How To Get Unloving People To Change—Without Saying A Word

by Margaret Paul

Have the unloving, selfish, judgmental or needy people in your life made you angry, depressed and resentful?

Some examples:

You’re angry because your colleague undermined you at a meeting.

You’re depressed because your partner continues to ignore your bids for connection.

You’re fed up because your kids don’t listen and talk back.

You’re disappointed because the person you were dating ghosted you.

You’re livid because your relative said something mean and condescending about your parenting style at a family function.

You’re drained because your best friend won’t stop complaining and needing reassurance about a personal problem, and doesn’t seem to wonder or care about what YOU are going through.

The people in your life seem to either be getting on your nerves, needing things from you, ignoring you, or insulting you.

Even people you don’t know personally are rude—cutting you off on the highway, arguing with you about a customer service issue, or making you wait too long when you had an appointment.

You wonder if people are becoming less caring and considerate in general. Maybe modern life puts a lot of stress on people or something.

But then you start to wonder if it’s something about YOU.

And you may be right! But probably not in the way you think.

If Only You Had Nicer, More Loving People In Your Life (Or So You Think)

You wish you had more loving and considerate people in your life. You even allow yourself to daydream a little bit about what that would be like.

You imagine how nice it would feel if your kids stepped up and cooperated, cleaned their rooms and finished their homework…with a positive attitude. You wouldn’t have to feel like such an ogre for yelling at them all the time.

Or if your partner even once said, “Hey honey, I can see that you’ve got a lot on your plate. Let me take care of this.” You’d be more affectionate and loving towards him or her.

You imagine having the kind of friend who would meet you for a cup of tea and look you in the eye and ask, “Tell me how YOU are doing. You seem frazzled. What’s up?” Instead of diving headfirst into their latest love life or work drama before you even had a chance to take your first sip. No wonder you feel like a bad friend because you hardly ever invite them to spend time with you.

You’d be a happier person if people were nicer to you, you think.

Instead, you’re distant and stand-offish, or you feel irritated because you’ve been so nice, but you can’t help it, because you don’t know what else to do.

When people are rude, judgmental and selfish, how are you supposed to respond?

You wouldn’t be alone in thinking this way.

The Misguided Assumption We Make When We’re Surrounded By Unloving People

Many people believe that “If only I can attract a kind and loving person into my life, then I will be able to feel good about myself.” The problem is that this is backwards.

The truth is that when you become a kind and loving person to yourself and you learn how to love and value yourself, then you will attract kind and loving people into your life.

I work with many people who seek out my help because they are tired of attracting the ’wrong’ person over and over, whether it’s friends or romantic partners.

They make friends that turn out to be needy and judgmental. They fall in love with partners who are inconsiderate and selfish. They don’t like their relationships or the person they become when dealing with these unloving people.

It’s generally evident to me in the very first session that they have never learned to be the ’right’ person with themselves and with others. And until they do, they will continue to attract people from the low frequency of their wounded self rather than from the high frequency of their loving adult.

From the standpoint of quantum physics, everything is made of energy. “Frequency” refers to the energy you give off by the way you hold yourself, the things you say, your body language, and your attitude. When I say that you attract people of a certain frequency, it simply means that you attract people that give off similar energy.

The wounded self is our ego, housed in the lower brain (amygdala) which is the seat of our fight or flight response. It’s the aspect of us that carries the fears, false beliefs, and controlling behavior that results from not getting the love we needed as children, or as a result of abuse or neglect.

The loving adult is that aspect of us that is able to nurture and protect us by setting appropriate boundaries with others and with ourselves, setting limits on self-destructive or unloving behavior, and has compassion for ourselves and others.

So in other words, when we’re operating out of our ego wounded self, we are relating to others out of false beliefs, fears, and a need to get something that we have been unwilling to give to ourselves.

We attract others who are also operating out of their ego wounded self.

They unconsciously feel drawn to us, and we are drawn to them.

We attract judgmental people because we have self-loathing and self-judgment.

We attract selfish people because we disqualify our own needs.

We attract rude people because we aren’t kind to ourselves.

So in essence…

The Problem Isn’t How People Are Treating You. The Problem Is…

…how you’re treating yourself.

When you fail to honor your own feelings and needs in lieu of other’s feelings and needs, you are disqualifying yourself. You attract people who put their needs and feelings above yours.

When you don’t set appropriate boundaries, you attract people who are rude, inconsiderate and selfish. They steamroll over you in conversations, they are ignorant to your distress, and they undermine you. They are comfortable around people who have loose or non-existent boundaries.

When you look to others for approval instead of seeking your own inner guidance and learning to approve of yourself, you attract people who are judgmental. They tell you what you “should” do, or they make remarks that come across as condescending and unkind. Their remarks “get” to you because you don’t trust your own opinion of yourself.

In general, when you aren’t loving to yourself, you attract people who aren’t loving to you.

Is Your Frequency Attracting Unloving People?

When you are operating from your wounded self—which means that you are coming from neediness, emptiness, fear of rejection, fear of engulfment, fear of getting hurt, anger, anxiety, depression, guilt, shame or feelings of unworthiness—you are transmitting a low frequency.

People with a high frequency—people who love and value themselves and treat themselves and others with kindness and caring—are going to be attracted to other high-frequency people.

They will feel compassion for low-frequency people, but not feel attracted to them as friends or partners.

We all have the free will to determine our own frequency.

Regardless of your background, you have the choice to do the inner work necessary to operate from a higher frequency.

When you let go of believing that someone else can do this for you, then you might become motivated to do it for yourself and learn to become the kind of person you want to attract.

While other people’s love can support you in your healing, no one can do it for you.

No matter how loving someone else might be with you, if you are not treating yourself with love by indulging in self-judgments and various addictions (food, TV, internet, work), you will continue to feel badly about yourself and continue to operate from a low frequency—and continue to attract other low frequency people.

That’s why the solution to having more loving, considerate people in your life is to do the work to be more loving and considerate with yourself.

And THAT is the uncommon cure for anger, resentment and disappointment with others.

How to Attract More Loving People to You In 6 Steps

Many years ago, I used to be an angry, needy and judgmental person and I consistently attracted angry, needy and judgmental people.

That was before 1984, when I co-developed a process with my friend and fellow therapist, Dr. Erika Chopich. This process showed our clients how to “raise their frequency” by learning how to take loving care of themselves, and become the kind of people they wanted to attract.

We named this process, Inner Bonding.

It’s a 6-step process that helps you identify your hidden emotions, false beliefs and unconscious patterns that cause you to struggle in personal relationships or experience difficult emotions.

Inner Bonding shows you how to pay attention to your feelings and needs. It helps you uncover the childhood origins of your emotional pain so that you can understand and resolve those painful feelings in a compassionate way for yourself.

It gives you the tools to set better boundaries and shows you how to access your inner guidance so that you’re less susceptible to feeling resentment or anger when people are rude or selfish.

Instead of casting blame on others, you learn how to take full responsibility for your own happiness and contentment, and therefore be less affected by people behaving in an unloving way.

And now, you can learn all about this 6-step process and practice it in “real-time” using the self-reflection exercises in my eBook, Thriving At Last.

Through my own Inner Bonding practice, I’ve healed to the point of now attracting caring and emotionally healthy people. I used to believe that the world was full of angry and judgmental people, and now my experience is that the world is full of kind and loving people! It’s amazing how much the world has changed for me.

I encourage you to focus on becoming the kind of person you want to attract into your life.

Blessings,

P.S. Do you have an inner bully that just won’t leave you alone? I call this the negative internal voice, and it can be the source of much of your self-loathing and self-judgment. It can be unrelenting and vicious.

But there’s another voice that can stop that internal bully, and it’s the voice of self-love. In my eBook, Thriving At Last, you’ll learn the 6-step process to self-love, by learning how to identify your hidden emotions, dialogue with your Inner Child, and take the necessary actions to heal from the emotional wounds that have created your inner bully. It’s all here: