Can you stand up for yourself and still be spiritual?

Chances are you’ve got people in your life who rub you the wrong way. Maybe they get angry and lash out at you. Or perhaps they manipulate/project their crap/nag the hell out of you. There’s probably many scenarios where you find yourself teetering on whether to tell them to kiss your ass or lovingly stand up for yourself and voice your concerns nicely.

If you feel like being truthful somehow negates your spirituality, think again. There are many people who think that having healthy boundaries and standing up for themselves is somehow not spiritual or less spiritual. (Or they are knee deep in codependency patterns.) They think that by doing so they are going to hurt the other person or get themselves into an uncomfortable situation. They may think that Love and Light would want them to be ignore such situations and turn the other cheek.

This can be confusing, as it can be challenging to know when you should speak up and say enough is enough.  There can be a fine line between compassion and victimhood, but the reality is that you can learn to recognize when it’s time to stand up for yourself and do so in a loving and compassionate way.

Love means recognizing your truth

The truth is that you are love at your core. As a spiritual being, standing up for yourself is about love. Love for yourself and love for others. If someone is being disrespectful to you, it’s alright (and spiritual) to sit down with them and say, “Hey there. I feel as if the tone you are using with me is disrespectful and I do not appreciate it. I would like for you to address me in a respectful manner.” Or something like that. This is kicking codependency right in the ass.

Do not ignore your truth. Usually, when someone is speaking or treating you in a way that is disrespectful or abusive, your intuition will be letting you know. Your intuition is a great radar for low vibrations, but sometimes we start making excuses.

“He loves me. He didn’t mean to yell. He’s just tired.”

“She PMSing. It’s only natural she’d be selfish and bitchy. It’ll pass.”

It’s not alright. It’s ok to address such and it doesn’t make you one iota less spiritual.

Step into your power

Being in your truth means stepping into your power. It’s spiritual to walk around empowered with Light and Love. It’s actually pretty badass. It took me years and years to learn this. I walked around trying to be spiritual, yet scared to bring up things that would makes waves in the water. Contrast frightened me so much so that I would keep everything inside. The fear of abandonment kept me curled up in a puddle of fear. Then, because I knew I was not standing up for myself, I would beat myself up over and over.

The journey to self-love

Being spiritual means doing what you need to do on your journey toward self-love. Sometimes this means telling your partner you do not appreciate being yelled at or letting your children know that they are not allowed to use manipulation to try to get their way. It means navigating your life using your intuition and loving yourself enough to be honest and act in love, even when others may not be happy to hear what you have to say.

When I was struggling with major codependency issues, I had to learn that my standing up for myself did not mean I was an uncaring, bad person. On the contrary, I was an amazing, compassionate, loving soul and no matter what the reaction of the person on the other side of me was, I would remain that kind of person.

Can you stand up for yourself and still be spiritual?

Hell yeah. When done in a compassionate and loving way, you give yourself and the other person the opportunity to heal and grow, and that is what helps humanity grow and evolve as the collective.

Go ahead.

Step into your authentic power.