Often when we think of our rights, we think of legal rights, but everyone also has emotional rights. These emotional rights are the boundaries, respect, and consideration that everyone is entitled to receive and give in every relationship.
Sadly there are a lot of toxic people who, in turn, create toxic relationships where boundaries and rights aren’t respected.
Plus, of course, these boundaries are usually crossed and ignored in emotionally or mentally abusive and other toxic relationships.
Perhaps as you read the following list, you’ll find some of the points very obvious or even silly, but you would be surprised how often people don’t honour these emotional rights.
If this topic is a concern for you, feel free to print out or bookmark this post for reference.
Either way, I hope this list offers you some helpful information.
Your Emotional Rights;
- You have the right to ask for what you want.
- You have the right to say no to requests or demands you can’t meet.
- You have the right to change your mind.
- You have the right to make mistakes and not have to be perfect.
- You have the right to follow your values and standards.
- You have the right to express all of your feelings, both positive or negative.
- You have the right to say no to anything when you feel you’re ready, it is unsafe, or it violates your values.
- You have the right to determine your priorities.
- You have the right not to be responsible for others’ behaviour, actions, feelings or problems.
- You have the right to expect honesty from others.
- You have the right to be angry.
- You have the right to be uniquely you.
- You have the right to feel scared and say, “I’m afraid.”
- You have the right to say, “I don’t know.”
- You have the right not to give excuses or reasons for your behaviour.
- You have the right to make decisions based on your feelings.
- You have the right to your unique needs for personal space and time.
- You have the right to be playful and frivolous.
- You have the right to be healthy.
- You have the right to be in a non-abusive environment.
- You have the right to make friends and be comfortable around people.
- You have the right to change and grow.
- You have the right to have your needs and wants respected by others.
- You have the right to be treated with dignity and respect.
- You have the right to be happy.
These rights have been adapted from The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook by Eugene Bourne (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1995)
How to dispense hope featuring Mark Schaefer
Hi, Amanda. If you don’t mind, I’ll be sharing a link to your post and giving you credit for telling me that all the memes I posted will become little blue squares soon. 🙂
When it comes to right, my father used to say, “Your rights end where my nose begins.” It meant that if a person next door was playing music you hated at a decibel that would make anyone around it deaf, you were well within your rights to complain to your neighbor and expect him to use earphones (or turn the volume lower).
People forget that with rights come responsibilities. A non-abusive environment means that neighbors respect each others rights. I suppose it could be said that my rights end where my neighbor’s yard begins — and that should mean that if my neighbor turns his music up loud, and refuses to turn the music down after asking nicely, I have the right to shoot his $*%&#$ radio in self defense for assaulting my eardrums. 🙂
Sure, feel free to link to any post you like.
You make a good point about rights and responsibilities, they definitely go hand in hand. Which of course means that being responsible also means respecting everyone’s rights.
Then again, if it was a perfect world, theoretically, if everyone respected everyone else’s rights we wouldn’t have to worry about protecting our own so much.
Thanks for dropping by. 🙂