This afternoon I saw my therapist and told her about my recent run-in with a guy who aggressively asked me, “What do YOU do for a living?” Her jaw dropped. She also said I handled it well. (I told him I was a dance instructor and that, yes, you COULD earn a living being one.) She also said that more and more I’d know in the moment, like I did then, when someone was being aggressive, passive aggressive, or otherwise shitty.

This is one of the by-products of doing The Hard Work and learning to see yourself more clearly–you learn to see others more clearly. What I mean is that several years ago it probably wouldn’t have even occurred to me that this fella was sizing me up and not simply asking a benign question. Maybe a couple years ago I would have figured it out a few days later. Like, Wait a damn minute, that wasn’t very nice. But the other day, I knew instantly.

That’s how fast your intuition works if you let it.

The part I’m still working on is how to respond–in the moment–when someone crosses a boundary. After all, I’ve had a lot of practice at playing aloof or being Mr. Nice Guy. And whereas I knew with Mr. Slick (as I called him in therapy today) what path I wanted to take (subtle assertiveness versus all-out war), I don’t always know what to do when it happens with people I’m familiar with. For example, months ago someone I care about was being passive aggressive with me, and it really caught me off guard. Not that this person hadn’t done it before, but I hadn’t SEEN IT before. I had my blinders on. To put it bluntly, I’d been lying to myself. We all do this–because once you acknowledge the truth, you’re responsible for what you do with it.

This is the part that sucks.

In the above case, I ended up calling the person out for being passive aggressive. This is something I’ve had to do more times than I can count in the last five years, since starting therapy. Not that I take every opportunity to do so (because I truly don’t love it), but I’ve seen the results of not acknowledging and acting on my truth (the results are always a shit-show), and I’m not willing to do that anymore. Again, I don’t attend every fight I’m invited to, but I’ve learned that I and I alone am responsible for the quality of the relationships in my life. As the saying goes, “We teach people how to treat us.”

Today I told my therapist that I think of her as a ninja. That is, at least in my mind, she doesn’t take any crap from anybody and she’s always lightening-fast at both assessing situations and responding to them. Her motto is “if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.” But today she told me (and she’s said it before) that plenty of things catch her off guard. “Life is always going to up the ante to keep you on your toes,” she said. Likewise, she said she lets plenty of “bad behavior” slide either in the interest of keeping the peace or “I’m just not ready to deal with it.” “Sometimes it’s enough to SEE CLEARLY what’s going on, even if you don’t do anything about it,” she said.

When she does confront, she says she matches the energy coming at her. If they’re subtle, she’s subtle. If they’re full-on, she’s full-on. To this point, I think it’s worthwhile to say something about the attitude in which you confront a person should you choose to do so. That is, I’ve learned that you can have a confrontation without cutting someone off at the knee caps. You can say, “This is a problem for me” without calling them a low-life bastard. This afternoon I listened to an interview with psychologist Robert Augustus Masters, and he said that ANGER is actually connected to your heart and can be expressed without being unkind. AGGRESSIVENESS, on the other hand, isn’t connected to your heart and often forgets the humanness of the other. That is, there’s no heart, no humanity, in aggressiveness. A (seemingly unrelated) book I read this afternoon juxtaposed ASSERTIVENESS and AGGRESSIVENESS, suggesting assertiveness as the kinder, more human-to-human option for confrontations.

But back to SEEING MORE CLEARLY. Maybe that sounds nice. I imagine we all want or pray for GUIDANCE in almost every area of our lives at one time or another. We think, What am I supposed to do? But this is the not-nice part about intuition. Again, we’re responsible for the information we’re given. If someone is mistreating you and all your alarm bells are going off and telling you to tell them, “Step back,” “Back up,” or “Up yours!” but you don’t, what makes you think your intuition (or gut or guidance) is going to talk to you when you really need it? If you asked your partner to take the trash out every week for a year and they didn’t do it, would you keep wasting your breath? No, you wouldn’t, and neither will you intuition. So if you want it to talk to you lightening-fast, you have to listen to it.

You have to take your trash out.

Again, this sucks and is no fun. Because listening to yourself is–by definition–a lonely endeavor. Self-empowerment is not group-empowerment. Plus, seeing clearly means the end of your illusions, about yourself and others, about people you might like. Not that you don’t entertain or love the passive aggressive (or whatever) people in your life, but the dynamics shift when you start to call bullshit. Maybe for the worse, hopefully for the better. Enforcing boundaries is a crap shoot. (Life is like a box of chocolates.) The other person could rise to the occasion (like an adult), pitch a hissy fit, or do nothing. But you’re not responsible for what other people do or don’t do. You’re only responsible for yourself. This, of course, is a full-time job and doesn’t pay very well. At least in dollars. But it does pay in a greater sense of self-worth and value, more peace of mind, and richer, truer relationships with much less drama.

This is worth all the effort.