Get out of my head

One of the statements that totally irritated me was when DH told me to not let my mother get into my head.  AAAAAHHHHHgggggg.....he didn't explain how to do this.  It involves boundaries, taking back my power and perspective.  An awesome combination when you know how to use it. Goes along with the this one:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Eleanor Roosevelt

These are thrown out there with abuse survivors having no idea how to stop this from happening.  How do you get someone out of your head?  How do you stop a person from making you feel inferior?  

I believe there are several steps involved.  First, you need to know who you are.  A child abused from a young age defines themselves by their abusers standards, inferior, defective, dumb, not worth protecting, foolish, all the ugly derogatory things that abusers use to emotional destroy a person.  Second, a person needs to understand boundaries.  If I am to keep someone out of some place I need to know what boundaries are mine to maintain.  Many of my sessions revolved around boundaries.  In the process I learned to keep my abusers out of my head.  I am still working on this process.  Mostly the third thing is recognizing that the line between inferior and superior is always drawn by the one that is attacking.  I had to recognize that when someone is attempting to make me feel inferior they are an enemy and I am responsible for defending myself.  I am a work in progress.  I am learning that someone's opinion is not fact.  I am learning that their perception is just that, their perception.  I can agree or disagree.  I am learning that some people depend on putting other people down in a lame attempt to make themselves be bigger.  I learned that truly strong people have no need to make anyone else feel inferior.  

Sometimes you need to build a fence and lock some people out.