Stressors in congregations

If a congregation member or team is stressed they exhibit behaviors that indicate or reveal this stress and sooner or later, there is conflict or departure. Perhaps the members stay on, but they become ungrateful, cynical, critical, and angry for being the sole burden-carriers.

I am following the dharma Srila Prabhupada has described in his lectures to the best of my ability. He is my authority and my concern should simply be how to ensure that I please him. Other than him, I am answerable to no one. Yet people assume power over others as if they own them and it is a behavior that is hard to avoid. I try to limit my interactions to people who are cheerful and helpful. However, I do not manage to avoid becoming the receptacle for the inevitable manipulative anger from members whom I have come to look upon as valuable and worthy of respect. Either I manage to disappoint or neglect someone in a way that is irreparable, or I sense anger and start to wonder what caused it and keep meditating on the experience in pain and fear. The pain of being misunderstood and unloved and the fear of being isolated and abandoned.

I seldom think about the behavior of others as a reflection of their own internal stress and dissatisfaction. I tend to accept blame for all anger by default, wondering what it was that I did to trigger these reactions. I seem to be the perfect victim for angry and stressed manipulators, because I am obviously smiling too much, trying to maintain peace, and almost holding up a placard that says I will obediently do anything to please you, because I can't stand it when people are upset with me. I need to keep everyone happy and I need approval. Exploit my weakness by treating me badly, being angry, neglectful, disparaging, mean, or sarcastic, or just ignoring me obviously and intentionally. If you do that, I will spend nights together analyzing how it was my fault, and then sum up how I am supposed to make it up to you. I will kill myself to pacify you, disregard your ill treatment, and simply consider myself inadequate, unlovable, and flawed.

Instead, I should perceive negative behavior first as a sign of the perpetrator being stressed and later as my personal responsibility, only if there is scope for positive improvement in my actions or character.

If I nourish myself from within, with the love of Srila Prabhupada and Krishna's ambassadors of love, then I can be stable and secure in this love and remain undisturbed by external hatred and rejection. And I can learn to look at negative behavior as both an expression of the person's mental state and feedback for myself to improve my own character..