Quote:
Originally Posted by Rue11
If someone was in your life and there was no way to change that at the moment, how would you personally keep their negativity from affecting you? Physical avoidance, putting up emotional walls, those things seem to draw in more negativity.
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I have always been sensitive to when people get angry, it is for me a really hard feeling to receive. I'm not good at it.
Once I have figured out what it is about the person's negativity is when I take it less personal and i try to stay neutral but I have to be given breaks from the person or it will effect me too much and I have to have other people in my life that are then positive.
I use to have a secret competition with someone that i honestly think suffer from a type of depression or something. So each time the person said something negative I would make a joke or say something positive. It wasn't that I did not want to listen - I had heard the same stories over and over before and I had then given my empathy but it was as if the person was stuck in this wheel of negativity so it didn't really matter. At the end of the day the person seem to be more positive and although I felt somewhat drained I was exhausted but in a good way. But I would not have been able to keep this going if I was not given a break from that person's negativity state. I also had to understand that the crucial reason behind the persons negativity could be something that had happen perhaps long ago that not even that person might even be aware of, that is we never really know when it all started and I think if one shows some silent compassion for that - one will feel better about that person, like one has to silently forgive the person. habits are hard to break and the way we think is much habit too, the negative person may not even be aware that this is how it is seen as, it is just so normal to them, they might not be aware of how badly it effects others.
Also I think that someone so negative - it is only a portion that is thrown out to others, and the person that really suffers in the end is the negative person the most.
(PS. As for me I really suck at receiving anger, especially from a partner that I am in a romantic relationship with. I'm not an introvert person but I get like that. I close off. I go inside myself. I can't find my way out for hours - days. The partner showing off the anger was not fully aware of how much the anger effects me in the moment it happens, but then as I am dealing with it hours-days etc after - it can have a devastating effect, that the person who showed of the anger have no clue it caused that harm. It is not that I get sullen or I go around feeling like this to get attention or get the person to feel sorry for me or something. I have been told in the past that the guy gets increasingly frighten to loose me even though I am still there and I still go on automatic and I would, will get comments like "Where are you?". If I could change anything about me it would be about how I receive anger from other people, what it does to me.)