We are social beings. It is very complicated, if not impossible, to maintain a healthy life without informing anyone, since we have become socialized and we are part of more or less numerous groups that can evolve and expand over time and give rise to all kinds of situations. relationships, including difficult relationships.
Who doesn’t have a tense relationship? Whether it’s family, work or even romantic relationships, all kinds of relationships can become difficult at some point.
- We may think that these people appear in our lives as obstacles.
- But we can also go a little further and see them as challenges.
Make no mistake: life is an ongoing challenge, as human beings, we overcome stages, cycles and relationships.
When people have their respective backgrounds, their personalities, their temperaments, present circumstances and their dreams of the future, we talk about a psychochemical experience, quite ambitious, very hopeful, but that does not always go well.
Generally, when we start a relationship with someone, whether loving, professional, family or platonic, we all want the presence of those sparks that make us feel alive, loved, admired and respected.
But the truth is that, on many occasions, sparks become pure combustion, and we don’t like that.
Some of our relationships are becoming difficult and there seems to be little to be done, tensions often give way to more difficult attitudes and even verbal confrontations, often tending to avoid these people so as not to generate conflicts, but we don’t always make it. .
If we look at literature or cinema, we will discover that each protagonist has his own dynamic character, sensitive to the evolution of the plot.
Conflicting situations arise, usually caused by another character, antagonistic to the first, these antagonists are the ones that challenge the perspective of the protagonist, placing him in situations that encourage the deployment and improvement of resources and abilities.
Life is not very different. If we wear our character costume and can see who our antagonists are, we will understand how to overcome the tension and grow.
In the face of difficult relationships, we both have paths: we can complain and feel victimized by our antagonists or seek a way out of a solution that allows us to do so.
This is not a confrontation, but an internal work that eliminates the variables or factors that led us to this situation.
Insecurity is not a good business to deal with difficult relationships, starting with self-esteem and self-respect is the best way to follow this hero path.
Sometimes a phrase like “If you keep talking to me like that, will I leave you?”It reflects a powerful and very courageous attitude. Our antagonists have power over us precisely because they attack us where it hurts the most.
A very important part of our own psychological development is understanding, healing and changing responses to our emotional wounds. Many therapists say we attract people who have the best and worst characteristics of our parents.
There is a reason why this is happening, it is an unconscious reaction to the secret need (even of ourselves) to solve problems that have not been solved with our parents, in many cases this may be to earn the admiration and respect of a critical and severe father.
If we see that our difficult relationships repeat patterns with figures of authority, the antagonists in our lives can play the role of the dominant father we have never been able to satisfy.
This set of antagonists is a resource used with great success in sessions to support personal development, it is a personalized exercise, in which the person regains his character and his antagonist.
The difference with literature is that our antagonists are not demonic or evil characters by nature, they are usually people like us, with their fears, their hopes, their emotions and their acquired behaviors.
If we decide to follow the hero’s path in the context of difficult relationships, will we begin to see our antagonists as our true masters of patience, courage, compassion, and flexibility?
In fact, we can take advantage of them as opportunities to strengthen and improve our character and emotional muscles, if we work on these aspects we will be able to develop and improve areas of sleep, forgotten or ignored resources.
Coaching addresses many important issues. When it comes to facing difficult relationships and doing so from that perspective, there are questions we can ask ourselves, they are questions that reveal our own capacity for discernment.
If we want to play with the book writing of our own life, we will analyze the characters, ask ourselves who our current antagonists are and what makes them so difficult for us.
If we write this story ourselves, we’ll wonder why we chose this character in question. Usually, antagonists are created to get a more advanced version of the protagonist.
Another topic that will help us deal with difficult relationships will be to identify what skills or virtues can help us in this challenge. In coaching, are we dealing with a long list of virtues, such as self-affirmation, resilience, courage, compassion, patience, self-awareness?
If you want to be the author of your own story, you can start by sitting down and rewriting your own script.
Look at the situations of your life and the difficult relationships from a higher stage, that of the screenwriter, which will always give you a better perspective than the actor has in the spotlight.