Discussions, criticisms, blackmail, negativity in the environment? When difficult people need to be treated daily, mental health is affected, it is not always possible to keep their distance with them or convince them to do otherwise.
What can we do, then, if it is necessary to live with someone like this at work or even in our own family?
- The most important is personal care.
- Sometimes we focus so much on self-defense.
- Building walls.
- Creating strategies for attack or simple survival.
- That we forget the basics: well-being.
When we are carefree, the mental and emotional energy itself is consumed more quickly and we reach minimum levels, becoming completely unprotected.
On the other hand, there is something important about this issue that deserves to be considered, sociologist Shira Offer, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, says a good part of these people we call?Difficult? They’re very close to us.
You can, for example, have very demanding children, or also parents and siblings with a difficult personality.
We would like to treat them more simply, so that things go on their own and make our day-to-day life more rewarding, however, this is not always possible, but that is not why we must resign ourselves to suffering.
There are useful strategies, and most of them go through something fundamental: start with ourselves.
“Anything that bothers you about others is often a projection of what you haven’t solved in yourself. “- Bouddha-
Difficult people can demonstrate the complexity of their personality in very different ways, there are those who advocate for everything, who escape responsibility and cooperate with nothing, who spread rumors and those who live immersed in a well of negativity.
However, beyond their personality, what they do or don’t do is how their behavior affects us.
There are those, for example, who don’t see any problems with a co-worker too perfectionist that co-workers always try to avoid. We all have a limit and a way of dealing with human complexity.
So, before you focus on each other’s problem, the first step must be to ask yourself exactly what bothers you about each other. Is it his disrespect, his attitude, is it something that bothers you for a specific reason?
In relation to this topic, Dr. Shira Offer, mentioned above, conducted a study to demonstrate some interesting points, the first is that dealing with difficult people increases our stress level.
Gradually we have developed a total and absolute discomfort aimed at this figure, we do not really know what we do not like about the person because what we are trying to do is avoid it.
However, and here is the problem, it is not always possible to escape these people, in some cases we are forced to work or share common scenarios with difficult people.
Researchers Howard Friedman and Ronald Riggio of the University of California conducted a study discussing the impact of secondary stress What does this term mean and how does it relate to difficult people?
When we are forced to live with complicated, unfavorable, critical or demanding profiles, this extraterrestrial behavior always ends up affecting us.
Thus, the simple fact of observing someone stressed, a colleague or a relative too negative or critical, ends up affecting our own nervous system, is called secondary stress and is something that leaves marks and harms our health.
That’s why, when it comes to difficult people, it’s critical to take care of yourself, this daily exercise is like strengthening a mental muscle that will support you in the face of these extraterrestrial behaviors.
Practices to which we should devote time and effort to include
We must quote this old maxim: “Things will affect you as much as you allow them to affect you. “There is a lot of wisdom in this sentence, but it is not always easy to apply it to our immediate reality.
We would like some things to affect us less, but when difficult people violate our rights and freedoms, few are able to maintain peace of mind.
In this case, personal care is also the key. Well-being also means remembering the need to impose limits, knowing how to protect and defend when necessary.
Well-being is, in turn, knowing how to control your emotions, giving importance to what is really important and diverting attention from those who do not deserve it.
Having a clear idea of ourselves, remembering our values and needs, staying calm, and developing appropriate emotional intelligence skills can help us better manage many of these often frustrating situations.
In the end, we all have a complicated person in our lives. Let’s learn to manage relationships with them well to live better.