7 WAYS … TO DEAL WITH NEGATIVE PEOPLE

As children we’re raised on Utopian ideals of community based on cross religious and cultural variations of ‘love thy neighbor’. But where exactly do you draw the line when it comes to negative, energy-draining, drama-inducing people who seems to thrive on negativity? Negative people are black holes, the “Blue Meanies” of our world.

Walking vacuums, they drain the life and energy out of anything they come in contact with, and they’re seemingly incapable of offering anything positive in return. When cornered in conversation, creative (borderline desperate) measures pop into your head – the heights of imagination reached to avoid contact saving you from further torment. The mere mention of their name spreads a grimace across faces, followed by pained and feigned smiles whenever they enter a room.

No matter how much we may insulate ourselves, we can’t isolate ourselves from negative people. Yet, what we can do is learn how to deal with them, and here’s how:

1. Empathy and understanding – Negative people are unhappy people. People with cemented negativity are classic disappointment cases. They’re disappointed in some aspect about their lives. They usually feel inadequate about themselves and so rather than address that, they project this inadequacy onto everything around them – this allows them to deflect attention away from themselves and onto what they consider as outside or separate from themselves.

Negative people are faced with one to two dilemmas. First, they don’t want to recognize their own perceived shortcomings. I say “perceived” because there may not be anything necessarily wrong with them, but in their own mind they have or are failing somehow – and that is a very harsh reality to deal with. While we may see absolutely no shortcomings, one’s own reality is a powerful force and it takes an immeasurable amount of discipline to master it.

The second dilemma involves a great deal of insecurity. With the premise being that negative people are unhappy because of their own perceived inadequacies, it follows that because they’re unhappy, they will project negativity onto others in order to deflect attention away from themselves. This is a classic bully scenario in that bullies typically attack others because they themselves somehow feel attacked by the outside world.

There is a two-fold importance of understanding negative people. First, it takes power away from them and they no longer have a control or influence over us (particularly true if your negative person is a ‘loved’ one). Second, understanding them fosters empathy – a key ingredient for our own spiritual development.

2. Assert Yourself – Being emphatic doesn’t mean you have to be a fool. Just because you understand someone doesn’t mean you have to tolerate being a victim of their negativity. Negative people come in all forms. If it’s someone you’ve randomly met, or if it’s a brief encounter, there isn’t necessarily cause to assert yourself. However, if you’re working with this person or if this person is in your family or circle of friends and associates, it’s critical you assert yourself.

End of the day, despite human evolution and advancements in civilization, we’re still in a figurative jungle. If you’ve ever observed animals, even domestic animals, you’ll notice there’s a hierarchy in which daily exchange plays a big role in. How you let someone treat you determines how they will treat you in the future. Simplified, if you let negative people project venomous thoughts toward you repeatedly, you’ve granted them the permission to continue doing so.

Asserting yourself doesn’t mean being violent or being aggressive. It means being calm yet having a firm conviction. It means letting someone know their behavior is unacceptable; letting them know where they stand with you. It’s basically a warning light and it will either solve the problem or show you an important truth about this person if your asserted stance fails.

3. When Assertion Fails - If being assertive failed, then you’ve just learned a very important piece of information about your negative person: they don’t care what you think. This is particularly important to know if your negative person is someone close to you to whom you feel some sort of obligation to.

If your cool and collected dialogue letting them know how you feel ended up falling on deaf ears, then you may want to seriously reconsider your relationship with this person. They clearly don’t have your best interest at heart at this point and you have to consider how much of yourself are you willing to let compromise. Thoughts and words being a powerful thing, how much of this continued viral negativity are you really willing to let into your mind?

4. Open Door Policy - If keeping your distance from this person isn’t an option, then you have the option of redefining your relationship. Relationships are often a swinging door in that things can go both ways. The point being that if you discuss your personal life, the details of your day, daily problems, etc, you’re opening the door and giving the green light for their negative interjections. No matter how much you may be itching to vent or make small talk, make sure you keep YOU out of the conversation.

If you don’t want their negativity, then don’t give them the opportunity to comment. It’s as simple as that.

5. Shifting Perspective - Going back to why negative people are negative, if you’re feeling especially heroic, you do have the option of trying to get them be more objective about how they see things. However, this is no fool’s errand. While some people just need a positive force in their life, something encouraging and different from the negativity they themselves were indoctrinated in at a young age, the fact is that some people genuinely enjoy being miserable. It’s become so much their security blanket that they feel more comfortable in this frame of mind.

This degree of negativity requires a profound level of self-realization to shake, and if it is in their path then it’ll come to them when the time is right – usually sparked by some small yet cataclysmically defining moment in their lives.
While you may want to help ‘reform’ your negative person, remember that at some point you may have to simply throw in the towel for the sake of your own sanity.

6. Grace – Grace is more than just an admirable quality; it is a lost art and an incredibly powerful tool. Grace is about calm, integrity and a resounding sense of self – and with negative people, having grace means never indulging in their gossip, never showing interest in anything negative they have to say (no matter how much you may be itching to get the scoop).

7. Ignore them – Negative people are attention seekers. Nothing will bother them as much as if you just simply ignore them.

7 Ways to Deal with Negative People written by Shireen Qudosi.

Photo by: Made Underground