In our everyday life, we have to get in touch with negative people. Those people have one thing in common: boundless negative energy that ends up affecting everyone around them. How can we interact with those negative or difficult people? People who seem chronically critical, belligerent, indignant, angry, or just plain rude. How to maintain a sense of compassion without getting sucked into their doom? And how to act in a way that doesn’t reinforce their negativity–and maybe even helps them?
This article provides 10 simple tips to deal with those difficult people:
1. Resist the urge to judge or assume.
It’s hard to offer someone compassion when you assume you have them pegged. Even if it seems unlikely someone will wake up one day and act differently, we have to remember it is possible. Try coming at them with the positive mindset you wish they had. Expect the best in them.
2. Dig deeper, but stay out of the hole.
If you show negative people you support their choice to behave badly, you give them no real incentive to make a change. It may help to repeat this in your head when you deal with them: “I understand your pain. But I’m most helpful if I don’t feed into it.”
3. Maintain a positive boundary.
Dealing with them, try to do two things, in this order of importance:
- Protect the positive space around you. When their negativity is too strong to protect it, walk away.
- Help them feel more positive, not act more positive.
4. Disarm their negativity, even if just for now.
Listen compassionately for a short while and then help them focus on something positive right now, in this moment. Don’t try to solve or fix them. Just aim to help them now.
5. Temper your emotional response.
Negative people often gravitate toward others who react strongly–people who easily offer compassion or get outraged or offended. People remember and learn from what you do more than what you say. If you feed into the situation with emotions, you’ll teach them they can depend on you for a reaction. It’s tough not to react because we’re human, but it’s worth practicing. Once you’ve offered a compassionate ear for as long as you can, respond as calmly as possible with a simple line of fact.
6. Question what you’re getting out of it.
We often get something out of relationships with negative people. You can’t make someone think, feel, or act differently. You can be as kind as possible or as combative as possible, and still not change reality for someone else. All you can control is what you think and do–and then do your best to help them without hurting yourself.
7. Remember the numbers.
Research shows that people with negative attitudes have significantly higher rates of stress and disease. Someone’s mental state plays a huge role in their physical health. If someone’s making life difficult for people around them, you can be sure they’re doing worse for themselves. When you remember how much a difficult person is suffering, it’s easier to stay focused on minimizing negativity.
8. Don’t take it personally, but know that sometimes it is personal.
Conventional wisdom suggests that you should never take things personally when you deal with a negative person. Accept that you don’t deserve the excessive emotions in someone’s tone, but weigh their ideas with a willingness to learn.
9. Act instead of just reacting.
If you know someone who seems to deal with difficult thoughts or feelings often (as demonstrated in their behavior), don’t wait for a situation to help them create positive feelings. You’re more apt to want to boost them up when they haven’t brought you down. This may help mitigate that later and also give them a little relief from their pain.
10. Maintain the right relationship based on reality as it is.
The best you can do is accept them as they are, let them know you believe in their ability to be happy, and then give them space to make their choices.
Image: Flickr – Pablo (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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