Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2018, and the author’s statement that he is 38 years old is as of 2018.
Things happen around us every day. Not all of them are to our liking. We meet people. Not all of them treat us well. We get into debates, sometimes by choice, sometimes without having done anything to deserve it. Some debates get heated. We lose clients, people leave us, we see Facebook posts that go against our beliefs. And all of that is normal.
However, when you take everything that happens around you as a personal attack, or it affects you in some way, you are fitting the definition of one of the types of toxic people. Yes, you may think someone who comes to argue with you is a toxic person because of all the nonsense you think they are saying, but if it affects you, I am sorry to tell you that the toxic person is not them. It is you.
What people say and do is about them
Most of the things that happen around us would happen whether we were there or not. Some people behave in a certain way, and they were behaving that way before they ever met you. It is not an attack on you.
Everyone carries a big backpack of life experiences on their shoulders, including wounds and disappointments. Not all of them have been lucky enough to have a social or emotional circle that changed their views. They may even be destructive people because of where they come from, but not consciously destructive. In any case, your mantra here should be to accept those people or to distance yourself from them. In some cases, both (acceptance and distance).
People see the world their own way
Everyone has their own idea of the world and of life. They may even have an idea of you. Some people may think you are an incredible guy or woman. Others may think you are a bad person. Either way, whether they think all good or all bad things about you, once again they are talking about themselves and their perception, about how they see the world.
Some people think life is beautiful and others think life is crap. Just as life can be seen in two ways, a person can be seen in two ways. So they are talking about themselves, according to their own perception.
The problem is that if all these things happening around you, other people’s opinions and other people’s words affect you, your problem is much bigger than those people’s perception of the world and of you.
Of course, this is not about ignoring all other people’s opinions and comments either: if 3 or 10 people say you are an idiot, they could be 10 idiots talking about you. If 100 people say you are an idiot, there is very probably something in your personality that you need to change.
How to stop taking things as a personal attack
You will live with constant frustration, pain, sadness and disappointment if you are in one of those phases where you take things as a personal attack. In most cases, the best thing is to let go and focus only on your response.
After all, you cannot control whether someone insults you, but you can control whether you let it affect you or simply let it go.
You cannot control the local drunk pestering you in a bar, but you can control your response. In fact, you can choose to see the situation in two ways:
- He is getting on my nerves because he does not like me, because he wants trouble with me.
- He is getting on my nerves because he would be getting on anyone’s nerves. He is drunk.
You cannot control whether your partner is faithful to you, but in the case of infidelity there are also two ways of thinking:
- They cheated on me because I am worthless, because I did not know how to please them, because I did something wrong.
- They cheated on me because they are an unfaithful person, and unfaithful people are not worth it.
These are small changes in the way we think that can free us from a heavy load of negative emotion that could destroy us mentally.
The key to keeping our energy when everything seems to be against us
When something unpleasant happens around us, in our lives or at a social gathering, look at what your most common response is. Do you take the bait straight away? Do you get angry? Do you get sad? Are you one of those people who feel sorry for themselves when life lashes out? Do you fly into a rage? Are you one of those who believe the universe is conspiring to mess up your life, expressly and only yours?
At some point we have all been guilty of taking something too personally and acting in the heat of the moment, and acting immediately on our emotions is one of the most harmful things we can do.
One of the mistakes we must avoid at all costs is acting on our emotions. We should always act from reason and intellect.
Things we tend to interpret as a personal attack
We get fired: my boss is a son of a b****.
Our child’s room is a mess: this lazy so-and-so is defying me.
Our partner does not show us all the affection we would like: they do not care about me at all, I am worthless, they do not worry about me.
We need to understand that people do not always act the way we would like. People make decisions; sometimes people get things wrong, they fail too. People are people, and we fail too, but we only pay attention to what affects us directly.
We think everything that happens to us is personal, even a client leaving for the competition. But the truth is that practically nothing that happens to us in life is personal. Things happen. They happened to us, but they would have happened to other people anyway if we had not been there.
Some people are rude, inconsiderate and selfish. Some of them have emotional problems they are aware of. Others are not aware of these problems. In no case can this be interpreted as a personal attack. We should take it the way we take a dog barking in the distance. We can ignore it, we can go and see what is happening, we can even confront the dog, but the wisest thing is to keep walking and not respond at all.
Your reaction to apparently personal attacks
Let me give you an example. When I have written a sensitive article or made a video that I knew would split opinion sharply, it could obviously feel as though, among the hundreds of insults and deliberately hurtful comments, I could take them as personal attacks. In fact, is there anything more personal than a personal insult and an attack on who you are?
See also: This skill is the difference between professionals and amateurs
I think of those young YouTubers who ended up closing their channels, some of them depressed because they could not cope with the bullying, and others who, sadly, ended up taking their own lives.
In these cases, people who know me have asked me how someone like me can put up with this kind of behaviour and these insults.
The answer is simple
The first thing I think is that I am 38 years old, have a certain level of education and have lots of things to do. From there, I realise that if I decide to waste my time on someone who must be extremely bored to spend their time making certain comments, that person would actually have won.
I start from the idea that behind certain profiles there are people who must lead very sad lives. So I see them as dogs barking in the distance. It is a different matter with someone who comes with the opposite opinion, even somewhat worked up because they did not like what I said. In that case I understand it, and I may even spend my time debating with that person. Hearing an opposing opinion is always a chance to learn other points of view.
It is true that if at some point I have free time and feel like playing, I might play around with the haters a little, but I never take it as a personal attack.
I have always kept a famous saying in mind: “Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”
So just remember this mantra
You will not be able to control everything that happens around you or everything other people say about you, but you can control not being overwhelmed by everything that happens. What happens around you and how people act towards you is their problem. Your reaction to what happens is your problem.
See also: This toxic behaviour is draining your energy
Featured image: Pasquale Paolo Cardo, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
