Dealing with negative people

Eric Berne (1964), founder of Transactional Analysis (TA), wrote a very popular book titled ‘Games People Play’. One of the games is putting others down, which is certainly aggressive. The payoffs of such games are building one’s ego, denying responsibility for one’s problems, reaffirming one’s opinion that other people are “not okay”, and expressing some of one’s anger.

The person in question may be a colleague, boss, partner, friend or neighbour. The constant bombardment of negative feedback gets you down, leads to anxiety, reduces self esteem and you cannot for the life of you work out why they are so nasty and targeting you for their criticism.

At a point in life you tend to ask yourself why you are their target and whether or not you should fight back. Experience of people that are always criticizing others is that they are deeply unhappy, have low self esteem and maybe even depressed. When people are depressed, they feel insecure and see an enemy in everyone especially in those they feel are better than they are. Some people are very jealous of other people’s success and deeply resent it. They then start to ‘act’ out.

“When people pass critical remarks at me, I generally see it for what it is -insecurity and jealousy. I pity them and as such bear them no ill feeling. I may try to help them feel better about themselves or to gain what it is they want on the condition that they can quit their negative attitude which can in the end drive even the strongest person down. But if they can’t and it’s normal for them to just take pleasure in criticizing people then I will distance myself from them, perhaps indefinitely,” says Hasiya Suleiman, an undergraduate of UniAbuja.

If you find yourself in Hasiya’s situation, do not let it get you down. Remember that if you seen to be at an advantage, those who feel insecure may make you their target. Their reason for making you their target of criticizing people could be born out of projection. By projection we mean they project onto others what they feel about themselves.

“I know I’ve certainly experienced put downs from people at various times in my life. I’m not sure it’s possible to go through life not meeting one of these people somewhere along the way so the best strategy is to learn how to deal with such people prior to interacting with them. The first thing to know is that a happy, self confident, person does not put others down. They might provide constructive criticism but they won’t and never put others down,” Ms Fatima Kabir, an Abuja lawyer.

For instance, if a colleague seems fond of dismissing your ideas, you may wish to ask him for better suggestions. Through this you will be able to know whether he is being sincere or just negative. You can decide to ignore negative people or help them but it is best not to fuel their misery by fighting back. Such people could stoop so low to bring you down no matter what it costs.

Even when you decide to distance yourself from such people they feel rejected and look for ways to reconnect with you so that they can carry on their games. Annoyingly, the attention grabbing efforts are always negative and not positive. Is it possible this person has yet to learn these methods are not effective? The best thing is to stay off completely and turn on your ‘ignore mode’ if they keep seeking your attention.

Some people are very negative about others because: They need to make themselves feel like they’re in control or more powerful or to cover up their own insecurities; they’ve experienced a trauma of their own in the past and they don’t know how to deal with the pain so they’ll hurt others as a defence mechanism; or they are unhappy with what they have or have not achieved in life.

Knowing this can go a long way in resisting a fight back urge. It will do you good to resist any attempt to fight back as doing so will only make the insecure person drag you down to their own level and defeat you because that is their area of specialty.

Dealing with people who people who put you down can be a painful and hurtful experience. Sometimes, the scars even last a lifetime but with caution you can learn to live with them.