How to stop taking things personally: 5 tips
If there is something that the human mind specializes in, it is in making everything that happens to us have a meaning for us. For that reason, sometimes curious experiences are given. There are many situations that, if we analyze them coldly, we would see that they are neutral and that they do not have any transcendence, and yet they make us focus our attention on them and associate them with an emotional charge. On many occasions, we react excessively to them, believing that practically everything that happens to us is important and it happens because we are there.
Of course, this phenomenon also occurs in our personal relationships. The fact of doubting about the intentions or emotions that hide behind the actions of others, or what they say, can cause some people to see an attack in the most ambiguous signs: a gesture, a change in tone of the voice, a constructive criticism ... For them, this article will be of special interest: How to stop taking things personally? Let's see it through a series of basic guidelines.
- Related article: "Obsessive personality: 8 habits that lead to obsession"
How to stop taking things personally
Every psychological change involves a transformation of our beliefs and our daily habits. Keeping this in mind, and in order to improve in certain aspects of the personality, you have to work hard and work constantly, follow the following recommendations for stop taking things personally in the slightest glimpse of possible attack or conflict .
1. Explain your personal evolution project
Not a contract with legal validity, of course, but one of word. It is something very simple: you should tell the people you have more confidence that you are trying to stop taking things personally so as not to get upset or offend you unnecessarily. Just doing this, you are already modifying your social environment to make it less tempting to throw in the towel and let yourself be carried away by your old habits.
Following this advice, you will be able to create expectations both in yourself and in others, so that you will indirectly boost your motivation to continue forward and try to take personal relationships with you. a more constructive attitude .
2. Analyze your type of hostility
When we say that someone takes things personally, we are simply referring to adopting a hostile or defensive attitude in situations of ambiguity in which their self-image or their public image could be compromised by a comment or an action of others. This encompasses a certain variety of behaviors that do not have to resemble each other.
So it's good that you stop to think about how that hostility appears in you when you take something in a very personal way. In this sense, you must distinguish between at least three trends: aggressive attitude, passive-aggressive attitude and resentful attitude . In the first case we speak of people who are clearly angry and express that feeling of anger, in the second the hostility manifests itself in a more subtle way, without directly facing the other but treating it with contempt, and in the third one does not express hostility, but It hides the fact that our feelings have been hurt.
Depending on which of these categories you locate, you can decide if your work should focus more or less on preventing hostile escalation against others, or on reinforcing your self-esteem so that you do not get hurt by a variety of social experiences.
3. Detect which situations trigger that emotion
Are there specific situations in which you consider that you take what happens in a personal way? Name them For example, some of this occurs in relation to your professional career, for others these experiences appear only in the family context , or even just with some people. Knowing these things will help you decide if you should manage differently only certain personal ties, or if the problem is in a facet of your personality.
4. Work your self-esteem
Yes, only this task already carries with it a whole series of exercises to perform, but it is an indispensable step. The reason for this is that there is always some insecurity when someone takes things too personally. After all, this is a tendency towards catastrophic and somewhat paranoid thoughts , feeding the beliefs that around us there are hostile forces that can wound us through the most insignificant details.
For example, something relatively simple that you can do in this sense is to lead a healthier life and take more care in general.This will positively affect how you feel, and allow you to break old vices that made you feel bad and adopt a more pessimistic perspective on what is happening around you.
- Maybe you're interested: "Low self-esteem? When you become your worst enemy"
5. Part of zero in your relationships with others
Sometimes hostilities are still there out of sheer inertia. For example, because in the past someone misinterpreted the intentions of the other, a misunderstanding was created that was perceived as a lack of respect, and reconciliation does not come because both parties refuse to admit their mistakes. Creating a symbolic ending for this stage makes it much easier rehabilitate those empathy bridges that will make it easier to tear down that tendency towards paranoia.
