Dealing with Negative People

Do you know someone who seems to never have a positive thing to say about anything or anyone?  Someone who constantly complains about situations and criticizes other people?  If you’re a positive person with a sunny outlook, spending time with negative people with dark clouds looming over their heads is sure to impact your mood and increase the chances of you becoming their Debbie Downer partner in crime.  If you’re ready to take control of the negativity in your life read on. 

What can we do to reduce the impact that these people can have on us?  The first thing to do is to try and understand why these individuals are the way they are.  What leads people down the negative path?  Many typically possess characteristics such as:

• Attention seeking tendencies
• Learned behaviors from others, such as their parents

• Low self-esteem
• Passive-aggressive tendencies
• Mood disorders such as depression

Constant exposure to other’s negativity can, in time, cause your own levels of optimism to crash and burn. There are many ways you can deal with persistent negativity depending on the type of relationship you have with the person concerned. Where the negative person is someone with whom you do not have many personal dealings, avoidance may be the best policy.

Often, however, it may be a co-worker or family member that is constantly dragging you down. This makes the situation much more difficult to deal with as it is both chronic and more personal. Here are some further suggestions:

• “Dilute” their impact by spending time with them only when other people are around.  Try to limit alone time.

• Don’t buy into the negativity.  Be assertive and state “Enough of the doom and gloom” and change the subject.

• Replace their negative statements with a positive one. Ultimately they will get
sick of not being heard.

• Praise their good attributes; they may then feel less of a need to be negative and you may also help to improve their self-esteem.

If you sense that someone in your close circle is suffering from depression or low-self esteem you may want to suggest they get treatment from a therapist to help them deal with their issues.  Attention seeking, passive-aggressive communication and other learned behaviors are more difficult to address but if you can get them into therapy the therapist should be able to address these issues when the time is right. 

Take a few moments to evaluate the relationships in your life.  Consider your coworkers, family and friends and see if you can identify the negative and positive people in your life.  Then make a concerted effort to spend more time with the positive people and using the tips above to keep the negative folks at bay.  In time you may just find your own level of happiness and optimism at an all-time high.