How do I honor my potential & myself while dealing w/ compartmentalisation in others?

[Bruce Achterberg]

Edit, 25 November 2008:
So you can consider this issue solved. I wrote more it in this post. Others may still find this thread useful.

I would like some advice (from people who aim to live consciously and have more experience than me in this life area) navigating an issue I’m having so that I can ultimately reach a “place” where I’m honouring and loving both those around me, as well as my potential and capacity.

My posts should convey enough information for people who have experience in this area to see similarities between my experience and theirs. In other words, you’ll know whether or not it’s worth your time responding to my posts.

I’m pretty sure I’m accurately diagnosing this issue and that it’s not a result of something deeper or beneath my awareness, but of course, I can’t know for certain.

I’m primarily looking for advice from people who want to utilise their potential for the benefit of all and understand that their best is also what is best for everyone else and have aligned their lives so that is so, and see living consciously as the way to progressively improve their alignment.

* * *

Info to give context:

I grew up interacting with virtual worlds, playing games and using computers and other technology. When I say that, I mean that instead of my intellect being used within standard environments (i.e. a balance of technology and people), I grew up with systems and data. As I did this, I developed in some areas more than others, giving me impressive strengths (since your brain is programmed to make you effective in whatever environment you find yourself in; it doesn’t care what environment it is, just about effectiveness and survival). But because I grew disproportionately, I was left with some glaring weaknesses.

Systems don’t need love, so love is not something I developed. I am told, however, that I was very loving when I was younger. Not sure how credible that information is since it comes from family, but I at least remember that when I was that age, I felt like I could be myself in my environment (i.e. home).

This changed when I started school. I was and always have been very different to most people (I’m not saying it’s a better or worse thing; I honestly don’t have the perspective to be able to say with any degree of accuracy. What I can say is that I know 100% that I was and am different to the majority of people I encounter). My peers didn’t really like this, and I was isolated. As a result, I interacted with systems, not people, since that’s where I was effective.

This left me with a highly developed intellect, but poorly developed intrapersonal skills. What I think is more important than the skills, though, is experience that you can use to cut through the complexity of your situation, see patterns, and make accurate predictions. Experience in interacting with people is something I lack.

Since then I’ve grown, and those who would once say I was fairly loving would no longer say that. During my teenage years I was more aligned with power than anything (truth and love weren’t really there when it came to relationships), and this had an influence on the people who I was growing up with, who to this day, choose to not live consciously. They prefer just accepting their results. This power alignment was useful, since it helped me to develop my power—something that was previously weak (i.e. I had love, but no truth or power)—but to develop power, I tossed away love (and truth, as it relates to what is ultimately an intelligent way to live; within isolated situations, I was well-aligned with truth).

Since my teenage years I’ve grown. Power in isolation no longer felt right, so I set out to reclaim what I could call “myself” and re-align with my true nature, not just a set of conditioned, reactive patterns formed over the years from positive or negative experiences. I choose to live consciously, because I wish to use my potential to have a positive impact. I want my existence to have been of consequence. I want to do this because I feel I should, and when I do it, I feel empowered and self-aligned. I’ve no question that this is the right path.

My challenge is this:

For the past year I’ve been using my intellectual strengths to branch out into the area of relationships. At first I wasn’t really effective, but I got better. I find I still interact with people on my terms rather than theirs since their terms (falsehood, fear, etc) are non-ideal. I’m not perfect, but I’ve always found openness, honesty, honour, and fairness to be a more productive set of values to align with.

Now I find myself interacting with people who don’t resonate with me completely. People who have compartmentalised life areas or many disempowering, limiting, or negative beliefs, and no real signs that they are doing anything to address that. At first I thought this was just the way things were and silently (i.e. unconsciously) approved of that situation because I knew no better.

I’ll give lots of credit to people who are in a compartmentalised state but are trying their best—even if they have limiting beliefs and the like holding them back.

I’m not perfect myself. While I have some strongly developed life areas, I have other life areas that are very underdeveloped, relative to my age and my capacity.

I always try to improve, and I’ll give people much credit if they, too, are committed to improvement and willing to improve a non-ideal situation.

Unfortunately I find myself surrounded by people who don’t want to improve, and want better results, but aren’t willing to do anything to get there, or are only open to doing things a certain way. I’m fine with people working from their strengths and in a way that lets people maintain their self-alignment, but outward “nope, not going to do anything; let’s just not worry about it” no longer resonates with me and seems ineffective.

Some relationships I seem to be able to “heal,” but the compartmentalisation remains, and I can see that, from a zoomed out perspective, that’s non idea.

I’m finding that this compartmentalisation in those I interact with is no longer serving me, and could possibly be hindering my ability to fully develop and utilise my potential, and maybe even holding me in this state, or, worse still, dragging me down. Not doing anything about that would be the ultimate way to dishonour my human configuration (i.e. my talents and abilities) and my capacity for positive impact.

I’ve looked into the issue from the lens of relationships, but I see that in general, throughout my life, the common theme is to say “yes” to compartmentalised things, even when I can envision a better future. I very frequently silently approve (sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously) mediocrity and compartmentalisation, even when I know I could be doing better. I simply thought that’s what you have to deal with if you want to interact with people, or to get money, etc, but now I’m starting to question that.

Compartmentalisation seems to be something you choose, and if you choose it, you must accept the results that come with it. I don’t want those results; they’re garbage and a waste of human potential.

I’m starting to see that perhaps I’m interacting with the wrong people, which ultimately hinders both them and myself, since we lock each other in our respective drama and silent approval, wasting time and potential.

My talent themes cause me to optimise my environment, so even in non-ideal situations, I feel a desire to improve them, but I’ve some isolated experiences have taught me that this is kind of a matter of “doing things right vs doing the right thing.” In other words, my efforts could be better directed elsewhere. I’ve found that some people will appreciate my efforts, and some people will say that they’re bad or unwanted and even try to diminish me. Experience has shown me that relative to their perspective and desires, both people are right. That said, I much prefer to align with those who appreciate myself and my efforts without constant drama.

Now I’m seeing that, not only on the level of relationships but with my life in general, I may be trying to optimise things on the wrong level, trying to improve already suboptimal relationships that I said “yes” to (consciously or unconsciously) at a time when I was less-developed and less-aware, and now I’m trying to hold onto them because from that situation it seems right and like something I should try to optimise, but if I zoomed out, it could be so much better if I applied my efforts optimising and developing empowering relationships, not semi-empowering relationships that don’t seem to have potential to ever become fully empowering relationships.

I’m prone to the “grass is greener” complex because my talent themes make me constantly want to improve things, but in this case, I think that urge for improvement is serving me, or at least, intelligence applied in a holistic fashion not just a biological craving. I genuinely predict that I can have a more fulfilling, empowering, beneficial, which I understand benefits not only me but everyone (through the concept of oneness, but applied on a very practical level), both indirectly and directly.

I can see that, primarily, this is about choice. It’s as simple as “whatever you’re experiencing you’ve said ‘yes’ to, whether you said ‘yes’ consciously or unconsciously, and if you want different results, say ‘yes’ to different things instead and your situation will shift.” Pretty simply, but I also understand the small print of “if you say ‘no’ to your current situation, or start saying ‘yes’ to different things, you have to accept the respective package of whatever you’re saying yes to.

[Bruce Achterberg]

This is what I’d like help with:

To what degree do you have to compartmentalise to interact with others, and how do you deal with compartmentalised people if you decide that you aren’t going to compartmentalise? Do you just let them pass through your life? Do you just do your own thing? That doesn’t seem to be a good way to connect with others. It seems that you’d be looking for an ultimate ideal all the time, never really being able to find it, ending up isolated, in bad-standing with all your relationships.

Do you not settle at all so that there are no compartmentalised relationships or situations so you can always be yourself, no matter what, and you don’t have to deal with compartmentalised people?

Sounds great, but not very realistic, or at least, I can’t see how you could reasonably do it. Even if I made

That’s why I’m asking you—people who may have experienced similar things and come out on the other end.

Help me navigate to where you are now so that I may develop and utilise my potential, both for myself, and for everyone.

I can deal with my fears. I can deal with reprisal and have the ability to endure the upheaval and change associated with life changes. What I need is to know where to direct my efforts—where to direct my power.

How do I honour and love those around me, even if they’re compartmentalised, not perfect and choose to remain like that (or not), while still honouring and loving my potential.

Feel free to use Steve’s truth, love, and power model in your response if you think it’ll be helpful. I have Steve’s book, so you can also reference page number or sections if you like.

I’d just like some help navigating this area.

Going deeper:

If I want to look at this issue a little differently (in an unrelated way to the way I looked at it above)…

This is about love (or lack of connection to love, using Steve’s truth, love, and power model). I see I may need to massively change my situation so that I’m in a place of greater alignment. Move to Las Vegas. =)

In all seriousness, if that’s the path to greater potential and self-alignment, I’ll do it.

I can see that I could kind of bypass all of this if I just applied truth, love, and power. I see this is a lack of alignment with love, and in implementing that, I’d probably have to develop my power and, in the process, I’d probably end up aligning further with truth.

But it seems non-ideal to just trash everything and “pull a restart” (i.e. connect with and develop new relationships that resonate with me and are in alignment with truth, love, and power).

But then perhaps that’s what I need to do and what holds me back is what I’ll have to do to accept the entire “pull a restart” package. This may or may not relate to a fear of my own “light”—the package I’d have to accept if I was truly effective.

For a long time I’ve thought that’s what my issue might be, but I know no effect way to go from “non acceptance of my life” to “acceptance of my life.” Truth, love, and power make sense to me and give me a direction, but “acceptance” seems method and process-based, and methods never really work. I find principle-aligned personal development works best.

I guess I could just connect more with my light and learn to love it somehow, but that seems very abstract. I can envision that if I did that, yeah, I’d probably not tolerate what I tolerate now since I’d know very clearly what I’m capable of and wasting that wouldn’t feel right at all, but again, I’m not sure how to get to that point, and I kind of feel like I lack the motivation to get to that point and instead just go back to doing (possibly distracting myself with) other stuff.

Perhaps the real issue is that I think that I’ll have power when I eventually “get to X” point, which means I’m essentially giving my power away. Either way, I’m not sure how to proceed, which leaves me kind of feeling stuck, which results in me tending to my existing situation since I know how to deal with that. I can’t even really begin to see how I could start working on this other stuff. It seems to abstract and general.

Is there an elegant way to directly or indirectly address this issue—a way that I may be aware of, but don’t recognise it’s potential to really help me?

[Bruce Achterberg]

Note: if you're a professional who offers some sort of service or product and you genuinely think you could help me, please let me know (either by replying in this thread or sending me a private message).

I'm willing to invest time, energy, and if necessary, money to deal with whatever underlying issue I'm dealing with here. I take my potential seriously.

As a disclaimer, this note only applies if you live consciously and don't want to sell me something to solve all my problems in three easy payments of $19.95.

[Rose of Cairo]

Bruce, before I can think about your questions, I need to know what you mean exactly with compartmentalisation. How do you recognize compartmentalised people and how does compartmentalisation manifest, concretely? What are compartmentalised relationships? I have no clue what you're talking about!

[Hyperchiller]

Hey Bruce

I think I know where you are coming from. By compartmentalised life areas I suppose you mean life areas such as health, wealth, habits, career that aren't totally aligned with the 'real you'?

For me being at university, I have a close knit group of friends at university which means I am connecting with them on a constant basis which sort of brings me out of the Truth and Power corner of the triangle. Otherwise I am at home all the time learning about personal development and other solitary interests. I think Toastmasters has also helped me find friends who have similar mindsets as me. And I know you are a keen Toasty member so I don't see why you can't network with members in your clubs.

You said you have made friends in the past in your sub-optimal state and you don't want to invest in those relationshiops anymore because you don't want to improve relationships that you don't want anymore. I think that's because your friends might not be growing anymore in the direction that you are. Or they might have completely different values, beliefs and you know that changing their minds is totally out of the question. I know where you are coming from.

So maybe don't invest as much energy in the relationships since they might be pulling you down. I think some of my Toasty friends will be some long lasting ones because we have similar desires and interests. I've helped some of my Toasty friends by giving them some of my PD resources and recommending ones that I found to be excellent. So I guess my 2 cents would be go to places such as Toastmasters and find people who have similar interests and mindsets as you.

Yang

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by Rose of Cairo

Bruce, before I can think about your questions, I need to know what you mean exactly with compartmentalisation. How do you recognize compartmentalised people and how does compartmentalisation manifest, concretely? What are compartmentalised relationships? I have no clue what you're talking about!

A good way to describe compartmentalisation is a win/lose situation, where part of you is satisfied, but other parts are not.

Compartmentalisation is the practice of fragmenting yourself into different parts, and instead of living congruently as one cohesive whole, you only engage portions of yourself at any given instance when convenient to you or your conditioning, instead of engaging yourself fully, authentically, at all times.

These are examples of compartmentalisation in people:
"This person is really positive, but their health is terrible."
"This person is wants to help people, but they're completely fear-ridden."
“I’m empowered when I’m around this person most of the time, but I have to edge around many areas and can’t fully be myself the other times.”
“This person espouses oneness and love, but scams people for money.”

Someone who takes a bunch of supplement and pills for their health, but pigs-out on chocolate and other processed junk food. Someone who whines about the results they’re getting, but openly admits that they’re not willing to make efforts to improve their situation. Someone who goes to church, yet violates their religious beliefs the rest of the time. Someone who is “vegan,” but eats meat and dairy “once in a while” when they’re out “being social.” People who treat one group of people differently to another when they interact with each other. Someone who is passionate about personal development, but won't mention it to a certain group of people to avoid their reactions (something I used to do).

This is comparmentalisation.

When I “say yes” to compartmentalised things, I might manifest as me accepting something a situation, offer, or relationships I know isn’t ideal, but that I go along with anyway because it’s easier, or because I desire a certain aspect, etc. That means I’m comparmentalising my values (and a number of other things), putting a portion of myself aside in a particular interaction instead of engaging all of myself—all of my values—and holding everyone, and myself, to the same standards. Ultimately, I’m dividing myself up into parts and saying, “this part goes here. This part goes there. I’ll use these parts in X situation, but not in Y situation.”

I’m finding that associating with people who compartmentalise their life and have no interest in conscious growth is reinforce compartmentalisation in me—something I don’t want to continue to happen. Because they’re compartmentalised, they draw me into their frame, and I have to react on their terms instead of fully being myself and interacting with them authentically, and them doing the same with me.

On further inspection, it seems the answer to this issue is pretty simple, but I’m still not quite sure how far to take this.

Steve says that tolerance is resistance to love, but in order for me to deal with all the things I’m tolerating, I’d probably have to move to another country. I’m not kidding.

Ultimately, I’d be in greater alignment with the collective principles of truth, love, and power.

My main question is this: is there still a way to honour myself—my best self and what I aspire to embody on a daily basis—and my potential, while still honouring those around me, even if they’re compartmentalised?

It seems the answer is “no you can’t.” Again, tolerance is resistance to love, which is ultimately resistance to connecting to what’s important to you (which is my self-alignment and my potential, since those impact me as well as my contribution).

It just seems rather drastic to kind of axe the significant majority of relationships in my life. I’m up for the shift if it’s needed, but it seems like you couldn’t maintain such an ideal standard in your life all the time, which makes me wonder if there’s something that I’m missing—maybe some sort of way to look at things or a way to interact with people that allows you to honour yourself and their best self at the same time.

Perhaps the answer is to align yourself, as much as possible, with truth, love, and power, hence increasing your power and self-alignment and lessening the influence people have on you, thus drawing people into your frame, instead of being drawn into theirs and being negatively influenced and reinforced.

[Bruce Achterberg]

Hi Yang,

Originally Posted by Hyperchiller

And I know you are a keen Toasty member so I don't see why you can't network with members in your clubs.

Unfortunately Toastmasters, at least in my area, is rampant with compartmentalisation. More and more, I see I have to shelve parts of myself when I interact with my Toastmasters club members.

I don't expect perfect alignment, but I do expect people who are committed to aiming for that. That's the core of what I'm looking for: people who live consciously.

I find I'm surrounded by people who don't live consciously. People who are unhealthy, ridden with limiting, inaccurate beliefs, lazy people, and people who just don't seem to care about their results in life.

It really saddens me to see and be around people like that. I can almost sense their potential crying out, saying "...what if?" It's not pleasant, and I feel as if I have to tolerate it just to have some interaction with people.

Now I'm starting to think no compartmentalisation, even if it means little people interaction until I make some progress in other areas, is better that my current situation.

Although sometimes there are hidden benefits to things in our life, and I'm kind of not keen of just getting rid of things completely, especially since I'm not sure if that's even the right answer.

Originally Posted by Hyperchiller

So maybe don't invest as much energy in the relationships since they might be pulling you down.

It's a good, simple idea. Perhaps I should just try it instead of doing all of this speculation and "ideal solution" searching.

I'm already partly doing that by reading through Steve's book and becoming familiar with the principles, which I intend to apply.

But perhaps I should just start now.

It saddens me a bit to think that I might have to (perhaps because I'm still holding onto these aspects within myself), but it doesn't seem like it's in my best interest to settle for relationships where I can't be myself fully and live my purpose in harmony with the purpose of others. Right now, I kind of feel very owned. That's due to my lack of direction, but finding direction is yet another issue for me (although I at least have a path to explore for the moment; I'm feeling confident that if I just throw lots of personal development at this issue, it'll eventually give).

These are probably my two core life issues at the moment. Everything else is solvable and I can see what to do.

Thanks for the responses, Rose; Yang. It's nice to have connections that I can see part of myself in ("self" as in oneness, not vanity ). <--- see, this is what I'm wanting more of in my non-virtual interactions. Darn smart people being a minority.

[Anna Conlan]

Hi Bruce,

I have some experience with this.

Over the past couple of years (since I've got into PD and started my new business) I have left behind some significant relationships - including some old friendships, plus some previously very strong family ties have loosened quite a bit.

One of the reasons for this is that some of my old friends think I've gone crazy for getting into spiritual stuff

Also, I have grown so much and so fast that some of those relationships no longer suit me - we have little in common, plus I am more positive than some of my old friends and their negative attitudes about themselves and the world bring me down. For example...

I don't like being around people who moan all the time and do nothing about their issues. Or people who really hold onto their limiting beliefs and have a lot of fear about the world and can't let go of that. Certain family members of mine are so rigid in their thinking that they try to impose their thinking on me when I'm around them.

I am a healer at heart and I have a tendency to want to help people with their issues, whether they ask for it or not. But I have come to realize that some people do not want healing or help and that it could be seen as arrogant on my part to think that I need to 'fix' other people when they haven't expressed a desire for help.

So what I do now is withdraw from relationships which depress me. If I hear a friend say something like 'that's just the way the world is' or 'everything has gone to hell' and I know they have various other limiting beliefs, I will just leave them to it. I am my positive self around them so they know I have an entirely different world view to them, but I won't argue with them. The way I see it, they're entitled to their world view and if they want to change it anytime and become more positive, they know I'd love to help them.

Then that leaves me free to use up my energy on relationships which are really good (where I have stuff in common with the person) and where we inspire and nurture one another. I also need my healing energy for working with people who really do want change. there is no point me wasting it on people who don't want to change.

I know it can be hard to strike a balance between caring about people and leaving them to it. I make it clear to my all friends that if they want a healing session, they can have one, and they know what it entails. They know that if they want to get into personal development or spiritual development, I can recommend some resources. But I am not going to invest my energy in trying to have more in common with people who don't understand me - we're basically incompatible right now. Doesn't mean I don't care for them. It does mean that I don't really want to spend much time with them though if they're negative around me.

Having said all of this about having little in common, two of my oldest, dearest friends are a couple who are a bit skeptical about spiritual development and psychic stuff but in spite of that we are not growing apart -I guess it's because we're all positive people so we inspire each other and we always have other interesting things to talk about.

One thing I would recommend is to resist the urge to wipe the slate completely clean and start from scratch in some life areas. I used to feel that way. Now, when I get annoyed with my housemates, I think about moving to France, which is just a passing fantasy...it's an escape from what seems like a problem (and usually isn't, in hindsight). So what I'm saying is that it is possible to improve your life without needing to starting from scratch. It sounds like you need to look for some people who are into PD.

[Bruce Achterberg]

So I now have some comfortable distance from the "feeling not-good-ness" I originally had with this issue, and am in a much better feeling place, which is great.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to read this thread and used their energy to offer me some support. At the time it was helpful and, now that some time has passed, I can thankfully say that I understand this issue much more, and can work towards what feels right for me from a point of alignment. I've already made some good progress, and feel like I'm at a realy good place energetically. This bodes well.

Rose--thanks for being willing to help, even if I confuse the heck out of you (and everyone, heh).

Yang--I very directly took your advice after writing through my thinking in reply to your posts, and it worked very well. Now I mostly play it by ear, but I find it very useful to have internalised this understanding of how to deal with this issue should it come up.

Anna, for someone who doesn't think she's very good at writing, your post was impressively good, and very helpful to boot. Reading over it now (and I read over all of the posts you guys made in this thread) I can see that really everything I needed was covered in your post, and I can say I basically resonate with the state of being that is conveyed with the words of your post. (As an aside, one important thing to remember about writing is that it's not always the words you write, but the energy you convey. Words, just like writing, are a medium. The message you have to convey is what's important, and you conveyed that message masterfully, which is why your post was impactful. I actually write almost everything I write now using intuition and feeling; very little of what I write is guided by my intellect. My intellect sucks at writing. I find my intuition has evolved to include my understanding of good writing practice, which was previously managed by my intellect, and now my writing is a more complete, holistic, inclusive process, instead of an effort and a struggle.)

* * *

One interesting side effect which was influenced by your collective feedback and support is that I've found the real solution to this issue isn't a matter of de-investing in old relationships and focusing on the negative (although that is a part of it), but more a matter of focusing where you invest your efforts in the first place.

I guess I began to realise that you choose where to invest your time in the moment--you're never really "locked in"--and when you have a greater awareness of what you want, especially when you understand truth, love, and power (which is something I didn't undertstand very well--at least, not to the point of harmonious synthesis--but do now), you can invest your energy more intelligently (intelligently in both the dictionary definition, and PDSP, "truth, love, power" sense of the word).

More importantly, I think what I'm left with from this fairly expansive experience that has occured over time is a greater self-awareness, and more connection (love) with what is true for me (truth), which manifests in the most beautiful way in every day happenings (intelligence).

Interestingly, this awareness kind of flowed over to more than just interaction with people, and impacts what I connect with in general, although I must credit much of my increased forward momentum in this area to a reading I, in retrospect, rather synchronistically had with Anna--more specifically, the healing component of the reading which helped me get a better sense for my power in general, and also as it relates to the lightworkers way of living (which, months ago, was quite a challenge for me but now feels much easier--even natural), as opposed to dealing with power in isolation. Fans of PDSP (the book) could say it's power aligned with truth and love (and if you really want to go into the specifics, it's the desire component of power that you connect with love by using truth--to gaze upon what is true for you). I can honestly say that since Anna did her healing work and I've been doing my follow up healing intention homework, I kind of feel much more lovingly supported. Not all the time, but when I'm in the flow, it's as if the floodgates are open and everything is working more harmoniously, which is quite a thing to feel--to experience--and behold. But then, perhaps the floodgates are always open now, it's just a matter of noticing it.

So yeah, thanks, guys. Success!

[funchy]

I am not quite confident what you mean by compartmentalization. I'm feeling like it means denial, internal dishonestly, or internal suppression of the true person?

I sense two issues going on, but forgive me, as I may be off base totally here:

One is a resentment that feel you must suppress part of yourself in social settings to appease others.

The other is your frustration at people who live with flaws they themselves do not acknowledge, yes? People who seem trapped in their own cycles of self-harm, many of whom don't seem able to break free?


The first secret to being happy with others is acceptance. People are full of flaws and issues and self-deceptions. Good or bad, it's how people are. You cannot change them; only they can change themselves. Rejecting most people makes a world a lonely place. Therefore, the only thing that can change is your own view.

Accept that some people will never change and grow. You cannot help that. Everyone chooses their own path in their world. People have to be ready to change. Some people do have vices that seem to go against their other beliefs, but it's just their way of coping. Don't hate them for these things. Just accept that this is what others need to do to survive.

The really negative people probably will never change. Some of them are so bad, it creates a toxic environment. When I encounter this, I have to decide if what I'm getting from the situation is worth the unpleasantness. Sometimes it's better to just keep a safe distance from the real negative-energy or drama-addicted people.

If you're the smart guy among some friends and the funny guy among others, you're adapting to meet their needs. I don't see it as a personal dishonestly. I see it as being a better friend, a funnier storyteller, a more efficient boss, etc. Every person you meet is an individual with different experiences, beliefs, and understanding. It's understandable when some people enjoy your funny side and others appreciate your ability to get things done. If you can view it as you adapting to the situation and not compromise on being yourself, it shouldn't bother you so much.

In short: you can't change other people. Avoiding them or moving to another country doesn't instill tolerance in you. Perhaps the lesson in front of you, by living surrounded by these people, is to teach you patience and love for your fellow man? Who cares if they never grow or never learn; what matters is what you do.

I hope you find the answers you need. Best wishes to you!