How to protect yourself from negative vides from people?

[run_fly]

Does anyone know how to protect yourself from negative vides you get from others? As soon as I walk into a room where some close family members are I get negative feelings. I can feel it in my entire body... and I can really feel it in my upper chest area... I get out of that room as quickly as I can... It's really strong in one particular room in are house and it happens everytime.

I also get this feeling at school sometimes around certain people.

[Antiventurecapital]

I know how you feel.



Here's what I do. I put my 90 minute drive to see family to good use by visualizing the visit in a positive way. I see them saying what they always say and then myself responding calmly or switching the topic to something pleasant.

Think of yourself as having numerous strands of connection to your family, some positive and some negative. Your task is to let the negative strands wither and die while nourishing the positive ones.

For example, a hypochondriac relative starts complaining about their health:

Hypochondriac: My heart palpitations have me worried.

You: It's a good thing you have such a great doctor. You are in the best of hands and look fine to me. Indeed you are the picture of health for a person of your age. (A true statement.)

If things get really negative, I'll change the topic with a question like "So tell me about something good that's happened in your life lately."

I have some relatives who have been dumping their imagined ailments on me ever since I can remember. Changing the topic quickly is one way of reducing the topic's frequency over time. You are actually doing them a favor by making them focus on positive topics.

One final tip: limit your visits to a tolerable duration and don't hesitate to leave early if they are really starting to depress you.

[Antiventurecapital]

While it's hard to cut off family, it's easy to do with people at school. Just be polite whenever you run into them from now on and then tell them quickly that you need to be somewhere else.

Negative people are not worth having in your life. About 3 years ago, I ended a 17 year long friendship with guy after he had become this really bitter negative alcoholic. Towards the end, every meeting with him was just a total bummer. I decided one day that I no longer wanted someone like that in my like and that was it.

Eventually you will get to a place where these types of people just avoid you because they can subconciously pick up on the fact that you are not going to buy their sob stories.

[jacmac1]

You might be an impass (is that the correct word?) you know, someone who can intuitively feel the feelings of others. I am like that, and so I cannot be around people who are in denial of their feelings or project them onto others.

So it's great that you're aware of this and have taken action.

What I've found with my own family, is the more honest I am about my own feelings (I sense you're really unhappy with x, y, z) the less THEY want to be around me! Which is fine with me, although sometimes sad (I don't see my neices and nephews as much as I'd like.)

On the other hand, negative people seem to flock to me in droves.

It seems that like vampires they are looking for me to make them feel better, but often they want to do so by making me feel worse.

I have spent a long time working on boundaries and honoring my needs first, but it seems that negative people are really good at ignoring boundaries and violating other people's wishes.

Other than running away, since I must live in this world, I, too, have done what Antiventurecapital suggests, which is to counter their negativity with positivity. Like I said, since all they want to do is wallow in misery and misery loves company, they then either try harder to project their negativity on to me or run away themselves.

I can't help but feel there are many lessons for me (or maybe just one big huge one) that I need to learn and that is why I continue to experience this.


Is this something that resonates with you in any way?

[Antiventurecapital]

When I was in grade school I wanted to become a psychiatrist because I saw my role in life as that of a "fixer". When classmates had a problem they would always come to me for help. At first this made me feel good about myself.

Later on in college and probably up to my mid thirties, my strategy with women was to be the confidante who fixed all their problems for them. In my late twenties it began to dawn on me that they never really appreciated what I had done for them, so by about 35 I just stopped trying to fix other people's problems--even when they asked.

What I have come to realize is that most people are wedded to their problems and really don't want to let go of them, despite what they may say.

Finally, constantly hearing about other people's problems just gets to be a drag after a certain amount of time.

Half the battle is in simply recognizing that you have this problem. The easier half is to start emitting signals that tell the world you are no longer a walking dumping site for problems.

[Antiventurecapital]

I just remembered this incident from long ago.

I must have been in my early 20s and was feeling really down about something in my life, so I started this big "emotional dump" on a woman I knew but not too well. To my shock, instead of listening and commiserating about the terrible injustice the world had dealt me, she quickly interrupted with "I'm sure that a smart person such as yourself will come up with a solution and move on." She patted my hand as she said it, then got up and walked away. I was devastated by her callousness at first but came to realize that she had done the right thing in the situation.

I have used this same technique myself over the years and recommend that you try it on for size as well next time an energy vampire starts dumping their problems on you.

[Liara Covert]

Hi Antiventurecapital,

I really like your contributions to this thread. It can be difficult if your altruistic side almost attracts people to you with problems and its in your nature to desire to help fix them. I've been there. Helplessness is an emotion I find quite humbling. It's useful to learn people need to work things out for themselves. We also benefit from working certain things out about ourselves. Why is it that we have this deep desire to sacrifice ourselves to help others?

In some cases, its easier to walk away from negative people who dump problems on you. You can discontinue a friendship, and distance yourself from certain family members. However, in other cases, like if a partner or parents or in-laws evolve to be like this, it's not as easy to walk away. Maybe that's a good thing since people reflect things we need to learn too.

I like your story about the woman who expressed she had faith that you could solve your own problems, then left. This is an approach I have used. I'm also in the process of writing another motivational book and I've been giving segments of the draft to a typical negative thinker to edit. She has actually been progressively changing her own attitude of her own accord, while she has also provided me useful input. Just like you, I find that empowering others to make their own decisions is a good way to go. My approaches and motives also teach me a lot about myself

Best wishes,