Dealing with blame and negativity

Have you ever come across someone who is negative all the time?  

We probably all have, and we have a choice as to how much we allow their negative energy to affect our own energy, our own mood.  

It’s so easy to allow it to, but you can change how you view this person and their negativity.  

Although it feels like this person is critical of YOU when they are condescending or putting you down, what their ranting or complaining is really about is themselves or their inability to deal with something happening in their lives.

They don’t know how to deal with it or accept how they feel about themselves or what is happening or work on it, so they externalize it by blaming…making others around them feel bad…so they can feel better and not have to face what is happening internally or externally. 

Sometimes people even start arguments over smaller insignificant things within their control to avoid dealing with the “real” larger issues that will create real change in their lives and are not under their control.

Sometimes it feels so much easier for that person to blame people they feel comfortable with, to avoid dealing with a larger problem that takes up risk, uncertainty or effort.  So they point to someone close and place blame or take it out on them. 

I was in this situation many years ago, before I got divorced, where I was made to feel everything I did was wrong and everything happening was my fault…even things that a neutral person, removed from the situation, could clearly see had nothing to do with me.  I spent years “allowing” and “accepting” this responsibility of fault he put on me.  Internalizing it and accepting the “responsibility’ he placed on me.  Until I learned it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him and his inability to look at himself and accept responsibility for what wasn’t working in his life.  

The thing is, we are all responsible for our own selves.  Our own happiness.  Our own bad moods.  Our own energy.  

We always have a choice of whether to allow someone to make us feel bad or to accept as the truth what they are saying to blame us. 

Our happiness comes from within us, and while we cannot make others act in such a way that aligns with how we want to feel, we can choose how we view and respond to their words and actions and whether we internalize them.  

When we focus on how to get the other person to change, that will never lead to our own happiness.  Because we don’t have the power to change another.  

When the focus is on you and what can you do…this is where you do have the power to change…changing so that you can view this person in a different light, seeing that their actions aren’t about you, their words and blame aren’t about you…you can make a decision to leave it as their stuff and not pick it up as yours or take responsibility for it. 

And if you are in a relationship and your partner is starting arguments and getting angry over very small things, together you can explore if there is something bigger or more vulnerable they are avoiding dealing with.