How to stop taking things personally

If there is one thing the human mind specializes in, it is making everything that happens to us have meaning for us. For this reason, sometimes curious experiences occur. There are many situations that, if we coldly analyze them, we would see that they are neutral and that they have no transcendence, and yet they make us focus our attention on them and associate a burden with them. emotional. On many occasions, we overreact to them, believing that practically everything that happens to us is important and happens because we are there.

Of course, this phenomenon also occurs in our personal relationships. Doubting the intentions or emotions behind the actions of others, or what they say, can make some people see an attack in the most ambiguous signs: a gesture, a change in the 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. Bearing this in mind, and that in order to improve certain aspects of your personality you have to make a constant effort and work, follow the recommendations below to stop taking things personally at the slightest hint of possible attack or conflict.

1. Explain your personal evolution project

Not a legally valid contract, of course, but a verbal one. It is about something very simple: you must tell the people with whom you have the most confidence that you are trying to stop taking things personally so you don't get angry or offended in a way unnecessary. Just doing this you're already modifying your social environment to make it less tempting to throw in the towel and let yourself be carried away by your old ways.

By following this advice you will be able to create expectations both in yourself and in others, so that you will be indirectly enhancing your motivation to move forward and try to take over relationships personal with a more constructive attitude.

2. Analyze your type of hostility

When we say that someone takes things personally, we are simply referring to them adopting a hostile or defensive in ambiguous situations in which their self-image or public image could be compromised by a comment or action of others. This encompasses a certain variety of behaviors that do not have to be similar to each other.

So, it is good that you stop to think about how that hostility appears in you when you take something very personally. In this sense, you should distinguish between at least three trends: aggressive attitude, passive-aggressive attitude and resentful attitude. In the first case we are talking about people who get clearly angry and express that feeling of anger, in the second the hostility manifests itself in a more subtle way, without confronting the other directly but treating him with contempt, and in the third one does not express hostility, but rather hides the fact that our feelings have been wounded.

Depending on which of these categories you fall into, you can decide if your work should focus more or less on preventing hostile escalation against others, or to reinforce your self-esteem so that you are not hurt by a wide variety of social experiences.

3. Detect what situations trigger that emotion

Are there specific situations in which you consider that you take what happens personally? Name them. For example, for some this happens in relation to their professional career, for others these experiences appear only in the family context, or even just with a few people. Knowing these things will help you decide if you should manage differently just certain personal ties, or if the problem is in a facet of your personality.

4. work your self esteem

Yes, this task alone already entails a whole series of exercises to perform, but it is an essential step. The reason for this is that there is always a certain insecurity when someone takes things excessively personally. After all, this is a tendency towards doomsday and somewhat paranoid thoughts, feeding the beliefs that around us there are hostile forces that can hurt us through the most insignificant details.

For example, something relatively simple that you can do in this regard is to lead a healthier life and take better care of yourself in general. This will positively affect how you feel, and will allow you to break old habits that used to that you feel bad and that you adopt a more pessimistic perspective about what happens to you around.

• You may be interested in: "Low selfsteem? When you become your own 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 other's intentions, a misunderstanding was created that was perceived as disrespectful, and reconciliation fails because both parties refuse to admit their mistakes. Creating a symbolic end to this stage makes it much easier. rehabilitate those bridges of empathy that will make it easier to break down that tendency towards paranoia.