People who live in the complaint: does their negativity affect you?

Surely you know someone who is constantly complaining. It seems that she always has a problem or that everything bad happens to her. When she arrives at a meeting, it even seems that the atmosphere thins out and the room becomes darker, as if an invisible mist was accompanying her. We are facing what many call a “toxic person”.

In principle, These people do not have bad intentions in their behavior, nor are they the abusers we have seen in other articles. However, their negativity ends up affecting the people who live with them or spend a lot of time with them.

They are people who contribute little or nothing, absorb your energy and they end up dragging you into their way of seeing the world. The first step to avoid the negative effect of these people is to detect them in order to distance yourself and avoid their toxicity. For this, I have compiled a series of characteristics, based on the experience of my consultation.

How to detect people who drag you into negativity

Marina spoke to me in one of her sessions in my office about a lifelong friend whom she was beginning to identify as toxic. She gave her the impression that her friend “feeds on trouble.” Even if they were enjoying a quiet vacation, she always managed to cause some difficulty and end up arguing with anyone. Is anyone around you having this effect on you? Next I give you some keys to detect this type of people.

They always have something to complain about. Even having a comfortable life and without problems, they always find some detail to complain about.

They are always negative

They always see the negative side of things. Even in the best situations they detect a bad side. They are not able to enjoy anything because they magnify that dark part and cannot see the light part.

They never take responsibility for what they do. They blame everything on others.

If at any time you want to talk to them to try to solve a misunderstanding, this is never possible. They are closed before any communication attempt to solve the problem. The conversation ends up leading to new discussions that bring back the usual reproaches and blame.

For these people only their point of view is valid. They are not able to empathize with other people Or relax your posture.

You give them chances, but they always fail

For your part, you always try to give them a new opportunity to fix things and, although at first it seems that they can improve, in the end they end up going back to their same old mechanisms and they make you feel bad.

memory of ancient events

in any discussion they always bring to light a mistake or a bad word that could have bothered them, even if you told him decades ago. Instead of focusing on finding solutions, they wallow in the negative past.

What to do if that person can’t change

Obviously, these people have their own personal problems and act in this way because of their own shortcomings. We can always try to help them. However, if they do not recognize your problem and don’t try to change Others can’t do anything for them either.

In this circumstance was Marina. She had given her friend countless opportunities and, although, at first, it seemed that everything was going well, progressively, the situation was degenerating and negativity and toxicity returned to take over everything.

After checking that there was no change possible, The only solution for Marina was to distance herself from her friend and set the limits of what she wanted or didn’t want to do with her. He couldn’t force her to change, nor could he stay with her for long, because he ended up involved in their arguments and the problems he caused.

By distancing herself from this toxic friend, Marina gained quality of life. By staying with her less, she was able to start spending more time with other friends with whom every little mishap didn’t mean the start of a huge fight.