Negative people recognize and appease the negativity around us. It happens to everyone to have a bad day and see everything black, or to spend their time with people who live this experience on that day. This type of negativity is something that tends to run out within a few hours or days and the greatest possible damage is having worsened the day of the people around, having wasted energy, and being inefficient and productive in the workplace.
In short, something annoying for oneself and for others, but easily remedied. The problem arises when negativity is pervasive and constant and becomes a real lifestyle for some people. Unfortunately, it often hides behind behaviors that are not easily recognizable, which at first glance may not create particular problems.
How to recognize negative people
Negative people usually can’t find the positive in the things that happen in their life. They are the classic people who, even in the face of success or the normality of everyday life, do not enjoy the goals and continue to have a pessimistic outlook on life. Pessimism is pervasive and therefore reigns in every sphere and moment.
In the same way, they are people who try to remove the responsibility for things and do not set well-defined goals. This happens because they often feel unable to complete them, they consider them too wasteful of time and energy, or dangerous and possible sources of negative judgments by others.
Their constant insecurity often leads them to implement control and defensive strategies, not always pleasant and functional: they speak ill of others, underlining their defects, so as to belittle their own, they become nervous and arrogant, they attribute blame to external factors and far from their control and so on.
They are people who cannot rejoice in the midst of family or friends but live with a constant perception of being under accusation. Inadequate and incapable, attributing these feelings to the devaluing attitude of others, often struggling to observe the reality of things.
Negativity can be contagious
Being often with negative people could generate a negative experience as a result. This happens especially in people who do not in themselves have a strongly positivist imprint of life, but live in a balanced way, attributing different values to events and experiencing different experiences. Instead, it has less force on optimistic perennials.
Constantly hearing negative thoughts, pessimistic and devaluing visions, can lead to reducing hope, the value of dreams and goals, and reading things around differently.
How to appease the negativity of negative people
To appease the negativity around there is no better weapon than the counterattack – to be positive. Like negativity, positivity can also be contagious and over time pessimism can subside. Or at least waver and open a window to a different vision of life. This has to be done in small doses, day after day, but it can work.
It is therefore important not to be overwhelmed by the cosmic pessimism of negative people but to help them understand the existence of another perspective, without trying to convince them or seek reason, but only by opening a confrontation.
It is not always possible and often the reaction is one of further closure and strengthening of one’s convictions, but it is important not to fall into the trap and to affirm one’s vision.
Another possibility is to be welcoming towards their fatigue and difficulty in dealing with things. This at least at first can be useful to create a bond and only later to support the person in seeing things differently.
Negativity can sometimes be a plea for help and support and tie in with low self-esteem and a need for affection. Finally, however, it is important, especially in one’s moments of difficulty and fragility, to distance oneself from or protect oneself from these people, so as to maintain one’s own stability and not get infected.