Dealing with Asshole Poisoning

When I arrived in Fairfield, Ohio as a 25 year old alien, I was an inexperienced, innocent, ineffective and extremely nervous to my unknown environment. My expereince with the challenge of being alone started last year. At first, I found the solitude unbearable. I can definitely say this wasn't a fun experience, when I have my husband always in my side for some years. Although, it did teach me a valuable lesson about how to enjoy my time alone.

My piece of delight evaporated when a more senior individual ran to my mother-in-law, and said something unpleasant with the intention of hurting me. She secretly and expectedly extracted every ounce of joy I had been experiencing.

When I encounter a mean-spirited person like this, the first thing I think is, "WOW, WHAT AN ASSHOLE!"

No matter where we go, UNFORTUNATELY, we have to deal with people who are negative, people who oppose our ideas, people who piss us off or people who simply do not like us.

There are 6.4 billion people out there and conflict is a fact of life. This fact isn’t the cause of conflict but it is the trigger to our emotions and our emotions are what drive us back to our most basic survival instinct; react and attack back to defend ourselves.

In these instinctual moments, we may lose track of our higher selves and become the human animal with an urge to protect ourselves when attacked. This too is natural. However, we are the only animal blessed with intelligence and having the ability to control our responses. So how can we do that?

I know it’s not easy, if it was easy, there wouldn’t be difficult or negative people to begin with.

ARE NEGATIVE PEOPLE BORN OR MADE?

Yes, some are born that way. There is a strong evidence that no matter what our personality is, we can transform into an animal (our primitive instinct of survival) under the wrong conditions. This happens frequently with shocking speed and intensity when people assume inferiority and power.

FIGHT THE POWER

I've spent much of my last year thinking about how to sustain a humane environment. Based on my learning experience we call LIFE and stories that I hear, I've developed a few lessons.

HURTING OURSELVES

One of my favorite sayings is “Holding a grudge against someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” The only person we hurt is ourselves. When we react to negativity, we are disturbing our inner space and mentally creating pain within ourselves.

ESCAPE IF YOU CAN

The best thing to do if you are stuck under the thumb of a negative person is to get out fast. RUN!

Not only are you at the emotional risk, you are also at risk of emulating the behavior of the jerks around you. Catching it like a disease.

If you can't avoid them, start with polite confrintation. Some people really don't mean to be jerks. They might be surprised if you gently let them know that they are leaving you feeling belitted and demeaned. On the contrary, other jerks are demeaning on purpose, but may stop if you stand up to them in a civil but firm manner.

IT'S ABOUT THEM

I’ve learned that when people initiate negativity, it is a reflection of their inner state expressed externally and you just happen to be in front of that expression. It’s not personal, so why do we take it personally? In short: Because our ego likes problems and conflict. People are often so bored and unhappy with their own lives that they want to take others down with them.

NEGATIVITY POISONS

I’ve found that once I allow negativity in one area of my life, it starts to subtly bleed into other areas as well. When we are in a negative state or holding a grudge against someone, we don’t feel very good. We carry that energy with us as we go about our day. When we don’t feel very good, we lose sight of clarity and may react unconsciously to matters in other areas of our lives, unnecessarily.

WASTE OF ENRGY

Where attention goes, energy flows. What we focus on tends to expand itself. Since we can only focus on one thing at a time, energy spent on negativity is energy that could have been spent on our personal wellbeing.

Negativity isn't just something that only happens to others and can't possibly happen to wonderful people like youu. All of us are at risk.

While I’ve had a lot of practice dealing with negativity, it is something I find myself having to actively work on. When I’m caught off guard and end up resorting to a defensive position, the result rarely turns out well.

The point is, we are humans after all, and we have emotions and egos. However, by keeping our egos in-check and inserting emotional intelligence, we’ll not only be doing a favor for our health and mental space, but we’ll also have intercepted a situation that would have gone bad, unnecessarily.