Has dealing with difficult personalities ruined your mental health?
The people closest to us can cause the biggest impact, especially if they are a difficult person to live with or be around. It all comes down to difficult people staying difficult and the others having to change their lives to keep them happy.
Whether it’s a family member or close friend you can lose yourself from ‘over adapting’ to the requirements of pleasing a difficult individual. A child’s creativity and passion can become extinguished due to their parents, a husband or wife can suffer personality loss due to a difficult relationship dynamic. Situations like this can be devastating if a difficult person is on the narcissistic spectrum.
So how do we clear this and help a person regain themselves? The process involves separating the truth from the individual. All trust in the individual has to go and we can rid that person of credibility in many ways by outlining their flaws. Once we have discredited this person you will now feel lost and not know what to think about yourself because you’ve grown accustomed to receiving validation from someone who is negative.
The next step is to establish the new influencers in your life and make sure you are latching onto correct thinking instead of trusting negative statements. We’ll make sure good and trusted people are around you in your life to identify when you are latching onto a negative thought.
So far the process of stabilising the situation has been put in place. Many people get to this point when they eventually move away from the influence of the difficult person. You haven’t yet worked on restoring good mental health, sanity or clearing damage to your self esteem. This is why it’s really important to make sure someone coming away from an abusive situation is helped fully and not just to the extent that their life is just stable.
The next part is specific to the individual. If we put it simply it’s about clearing the reason they give against the following question: “Why do you feel you can’t achieve that?” It is highly likely that all of these limiting beliefs they have picked up are from the influence of the wrong person. We’ll do mindset work to show them it’s normal to think highly of yourself etc.
The above is the common structure for those who have come out from being in a situation with a difficult person. Those people who are currently in a trapped situation shouldn’t be told to hold mental toughness because it’ll cause a bigger crash if they are powerless in the situation. Practical support options are the main route for this.
Dealing with difficult people is the leading cause of mental health issues and the side effects kick in many years later on a chronic level. If you know someone who has been through a struggle like this, make sure they haven’t parked the topic in the no-go area of their mind because it’ll most likely hurt them when they are alone.
