How do you handle people who won't shut up about something you did wrong?

[FortisFortunaAdiuvat]

I have people in my life who, no matter what I do, keep turning small problems into huge dragons, it's remarkable. They get caught up in negativity and it spirals up. They take zero responsibility for the things that happen to them.

I can apologize, say it's my fault, ask how I can fix it, offer solutions. But they keep turning me into a devil because of a simple little mistake. They attack me with unrelated nonsense I did years ago. And what's even funnier is that they believe I am causing all this. And when I ignore them or walk away it gets even worse. So I "have" to stay in the situation for them to verbally attack me while trying to stay calm. They have no self-reflection so it keeps happening over and over again.

One of them is a family member, should I really just cut him out of my life?

[Eph75]

This post can be read from more than one positions, two being:

A) they are just trying to find fault in everything, even where fault is not present, it is out of your hands, you are the victim under circumstances. 

B) your ego is preventing you from seeing what you have done/do wrong, the seductive lies of the ego paints a story where you have no part what-so-ever in what is playing out, devoiding you of any responsibility and preventing you to face the growth you need, assuming absolute personal responsibility for what is manifested in your experience. 

We're always prone to select A unless our eyes are open. The way forward is always B. How can we accept this, that is the question. 

[Nahm]

Focus on what you want. They say what they say, you talk about what you want. Stop waiting for them to. ?

[Opo]

2 hours ago, FortisFortunaAdiuvat said:

 And when I ignore them or walk away it gets even worse. 

For a while, it's a test and you need to stay in that mentality to pass it. 

If you do they'll leave you alone. Usually those kinds of people are mentally weak and just want an easy victim. 

[TheSunKing]

Whenever this happens, I remember that I Am Love. And then I act accordingly. Usually irons out the wrinkles.

[Applegarden]

Don't take yourself and them so seriously to the point it becomes a little bit entertaining. Just remind yourself people who don't do mistakes doesn't perform the action in the first place.

Btw you should walk away from these people altogether.

[Fadl]

Quote

How do you handle people who won't shut up about something you did wrong?

By confrontation, just don't run away and don't do the same mistake.

[Proserpina]

2 hours ago, Applegarden said:

Just remind yourself people who don't do mistakes doesn't perform the action in the first place.

People get a false sense of pride from peak lifetimes.  

[Opo]

On 10/3/2020 at 9:52 AM, neutralempty said:

Tell them how you feel about it every time this comes up. If you feel it's unfair say it's unfair, if you feel it's sad, say you feel sad, if you feel it's annoying, say it's annoying.

Pointless. 

[Eph75]

2 hours ago, Opo said:

Pointless

Not necessarily so. Impact feedback e.g. might come handy. Based on a feedback format that is such as "when you say/do.... the impact it has on me is.... and I'd prefer....". 

It can't come from agression though, or from passive-aggressiveness. It has to be authentic and constructive. 

It does work. I've had it work wonders with people that have not been responding to anything else. Of course there's no guarentee it works 100% of the times and you might have to be consitstent in exercising this in specific situations with sepecific people and over time. 

Or simplify it it to "when you... it makes me feel...". 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Eph75

[universe]

The golden way is to stay loving towards them. Not getting dragged down by their comments. This is hard an requires a lot of strength.

The practical way is to remove them from your life for now. If it is family, stop seeing them. Maybe only on christmas if you want. If you still live at home, move out.

[Opo]

@Eph75

3 hours ago, neutralempty said:

@Opo  

"Pointless"

Why?

I grew up with those kinds of people and that approach had 0 positive effects. It either went over their heads or was perceived as weak and too sensitive. 

@Eph75 Yea it probably works on some people. 

[Megan Alecia]

1. Leave

2. Something like transcendental meditation

[meow_meow]

I see a lot of people recommending just to leave or exclude that person from your life, which is a good advice in some situations.

But what if that person is within a your social group and you want to be within this social circle but only have a problem with this one person?
Just leaving or excluding that person isn't an option here.

My advice is to bust back, and harder than they do. By this I mean, if they are disrespectful towards you - Don't react emotionally, but rather be ready to get into 'verbal sparring' with him/her and say something like "Oh just like that time when you did xxx" and so on.

This is of course a sign of that persons low level of development and I'd suggest a change in social circle/people around you.. but that's not always an easy task, so if you have to stick with these people - fight back, don't become emotional and don't let yourself to become their verbal punching bag.

EDIT: You might want to look into this, in fact Joe Rogan has other episodes that you might relate to:
 

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by meow_meow

[Origins]

Short answer:

(1) Remember that you have just as much right to existence as anyone or anything else, you're here so embrace it and enjoy the race to the finish line. 

(2) Peoples pattens of conditioning take decades to mature as personality patterns, so if you're dealing with people that are 20 plus years of age as self awareness and neuroplasticity decreases their ability to introspect on their inner feedback loops decreases. Most people follow an opportunistic algorithm when it comes to their interactions with other humans, they'll have a short term focus rather than a long term focus, moreover, once they've conditioned themselves to believe a certain way it takes an equal or greater amount of environmental situations in the opposite/different direction to change that perspective. It gets worse the more people have been convinced to believe a similar thing, simply because people are hive minds.

(3) Leading on from two, you have to remember that your average person in society has the same brain of ancestors that wouldn't blink an eye when it came to killing siblings and persons within a tribe that simply didn't fit in, this is because resources were much more scarce and our strategies were much harder to mount and consolidate in the environment. Just because we live in an abundant society now does not at all mean people would not do those things today, in fact I'm a very big believer that people still do so, perhaps not physically but certainly mentally on a subconscious level. Their repetitive negative reactions are not just a reflection of dislike, on some level, they want you "out of the tribe" of their mind, which in earlier times, could be death.

You see these patterns play out in families to YouTube comments backlashing against various famous YouTubers to celebrities to even certain brands that peoples brains see as tribes like Hollywood, its after all why we have conspiracy theorists, all they are, are people who compute these brands like government, CIA, etc in their brain and then begin to invent stories (at least partly) that explain the environment.

So people use a top down reasoning approach not a bottom up reasoning approach when it comes to their perceptions of other people, this is such an important point to realise.

Bottom up approaches take way more mental resources and subsequent self awareness, which is why I would start with point one by putting yourself first and ordering your social environment in terms of levels of self awareness then choosing your relationships from there.

If you're a self aware person you're never going to have a long term amazing relationship with someone that has comparatively low self awareness (LSA), the person with LSA will eventually feel intimidated, lonely and angry which will probably be expressed with dissonance that they won't be able to process properly so they'll just end up doing something stupid, either that or the person with comparatively high self awareness will just navigate that relationship around the other persons LSA, but then they'll be the ones that will have to manage their loneliness there with whatever amount of SA they have.

(4) Always be strategically planning for and moving towards a place in the future in which you've realised the ideal social hierarchy, leaving LSA at the lowest end there. Not out of superiority, but literally just out of personal safety. 

Edited October 5, 2020 by Origins

[meow_meow]

@Origins Woah, that's some really deep, in detail explanation. Thanks for this.