There is nothing wrong with this, but your behavior can provoke other people to make harsh statements.
For example, you ask why people are offended by you, but you yourself do not understand that with your desire to move forward and get a share of attention, you are turning everyone against you. If someone is offended and does not talk, then think, why is this happening? Are there really too touchy people gathered around? You can apologize many times, but until you reconsider the reasons, you will find yourself in similar situations (even with different people).
Two things to realize if you are offended
There are a couple of points that you need to realize before you take any action.
1. Each person bears full responsibility for their emotions.
If a person is convinced that someone has offended him, insulted him, or, in principle, created any negative emotions in him, then he plays the victim, abdicating responsibility for his emotional well-being. When he lets go of the victim mentality, he begins to see himself creating his entire life in every moment. In particular, this means that he creates his own emotions.
Therefore, if they are offended by you, it is their fault.
Of course, this does not mean that I consider a situation in which a person behaves like an asshole, completely neglecting the interests of loved ones, to be correct. Like, I don’t care how my actions look from the outside, if they get offended, that’s their problem.
I say this because if your friend/partner/colleague has a grudge, and you don’t realize that his grudge is his fault, then you will automatically twitch from side to side, anxiously trying to somehow improve the situation.
You also need to realize that you are twitching not because of that person’s resentment towards you, but because of your own “cockroaches”.
What kind of cockroaches are these?
This is the second point.
2. If you feel very bad about being offended, dig yourself. You will see fear and guilt there.
Let's be honest. You don't care if you're offended! This is not what brought you to my page.
You are here because you are gnawing at the feeling of guilt for how you allegedly behaved, or behaved, in that situation. There’s a murmur in your head, and the contents of this murmur can be reduced to “it’s my fault,” “no, it’s his fault,” “no, it’s my fault”...
Nobody wants to feel guilty, because since childhood we have all disliked this feeling. And since childhood, we have all been manipulated by this feeling.
That’s why, by the way, it’s so important to work through your childhood. Even though they are offended at you, even though you are offended - all this is mental masturbation, the roots of which were sown in childhood. And you need to pull out these roots from there...
Be that as it may, next to your guilt is fear. Fear of losing this person.
Work through the fear of losing him
This fear especially manifests itself when a person, against the backdrop of his resentment, decides to ignore you. Your fear will definitely add fuel to the fire of your negative internal dialogue associated with that incident and the subsequent resentment.
And, by the way, the closer this person is to you, the stronger the fear and guilt will be
It's all about childhood again! After all, as a child, your parents were your closest people, and it was in that relationship with your parents that fear and guilt began to resonate. How to get a child to behave in a certain way?
- Make him afraid. “ Now I’ll leave, and you’ll be left alone.
That's it I'm leaving! ” - Make him feel guilty. “ Is this what people do??
How dare you even?! ”
Against the background of this manipulation-programming, typical of many parents, you have developed a tendency to emotionally depend on the approval of other people. And emotional dependence is the subconscious root of both feelings of guilt and feelings of resentment.
Ok, let's say you realize these things. What, finally, should you do with someone who is offended by you?
Use humor
A friend of mine once had to hear: “Is this your new skirt? I think they use this fabric to upholster chairs.” She was not taken aback and replied: “Well, sit on my lap.”
My friend’s mother spent her entire life zealously keeping the house clean. One day she discovered a spider’s web on her daughter and asked: “What is this?” “I’m conducting a science experiment,” the daughter retorted. The best weapon against offensive criticism is laughter. A witty response will help you deal with almost any offender.
What to do with the offended?
Actions must flow from common sense, sober perception and without automatic reaction. If you don’t perceive everything soberly now, you automatically feel the urge to write or say something to this person, and your head is filled with thoughts about him, it’s still too early for you to act, and you should worry about working on yourself.
In this case, working on yourself is aimed at discarding your beliefs and ideas about the current situation and beginning to understand the situation as it is. Here's what you need to work on:
- Your victim mentality
. This will help you realize your responsibility for your own emotions. - Your fears
.
This will help you not worry about “ what if he stops communicating with me altogether?!”
“When a person is in fear, he behaves inappropriately to the situation. Actions should be performed only with a sober head. - Your guilt. If you feel guilty, then you will do all sorts of stupid things in order to temporarily cover up your subconscious feeling of guilt. For example, you will start apologizing automatically, just to be forgiven, and the feeling of guilt will leave you.
Next, you need to meet the person. Your task at this meeting is not to apologize to him, but to help him deal with his offense.
And you need help in person.
Childish resentment
A child’s resentment is a great psychological trauma, which can lead to a lot of complexes, rejection of the realities of the world and a distorted perception of the people around him. The danger is that an unstable child’s psyche cannot cope with experiences, cannot respond correctly to a stimulus and imprints negative experiences on the subconscious, forming an illusory reality.
Most people who are too touchy brought this feeling with them from childhood, they have grown together with it and can no longer live without it. 80% of all fears, phobias, complexes and reactions are instilled in a person during preschool age, most of them come from parents and close relatives. Therefore, next time, before scolding your child for something, think ten times whether it is necessary.
Invite him to meet and express everything in a calm manner.
Notice I didn't tell you to apologize! It's too early to apologize yet.
If you start apologizing now, you will reveal your fears and guilt headlong! The person will feel this and subconsciously understand how he can use these deep-seated things in you to manipulate you.
Do not do that! Just invite the person to meet.
Write or call, invite for a cup of tea or coffee, because you still want to find out what happened and what’s on her/his head. You don't like the current situation, and you want to figure it out.
If the person agrees to meet, move on to the next step.
If a person does not want to meet, then everything is very simple.
This means you stop contact.
Offering to meet and discuss it
garbage,
its
cockroaches,
its
problems - this is already a gesture of goodwill. If this gesture is rejected, then there is really nothing you can do. Neither for this person, nor for the relationship with him.
Isn't this selfish?!
If you think this is selfishness, I remind you that I am writing from the position of a person who has worked through fears and feelings of guilt.
The accusation of selfishness only works with those who have not yet freed themselves from their fears and feelings of guilt. Selfishness is just a good word to press the “guilt” button and force a person to act to please himself. But as soon as this person’s feelings of guilt are worked through, as is the fear of appearing selfish, it is clear that he had no selfishness.
There were only attempts to manipulate him with the help of accusations of selfishness + lack of understanding of responsibility for his emotions.
But when this understanding is there, rational action follows from it. If a person is unable to deal with his grievance, you offer to help him and talk out his problem, but he does not accept this, which means good riddance.
This understanding also means that there is no need to call or write to him.
You should offer to meet ONLY ONCE.
. This is the same One Message Rule that I wrote about here.
Okay, let’s say the person still agreed to see each other. Great. This means that he has at least a little awareness and wants to understand himself, and not blame everything on you, as victims do.
Here you are at a meeting. What's next?
Advice for parents of children who are bullied at school
So what should you do if your child is bullied at school? Let's figure it out now. It is important for parents to solve children's problems from a very early age, or rather, to help them cope in difficult situations. Children come from different families, with different abilities and ability to behave. Therefore, it is worth focusing on their education. If a child often begins to hear bad words addressed to him, then over time he will simply withdraw and stop developing as a person, because he will have fear. Unfortunately, this can happen once and for a lifetime. Therefore, from a very early age, it is important to accustom a child to the possibility of aggression from other people and words of insult.
Parents must clearly separate the words and actions of classmates. If these are just verbal insults, then it is important to teach the child to react and respond to them correctly. But it also happens that the matter takes a different turn, namely, the child may be hit. In this case, the parents are simply obliged to stand up for him.
Don't react. Do not apologize. Just ask questions and listen.
Your task here is to turn into an ear.
You work almost like a therapist. You need to let the person speak. So that he does not splutter in offended loneliness, but brings his grievances to the surface in a conversation with you.
But what is important is that there is no need to make excuses. After all, you are not responsible for his emotions.
Better ask questions.
- What exactly happened?
- How did you perceive my behavior?
- After what actions of mine did you feel offended?
- Why did you feel offended after these actions?
By asking such questions, you are reframing in the mind of your interlocutor. Before talking to you, his position was like this:
I was wronged and it is his/her fault.
Now, the position is starting to look more and more like this:
Certain actions were taken. I had certain reactions. I felt offended.
Without any accusations or apologies, you managed to ensure that the person, at least in part, began to realize that your behavior and his offense are two different things.
One thing follows another, yeah. But that doesn't mean that one thing causes the other. And even more so, this does not mean that you are responsible for both things.
And only if the interlocutor has this distinction between your behavior and his reactions, should an apology be addressed.
Do you need to apologize if you are offended?
You need to apologize, but only if it is appropriate.
If you see an opportunity to change your behavior in the future, apologize. Then offer an alternative to your behavior.
Different situations lead to resentment towards you.
Sometimes people will be offended by you, and you will not see anything in your actions that could be changed.
For example, if a friend is offended by you because of sheer bullshit, there is nothing to apologize for.
Listen to the person and that's it. If after talking with you the interlocutor has not realized a little responsibility for his grievances, you will not be able to do anything more. So say so.
What if you were offended out of the blue?
Let's say a colleague is offended by your criticism of his behavior.
If this criticism was a necessary measure, then you need to calmly let the person know that you will continue to criticize him in the future. There is no objective need to change your behavior if criticism is obligatory.
This has nothing to do with him as a person, but you will criticize his behavior, and you are not even going to restrain yourself. The person will then have a restructuring of his expectations, and he will not be offended in the future. They get offended when they expect too much.
If this does not suit him at all, then let the person think what he wants and do what he wants. You have neither fear nor guilt (if you have, work through it). Therefore, you calmly give him the opportunity to continue to be offended further, and you will behave as you see fit.
There is another situation.
What if you deliberately provoked his resentment?
Let's say that your friend's behavior was automatically criticized by you, in front of everyone, with ridicule - and now he is offended.
Here you can already see an opportunity to change your behavior in the future. And just as a person in a conversation with you pulled his cockroaches to the surface, you can pull yours out too.
“Yes, I now realize what I did then. I wanted the approval of other people, and for a long time I could not tell you how your behavior infuriates me. But I just can’t understand myself and understand whether my criticism is fair, or whether I’m just reacting to your behavior. So I took advantage of the situation, attracted the attention of our mutual friends, enlisted their support, knowing that they would side with me, and laughed at you. I took advantage of their attention to hide my own self-doubt and inability to tell you what I was thinking openly.
”.
By opening up in this way, you show the person your willingness to understand yourself, and do not throw off responsibility for your behavior.
You set an example for a person. By taking responsibility for your behavior, you are indirectly inviting him to take responsibility for his offense. Whether he will take it or not is a separate point, discussed below.
Now and only now, when in this incident you were isolated by your own behavior, which you can change in the future... it makes sense to apologize.
How to apologize if you are offended
“I apologize for this behavior. I will try not to do that in the future.”
You don't promise that you will never do this again. You promise to try
don't do that again. This is a much truer promise.
If you see clearly that you might do something differently in the future, add it.
“I will try not to do this in the future. I will try to tell you what I don’t like right away in a calm and friendly manner, rather than keeping it to myself and then unloading it on you at the moment when you are most vulnerable to criticism.”
The purpose of such an apology is to show the person that you are responsible for your behavior and have the intention to correct it.
BUT NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR HIS RESULT!
This is the main thing. Apologize for specific things that relate to you and only you. His resentment is not one of those things.
Ok, now that the conversation on this topic with a friend/colleague/partner is coming to an end, a couple of words about the final reaction of your interlocutor.
Will he take responsibility for his offense or not?
Insults
Most people can often be rude and present others in a bad light. Such situations can occur with people of different ages, from early childhood to adulthood. Not all people can insult and be rude. There are those who simply do not know what to do in such situations. What to do if you are offended? This question concerns everyone who has been insulted at least once in their life. It makes you think about your actions and actions towards other people.
What to do if he doesn't stop being offended?
Let's say you've completed all these steps. Everything that could be said has been said. This was all done from a place of friendship/love and empathy.
But he still doesn’t want to take responsibility for his offense...
This means we need to let this person go.
You are on different frequencies. You are on the frequency of awareness, he is on the frequency of automatism and helplessness. Helplessness literally means that you can't help him anymore.
You don’t have a feeling of fear or guilt, which means you won’t change your behavior to your detriment just to make it easier for him. So there's nothing more you can do. Relax. Read my article How to get someone out of your head.
Of course, if this person is your husband or wife, then I have no easy advice. You are in a difficult situation, and there is no and cannot be any pleasant advice.
If a person is not ready to “cooperate” with you in the matter of clearing out the garbage from his own head, first of all for his own sake, and only then for you and your relationship, then I have a question for you.
How did you even manage to end up next to such a person?
After all, it is now obvious that you are on different wavelengths, as I just wrote about. Maybe you were once on one, but that's in the past.
There is no need to deny obvious things. And don’t run away from the necessary conclusions that need to be drawn. It is possible that this relationship needs to be ended, no matter how difficult the consequences may be.
What to do is up to you.
How does resentment develop into resentment?
Due to an excessive sense of self and increased self-pity, a person often has internal strife: “Why me? Why is it possible for them, but not for me? I deserve better, more.” This plunges a person even more into an illusory reality, invented by him and, most likely, significantly different from reality. And the more often this happens, if the cause of grievances remains unresolved and settles inside, the more a person becomes touchy, fixated on his own experiences and blind to the feelings of others. Excessive touchiness becomes a natural state, destroying a person’s inner world.
What if he wants to stop being offended?
What if a miracle happened and a person perked up, realizing his responsibility for his own grievances, and wanted to get rid of them?
Everything is simple here. Give him a link to this page, where he will find out how to get rid of grievances, quickly, on his own, without psychologists and chatter.
If he starts working on himself, then he will warmly remember this incident with resentment towards you as a starting point in upgrading his awareness.
And he will thank you.
Turn to face the offender
Dealing with insults is not easy. Directness, in particular, helps. Remove the negative charge, for example, with this question: “For some reason, do you need to offend me?” or “Do you understand how words like that might be perceived?”
You can also ask the person to clarify the meaning of the comment: “What do you mean?” or “I want to check if I understood you correctly?” Once your critic feels that his game has been figured out, he will leave you alone. After all, when you are caught red-handed, it is very shameful.
Modification of a proverb
How did the proverb appear: “They carry water for the offended”? At first, the mentioned statement was reduced to the phrase “to carry water,” which meant “to burden a person with humiliating and extremely hard work, to exploit him, taking advantage of his kindness and flexible character.” The object did not have any negative traits; on the contrary, he was kind and hard-working and usually carried everything to himself and was lucky. In this case - water.
Then the saying began to be applied to a person who has excellent physical health, but at the same time works at half capacity: “Yes, you can carry water!” Statements arose where a subject appears who leads the process. Most often these were the servants of hell: “The devils carry water on it!”
If we return to the original version proposed by V.I. Dahl, then the proverb was often applied to those who were angry without reason. Synonyms for the word “angry” were the words “inflated” and “offended.” The latter has increasingly begun to be used independently. You should pay attention to the fact that the options “touchy” or “offended” are not used. The use of an adjective or active participle would be more justified, but the phrase contains a passive participle. It talks about who was offended.
Many researchers believe that this can be explained by the process of jargonization of the language. In prisons, the despised “low-down” criminals, who, as a lower caste, only had to carry water, that is, engage in hard and humiliating work, were called offended.
How to help get rid of resentment?
Explain to the person why you acted and said this and not otherwise. Explain in detail the reason in the smallest detail, make it clear with all your appearance that there was no desire to offend. If the situation really requires it, you need to apologize. Just remember: to apologize means to regret what you did and promise to do it again. Human reactions come from actions, not just words.
Try to explain that offense is a destructive feeling that shows how much the offended person does not respect himself as a person. Show that you respect him, but you will never have a close relationship if it develops so one-sidedly.
