The difficult thing isn’t living with other people, it’s understanding them. – Jose Saramago
Wake up to a bright new blessed day! You yawn, stretch, say your prayers and are ready to hop out of bed with an eagerness to start the day on a new note. Suddenly the previous days’ hostile home scene flashes into your mind. What was such a silly matter had erupted into a slinging match between you and your partner. What could have easily been resolved in a matter of minutes had taken hours and still the embers were burning.
You want to crawl back into bed..the day did not look too happy now. Why are people difficult, you wonder?
Now, this could happen as a normal routine in every household. Arguments, ugly scenes, children being difficult, spouses not pitching in to help, parents demanding, in laws being overtly criticizing, rude neighbors, domestic help being problematic…never ending list. At the end of it all, you have to bear the brunt. Having to juggle between home and work and to deal with difficult people all along the way, is truly exhausting.
The two kinds of people who can really drain your energy are the ones you love and the ones you fear. These are the ones who are inevitable in your life and you have willingly let them into your personal space. They can be equally frustrating and annoying too. That is when you will favor your own Alone Time.
In life, we will always encounter difficult people. Don’t allow them to frustrate you or steal your joy. – Victoria Osteen
Home is where you would want to create a warm and living atmosphere for your loved ones. Sometimes it works the other way around. Each family member could bring in the remnants of their own days’ bad experiences and be stressed out. So even a small trigger could set off a big argument or fight between spouses or children or other members, leading to much unpleasantness.
To be true, there are no difficult people. Only difficult behaviors. It is not the person who is difficult, but aspects of the behavior of that person. Understanding this prime aspect may not be possible when you are in a reactive mood.Your immediate and instinctive thought would be to change these Whiners or Manipulators or Short-Fused Difficult members of the family. Their main aim could be to provoke you and make you react.
Powerless over such interactions, you are left feeling like being mowed down by a speeding truck. Shying away and avoiding such people also becomes impossible when they are your own sibling, spouse, mother, father, kids, co-worker or friend.
People are the most difficult thing in the world to change – Gena Showalter
In a marriage, tussles between partners at their difficult moments could be handled by ‘letting go’ and patching up later or by working out strategies. You could do a lot of repair work on the interactions going wrong on a daily basis. When you judge your loved one as being ‘difficult’, you must also take care and caution to see that ‘you’ do not trigger off situations to become worse with your short temper blowing up or by by your hasty, condemning words.
On the other hand you will have to be ready in advance for encounters or difficult situations. This is relevant to every member of the family. Work on relationships at home. Curb your instinct to change each one: each try will only end up in the situation becoming worse. Change at every level is always resisted and resented.
People who are angry all the time and looking for conflict or confrontation – the battle they are fighting is not with you; it is within themselves. So the best thing would be to maintain your calm in a highly charged atmosphere: to get your reactivity down and to deep breathe: to listen well and to respond with clarity, rather than to add triggers to the conversation or argument.
It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice. – Anne Tyler
Well meant advice is rarely taken. You must take care not to label or judge or write off your loved one as ‘ a difficult person’. Each person falls victim to the circumstances he or she is in. That does not mean that they do not have their good points. Members of a family must be able to give and take respect and conduct themselves with dignity, without resorting to their egoistic selves.
Accepting each member as they are, will prove less upsetting for you. Don’t dream too much for them as it might end up in you being disappointed.
Avoid topics that could lead to conflict or confrontation, to the best possible extent. Realize that difficulties in life are vital for our own personal growth. Having hands-on experience at dealing with difficult situations, learn to avoid those things that could label ‘you’ as ‘being difficult’, at any given point of time. Strive to always create a peaceful a home and haven.
The difficult people who we encounter can be our greatest teachers. – Eileen Anglin