Negative Comments

Sometimes people have said things about me that I find pretty offensive. We have all been there and it can really play on our mind and hurt us. There have been so many times where I’ve wanted to explain to them that I found it difficult or upsetting but I tried to let it go. I had the realisation that I needed to change, not their comments, but how I felt about them.

A lot of the time people don’t even know that what they said was hurtful or negative. Perhaps I have said something today that someone did not like but we cannot always tell. One that stuck with me for a while was when I was told that when I first met this person she thought I was “painfully shy “. Now these words felt like a stab. Through my teenage years and early 20s I was shy. I spent a long time trying to be less shy and more confident. When I got to my late 20s I started to finally feel more relaxed and more confident. When I met this person I was in my mid 20s and not particularly shy. When I’m getting to know people I can sometimes be more reserved as it is my nature as an introvert. She comes from a louder family and that’s okay too. We are all different but then when she mentioned this to me a few months ago it brought back those painful feelings I had throughout my younger years of overcoming shyness.

I dwelled on these thoughts because they hurt. I thought I had come a long way after fighting so long in my 20s. After some thinking it did not take too long to let it go. This was a huge step for me because before it would take much longer to stop feeling negative about it. What helped was realising that in fact I know that what she said wasn’t true. She may have thought it but that does not make it a fact. Again, she comes from a different background so what she perceives to be shyness is not the same for me. The people who know me well wouldn’t think so either. Now, she didn’t mean it to sound a certain way, it was just her way of expressing. We all say things where we may not realise how it can come across. Some comments will be negative but we don’t always have to believe them. What about the positive comments? Perhaps focus on those more.

In order to not pay attention we need to care less about what others think and care more about what we think of ourselves. Any negative comments that have been made perhaps write them down and screw it up. Write what is positive about yourself or even turn that comment the other way around. There’s a difference between someone offering advice and someone saying something you perceive to be negative. If you feel down about it you need to focus on what the cause is as most of the time it is something to do with how you see yourself. People won’t always say things that you like. Ask yourself if it will matter in a few years what someone said about you. Will you still be thinking about it? People were quite nasty to me at school but I did not carry that through to my adulthood. I know that they were just children and that is in the past. We cannot move forward if we are always looking back. If we constantly think about negative comments we will continuously hurt ourselves. Use these comments as a way of building your confidence instead.

Focus more on the positive comments and more on your relationship with yourself.