Forums > Social Chat > negativity?

Posted: 17th Feb 2004
i know someone who is quite a negative thinker - my mom bought a wonderful book called the pocket book of positives - its great, with stuff like: action does not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action....
its really helped

Posted: 17th Feb 2004
i fortunately have been through this .. i say fortunately because it has made me realise and appreciate things others may not see .. what it took for me, and i have since used on friends, was a good telling off ( a good dose of reality) you can become very self centered and you view of the world distorted, it helps shake you out of things.
knowing i have love and support from those around me.
and finally seeing the positive in every situation (where ever theres a negative theres a positive) it may be small or seem silly but its still there and need to be picked up on to retrain the thought process .. now i needed them to be pointed out at first but the longer its done the easier it is to see them by yourself.

hope i helped abit hun take care

she who sees from up high smiles

Patrick badger king: *they better hope there's never a jihad on stupidity*

Posted: 17th Feb 2004
nope.

i see people like this rather often. and i know how you feel spritie. it can be incredibly frustrating. and sometimes, like narr said, a good telling off to shake them to reality is what they need, but often times, nothing is going to help until they decide they want to change. i can say, that most of the time, giving them sympathy and trying to be polite and sweet is going to make things worse. usually they are wanting attention, and it feeds into the cycle they play out for themselves. don't play the game. it's the best you can do for them.

I was always scared with my mother's obsession with the good scissors. It made me wonder if there were evil scissors lurking in the house somewhere.

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

**giggles**

Posted: 17th Feb 2004
a few years ago i had clinical depression - not for very long (about six months) but it was bad all the same.

All the way thorugh my friends were very suppourtive of me, but not once did they give me any indication that i was pi$$ing them off or being overly negative.

After i got over it i realised that, although only i could help mysef, i needed my friends to tell me what i was doing wrong. In a way, if they'd got angry with me it would have pulled me out quicker.

now i'm not saying that having a go at every negative person is going to help, and quite often trying to engage their enthusiasm is pretty POIntless exercise, but maybe just telling them that it'a problem might help.

It took me refusing to talk to my housemate for 2 weeks to stop him being negative -i just told him that i didn't need someone trying to bring me down all the time, and eventually he bucked up a bit.

It kind of depends on how well you know someone before suggesting this, but sometimes couselling is a good idea, even people who are perfectly healthy can benefit from talking through some stuff.

Also, loads of hugs!

I had a dream that my friend had a
strong-bad pop up book,
it was the book of my dreams.