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I'm a bit confused on this one..I've read a lot online and from people telling me that you should avoid people with a negative mindset about life and complainers. Teenagers rightly or wrongly (the latter in my experience) are usually judged by society as the worst culprit for these. People say how teens are 'angsty', depressed and don't like life.
But in my experience that doesn't seem true. Now I'm not trying to defend young adults or teenagers because I don't have much life experience, however when I was a kid expressing suicidal ideation at minor times and mostly expressing depressive thoughts about life, school etc.., a lot of people said I had a negative attitude. In fact one guy said to me that I had a horrible personality and others either complained about it in a much less aggressive tone or said nothing at all.
It seems even in adulthood, most people hate negativity and it's difficult to find someone who isn't repulsed by it. This seems to fly in the face of what I've been told. I can understand people being deeply uncomfortable about suicidal ideation but it seems that people who are generally annoyed with life are in the fringe minority in terms of encountering them in your day to day life
This is not the case all the time as sometimes people might be genuinely concerned on the possibility of a person being too consumed by it but I think a lot of the time people don't want to hear the truth. I'm often been told by people I'm too negative about things but a lot of my pessimism is realistic. I did not in any way invent it.
They will deny a lot of negative things are true because they want to pretend that life is all rainbows and butterflies.
I have a theory that answers the OP's question. Some---not all---people who believe that life is all rainbows and butterflies, simply never experienced anything but rainbows and butterflies. It's a "let them eat cake!" kind of thing. I used to know someone like that: a Pollyanna optimist. He acted like the world is a happy place where nothing bad happens. Of course, there was an easy explanation for it. He had a cohort of friends who practically worshiped him. He could pick up any woman he wanted, although he had a serious girlfriend instead. He found a lucrative, executive-level job through personal connections, and treated his employees poorly. Which meant he was very well-off. At the same time, he heavily bought into therapy-style platitudes like "just tell [whoever] how you feel" or "just think of how blue the sky is".
Of course, I could see right through the facade. But because most people don't believe that bad things exist , I was swimming upstream like a migrating salmon.
Most people don't want to deal with anyone at the far end of either side of the positivity-negativity spectrum. I think the whole "positive thinking" school of thought is idiocy - realistic thinking is what's necessary. Having been depressed, you are not doing yourself any favors by being relentlessly negative - and if you're being negative when things aren't as bad as you think they are, people are going to be turned off by your irrational thought. The people with whom you have established relationships will want to help and be supportive (even if they're not that good at it), while the people who don't know you will feel imposed upon by your insistence that everything sucks and your expectation that they feed into that belief you have established.
But even the people who care about you will get some burnout if you constantly take a negative tone but do nothing to address your practical problems or your mental health issues. If you're relying on people who are not trained mental health professionals to talk to about your depression all the time, they are in over their heads. There's venting and then there's using others as a crutch. And if the people you lean on aren't particularly close to you, they aren't going to be inclined to devote a lot of time to listening.
Depression and anxiety are a constant battle, it seems like to me. Even when I'm happy, I know they're still out there basically stalking me, biding their time. But I also know that I have a lot of good things in my life. For one thing, I live in a developed country - I have no fears of starving to death or dying in a civil war. I have amazing friends, a good job, a loving extended family and many low-cost interests. I can afford the things I need and have some left over. There's a lot to be grateful for. I focus on those things when I start to think life isn't worth living or that everything's going to fall apart. And I have those thoughts a lot these days. I'm constantly steering myself away from that cliff.
Most people are a mix of positivity and negativity. When someone veers too far too one extreme, the people around them will be worried or turned off - depression is a very isolating disease that way. People with depression are suffering from an illness, but they have an obligation to pursue solutions if they want to be a part of rest of the world. In fact, for someone who has depression to be around other people who just give in to it, it can be very destructive. When a suicide happens, often it is followed by other suicides in that person's social group. I just saw this play out in real life recently. It was beyond horrible - the people involved were financially comfortable, had strong support systems and truly bright futures.
Barring severe problems like great physical pain, extreme poverty, extreme health problems, etc., depression tends to be either situational or chemical. If it's situational, you need to take steps to address the problem by chipping away at the things that are causing your depression or learning to accept them if they cannot be changed. If it's chemical, you need to pursue treatment - either through therapy and support groups or through medication or both. And you can't give up - which is hard with depression, when everything in your being is telling you to give up. But that's the way of it.
I have a great support system of friends and relatives, but I have a therapist and a life coach because I don't want to overburden my loved ones when I'm struggling.
I'm a bit confused on this one..I've read a lot online and from people telling me that you should avoid people with a negative mindset about life and complainers. Teenagers rightly or wrongly (the latter in my experience) are usually judged by society as the worst culprit for these. People say how teens are 'angsty', depressed and don't like life.
But in my experience that doesn't seem true. Now I'm not trying to defend young adults or teenagers because I don't have much life experience, however when I was a kid expressing suicidal ideation at minor times and mostly expressing depressive thoughts about life, school etc.., a lot of people said I had a negative attitude. In fact one guy said to me that I had a horrible personality and others either complained about it in a much less aggressive tone or said nothing at all.
It seems even in adulthood, most people hate negativity and it's difficult to find someone who isn't repulsed by it. This seems to fly in the face of what I've been told. I can understand people being deeply uncomfortable about suicidal ideation but it seems that people who are generally annoyed with life are in the fringe minority in terms of encountering them in your day to day life
Why might this be?
Are you honestly saying that, for example, a person with a negative attitude should be just as pleasant to be around as a person with a positive attitude? Dealing with a person who has a consistently negative take on life is tiresome. Life is difficult enough without having to constantly (metaphorically speaking) pull a corpse uphill.
Are you honestly saying that, for example, a person with a negative attitude should be just as pleasant to be around as a person with a positive attitude? Dealing with a person who has a consistently negative take on life is tiresome. Life is difficult enough without having to constantly (metaphorically speaking) pull a corpse uphill.
I'd honestly prefer to be around someone with a neutral attitude. That is, someone who's not entirely negative, but also admits that this world isn't all pink bunnies and unicorns. At least not for most people. Because someone who's overly positive comes off a person who never had to actually work for anything in their life.
That said, I'm getting good at faking a positive attitude. Being the only one who sees that the emperor is naked as a jaybird is very exhausting. So if some BS can make the world go 'round, and keeps the preachy people off my back, I'm happy to oblige.
Are you honestly saying that, for example, a person with a negative attitude should be just as pleasant to be around as a person with a positive attitude? Dealing with a person who has a consistently negative take on life is tiresome. Life is difficult enough without having to constantly (metaphorically speaking) pull a corpse uphill.
Yup.
You don't have to be fake positive. That's grating, too. But it's emotionally EXHAUSTING to be around negative people. I literally get tired and very irritable.
And I don't buy the rainbows 'nothing bad has happened to them' theory. In fact, most of the negative people I know haven't come close to suffering some of the horrible atrocities some of the most positive people I know have suffered. It's almost like a choice for them, and I resent their clouding up my life with their choice to be an annoying downer.
Negativity breeds stress. It causes negative self-fulfilling prophesies. It is the enemy of creativity. It can't be reasoned with. It infects others. It devalues life. It is often the culprit behind poor choices in life. It attracts physical and mental illness. It is nihilistic and anti-life. It wears out people who are not negative.
Often the negative nellies I run into don't realize any of that.
I have already been told on this forum I am "ignorant" and "don't have a clue" by some bitter old people right here because I had the callow temerity to not hate life enough to wish I hadn't been born (the topic of that thread).
Sorry, you bitter old joyless pills, but it is not ignorance of hard knocks in life that make me positive and optimistic throughout life. It is experience with those hard knocks that do. So, for me to sit around and listen to people whine and moan about how life sucks so bad that they wish they hadn't even been born...well, that is a real drag. Such people wouldn't know a rainbow or sunshine if they saw it, and if they somehow did, they'd complain that it was ugly and meaningless. Yuck, who wants to be around such attitudes? That's how you get cancer.
An optimist in life makes the best of any situation. An optimist is empowered to change the future. An optimist remains strong and healthy while others become weak and sick. An optimist attracts others because others gain energy from the optimist. An optimist is flexible and adaptive. An optimist even looks more attractive than a pessimist; it is written on their faces.
This country seems to be in a downward spiral of negativity to the point where people can't even tolerate someone who is happy. This negativity has contributed mightily to the messes we now find ourselves in. I'm sure the negative nellies here will say something like the world is doomed anyway and we'll all be dead, so who cares? It will be the optimists who save us.
Yup.
You don't have to be fake positive. That's grating, too. But it's emotionally EXHAUSTING to be around negative people. I literally get tired and very irritable.
And I don't buy the rainbows 'nothing bad has happened to them' theory. In fact, most of the negative people I know haven't come close to suffering some of the horrible atrocities some of the most positive people I know have suffered. It's almost like a choice for them, and I resent their clouding up my life with their choice to be an annoying downer.
To me, "negativity" is just an unpleasant truth most people don't want to or haven't the courage to face. Here's a great read on this malignant trend in Positivity Policing.
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, I was swimming upstream like a migrating salmon.
