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Sometimes I don't sleep well at night and lay in bed and think about the incredible mix of personalities I have interacted with in my lifetime. Most people are forgettable and I "survive" them just fine but so many of the people I have interacted with at work, at school, in the neighborhood and in my extended family have been just evil. Lots of psychopaths who would do anything to make my life miserable. So many cruel people who just don't care about anyone but themselves.
I wonder if the average person has come in contact with as many bad, just plain evil people as I have.
What is your experience with people? Have you had basically good experience with your fellow man (and women) or has their been just enough psychopaths that your life really suffered? Tell us your story!
On a personal level, less than a handful. Most people I have met are either good or indifferent (self-absorbed to the point that they really don't see how their decisions affect others - but not actively trying to hurt people).
Learn to recognize dysfunction-learn to pick and chose wisely. There are good people in the world and there are truly miserable people in the world in many senses of that word.
I associate only with the people I think are good, decent folks. I was not sheltered at all as a child and grew up in a very large city so leaned early on to spot the crazies. When presented with crazy you can either join in or reject it.
Example, I am self employed in a heavily regulated industry. I have to develop my own clients. Sometimes a potential client will come along and ask me to do something that is either borderline or obviously illegal. They hold out the carrot that they will become a paying client. If I'm stupid I take the carrot and then lie awake at night worrying about these evil people and what they could do to me. If I'm smart, I tell them to go take a hike and block their access to me permanently.
You either put yourself in a dysfunctional situation or you learn to recognize and avoid it.
Got crazy relatives- have nothing to do with them. If it's unavoidable, be polite, get away as soon as possible and don't take the bait and interact.
Stay out of nonsense going on the the neighborhood. The lives of other people do not concern you. Ignore it. Neighborhood too crazy- move.
Stay out of work nonsense. Do your job and go home. Don't get involved with personalities, other people's problems, other people's jobs, etc.
Learn to be self assured and self confident. Wolves go into herd and seek out the frail, the sick, the weak & the ones that don't have enough sense to get out the way. They leave the strong alone. The same with psychopaths & bullies- they seek out the weak.
In other words, your life experiences are going to be based on how you interact and react to life. Not happy with things- change your actions and reactions. There are plenty of fine, good people in the world.
Sometimes I don't sleep well at night and lay in bed and think about the incredible mix of personalities I have interacted with in my lifetime.
So many cruel people who just don't care about anyone but themselves.
What is your experience with people? Have you had basically good experience with your fellow man (and women) or has their been just enough psychopaths that your life really suffered? Tell us your story!
Must be hard being empathic in a rather-cruel world.
I used to associate with a woman who "felt so hard (emotionally) it hurt." Debilitating, in her case, in what I knew was a case of Borderline Personality Disorder. Even smoking pot didn't calm her down, much at-least, though hers was the first use of therapeutic and (at that time) not-so-legal pot I actually thought was a great idea.
She was a magnet for "bad, evil people" as you put it; some personalities are. Bad men flock to it to exploit it, because they "can". I've seen it a dozen times. Ghou
The "bad, evil people" really don't care, btw. Not in the slightest, and they sleep great at night. I'm rather flat in affect (emotional), a bit toward Aspie's side I suspect, and a fair amount of what people get wound up about seems irrelevant to me. Merely a different perspective that yours.
Might want to think about strategies for minding your concerns and not worrying, if that is possible, about others and what they say/do. You can affect that. I see people like that these days, I walk away, quit, or transfer. Pick any of the above. Most amusing of all is getting in their face, but that takes far too much energy usually.
And no, I don't have a basically good experience with fellow man. Most eye-opening experience I had was running a large-scale survey and analysis program across thousands of respondents in our company, and finding out what was "really" going on behind the numbers. That went on for about a year. Even when confronted with facts (the analysis), more often than not people will 1) shoot the messenger and/or 2) act like a dog hearing a funny noise and go back to whatever they were doing. A few...only about 8% of our sample group...actually immediately acted on the changes necessary to improve our firm's delivery model.
Which was the expected outcome of 100% the cohort.
Little did I know. They shot (at) the messager(s), ignored it, complained ot higher-ups, wrote letters to the president and the board, and in the end went back to whatever vs. actually doing their jobs to delight the customer. The worst (6%) arrogant non-performers were eventually fired right out the door, however, and good riddance to bad rubbish. The other 86%...in neither group, what I called "the inert"...were compelled through means fair and foul to shape up or ship out. That's people for you: mostly inert, and irrelevant.
I really quit caring at about that point (chuckle). Too much energy expenditure.
I don't find it that easy to come to work and ignore the toxic people. Or ignore the bad relatives or friends of friends either. I am stuck with them.
So "I'm Retired Now" is no longer retired? Well congratulations on having finally found employment and hope this position lasts a while and you're able to settle down and work peacefully with both coworkers and management.
You do seem to have been continuously surrounded by very negative circumstances and people for so very long, none of which have been your fault. All the nasty people seem to gravitate towards you solely to make your life miserable, from the terrible employers to the horribly dysfunctional family members who ignore you when they're not asking for money. Over a lifetime we all have met "bad" people but dwelling on it/them and reliving the misery over and over again achieves nothing and is counterproductive. The previous poster got it right, viz, "Too much energy expenditure."
I've lived in a variety of places and situations...from living in officer designated housing on air force bases to upper middle class suburban neighborhoods growing up, to several apartment complexes, the projects, and SFH's in the hood after I moved out. Quite a variety of folk. I also worked in fast food from age 16-22, including as a shift manager from 20-22...so again, good variety.
One of my workers a few years ago ended up being a murderer. Not as in he was wanted by the FBI or anything, as in he shot and killed someone in the parking lot at work at 9AM on a Saturday morning. At that same job, I worked with several drug dealers. Worked with a 17 year old kid who was about to join the army, and a 17 year old girl who talked about nothing but sex. Worked with a 400 pound wider-than-she-is-tall manager who had a psycho husband that came into the store with a gun because he thought she was cheating on him.
In the projects there were ridiculous people. Females who would start stupid, completely false rumors about other people just to start s***. One female said I got her pregnant - I'd never seen her before in my life. Lived across from a dude that crashed his truck into his girlfriend's project unit because he thought she was cheating.
Now at work, the guy next to me attends a major research university and has a wife and daughter, but we are getting to be pretty good friends. I'm also getting to be good friends with a super-duper Christian guy; talks about church and god often enough but he's a real good guy. Rooming with a gay guy who has a PhD in neuroscience, and whose boyfriend is going for a masters in medical something or other. I'm talking to a girl at work who has her B.S. in biology, looking for a masters program. Woman across from me has an A.S. in nanotechnology.
On base I met all kinds of people too of course. The military kids, some bad some good some in between. Sooo yeah. I've met some characters. Lol.
I have worked for two really awful bosses. They were not psychopaths, but they were difficult stupid people without compassion. I suppose their acts masked some insecurities. But they were terrible people as far as I could see.
But mostly I have come into contact with decent people, some better than others. I can't think of a single psychopath in my life, ever. I have run across someone with a "borderline personality" and a couple of cases of bi-polar disorder, that I know of. The former is bad for sure. I have had some harassment, from time to time by men, but nothing as awful as cases I read about.
As a young person I did experience some teasing and I had my share of bad treatment by my peers, but I haven't experienced any thing like that in a very long time, and I don't think of that time very much any more.
I am not sure the world is so full of truly awful people. But if you do realize that someone you deal with frequently is very bad, then your dealings with that person should be defensive first and foremost. Because a person like that can damage you when it suits him or her.
I wonder if you are not misreading people? Or if you are not projecting your own feelings onto others? Or if you are not expecting people to be wholly good? (People are never wholly good, and seldom are they wholly evil, IMO.)
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