Why people are so nasty and why it’s really not about you
Remember that sinking feeling? Out of the blue, when you least expect it someone says something hurtful. At first you think you must have misheard but by the time what they actually said sinks in it’s too late to retort. For weeks and weeks every time you remember the incident you want to shrivel up like a used tube of toothpaste.
I’m sure that, like me, you’ve often wondered why people can be so nasty? It’s not always strangers either. Often the people we love the most can cut us the deepest.
And here’s the news! We are all guilty! We have all caused other people pain! How do I know? Because we are all human!
Let me give you an example that will make you squirm.
Imagine that you are having lunch with your best friend. They reach across the table and hand you an antique sepia photo of a young couple on their wedding day. You desperately try to sound interested. ‘Oh! That’s nice‘. You quickly hand the photo back to your friend.
They look down at the photo and look hurt.
They tell you that, as a surprise, they’d researched your family tree and found this photo of your great-great grandparents. Now you take the photo back and look at it carefully. You notice the family similarity. Now it’s interesting!
What changed?
Suddenly the photo had relevance for you but not because of your friend’s feelings but because you now ‘believe’ that the photo directly affects you.
Don’t worry! You’re not a monster or a bad friend — you’re just human. We all do it, all the time.
We put people and situations into little boxes and write titles on them based on our own self interest: mother, father, brother, sister, lover, wife or husband.
We project onto people the shadow of our own self interest.
We look at people through the window of our self and that self is made up of our past, how we feel about that past and our expectations for the future.
99% of the people in the world go through 99% of their lives almost totally unconscious.
Unless they work very hard to wake up!
Something happens to them that they believe is ‘good’ for them in the short term and they feel good. Something happens to them that they believe is ‘bad’ for them in the short term and they feel bad.
We live an almost totally reactive life — it’s like we are asleep or in a coma.
When people are cruel or unkind, just remember that they are entirely disconnected from reality – they are living in their own dream and dealing with the darkness within themselves.
But don’t worry, just as the real ‘you’ exists beneath your thoughts and feelings, these zombies are not really dead. Beneath our thoughts and feelings we are all connected.
The trick is to realise that their words and actions aren’t really aimed at you — they are looking at their own projections. They are dealing with the labels that they put on the box they put you in.
Their words and actions have nothing to do with the real you!