Taking Things Personally X Mental Health Monday

Taking things personally can cause a lot of unnecessary stress and/or can even be traumatic depending on the situation and a person's resilience levels at that time. Taking things personally is not actually a thing where you're obsessed with yourself or hold importance of yourself in every situation it's kinda the opposite, it's a somewhat victim mindset concerned with reputation feeling as though your 'character, abilities or personal achievements are under attack'. For example where you take that what someone did/said is related to you in some way shape or form and being unable to see how it's not like that, which yeah in some sense is self centred but not in an arrogant way. 

"It's normal to care about what others think about us but not to the point where it hinders us"

Taking things personally is generally a result of low self-esteem and low self-confidence; when you always think negatively of yourself e.g. believing everything is your fault then you're likely to easily believe other people think bad about you too. People take things personally for a variety of reasons such as being tired or stressed but it can also be deeper reasons such as you may have been neglected as a child making you sensitive to perceived rejection or feeling as though you deserve to be humiliated or mocked. For some, you might be neurodivergent, struggle with anxiety or be a highly sensitive person - being highly sensitive means you pick up on little things like a change in voice that others may not notice, which makes you susceptible to taking things personally as things can be misinterpreted."an unhealed person can find offence in pretty much anything someone does. A healed person understands that the actions of others has absolutely nothing to do with them." HOWEVER, taking things personally could be a result of mean people that you've experienced in life, yes mean people exist and no you're not 'crazy' for thinking that people could be being shitty to you on purpose and the behaviour of mean people can make you assume everyone's like that but kind people do exist. "While some comments or actions are actually offensive, if you find that your feelings are hurt very often or you tend to assume that someone meant to cause you emotional harm, it's possible that you're prone to taking things too personally." 

Taking things personally is your minds way of protecting you by assuming things; see the mind doesn't like gaps in information so it tries to make sense of things by filling in these gaps via assuming things, however the information isn't always accurate, even if there is so much "evidence" being presented. It can be pretty convincing because you don't have any alternate non assumed information to disprove the "evidence" so you end up grieving a situation that you might never have needed to grieve in the first place. It's a nasty cycle that because you've accepted it was related to you, it uses that experience as "evidence" for the next time a situation occurs and therefore trains your brain to create more "evidence" meaning at some point you'll assume almost anything anyone does in your vicinity is related to you; Taking things personally can spiral pretty quickly it becomes ingrained where almost any situation around you, can be linked back to you in some way shape or form. 

Taking things personally is likely to be a natural reaction/response that is subtle in regards to it's a thinking process which you're not even aware that you're doing it, even if someone tells you you are, you can't seem to understand how you're doing so because to you what your thinking is a valid rational mindset to have in the situation based on your "evidence". And some people can use this thinking everything's your fault against you/to their advantage, this would be manipulative but it does happen. For example if you already think everything is your fault and someone knows this, they may do something to try upset you and blame you/provide "evidence" that it's all your fault even though it had nothing to do with your actions they're just being a cunt and this is probably mental abuse. Not to scare you or anything but it's the harsh realities of where taking things personally can lead other than being labelled as dramatic or burning bridges with people for no factual reason just assumed ones. 

"It can be difficult to know when you are taking things too personally, especially if you are used to being over sensitive to others" or if you've had many bad encounters with shitty people it can have you worry what the next persons ulterior motive is starting the interaction from a biased perspective leading to misinterpretation. If you find yourself getting obsessed with the opinions others have of you, replaying scenarios/critique over and over again still thinking about the interaction many hours later finding it difficult to let go and getting angry or frustrated easily then you're probably overthinking whatever it is and could be taking things a bit too personally. Other signs include depending on the approval of other people to make you happy, apologising needlessly and being a people pleaser by finding it difficult to say no, you don't set or maintain boundaries and believing a mistake in behaviour is a character flaw.

Nobody enjoys being spoken about in a negative light, people do have the right to their opinions and it doesn't matter if you feel they are true or not. BUT there are some benefits of taking things personally, it tell's you where your sensitivities and insecurities are and when spoken about in a respectful manner to friends and family about what bothered you, can help them understand you better and they might modify their behaviour so that they won't offend you in future which will further deepen the relationship. 

Are you ready to stop taking things personally? 

There will be a part 2 to this coming soon with tips on how to stop taking things personally.

Till next time,

Stevie x 

Sources:

https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-not-take-things-personally-6541892

https://www.choosingtherapy.com/how-to-not-take-things-personally/

https://declutterthemind.com/blog/how-to-stop-taking-things-personally/