Most of us strive for self-respect – to see ourselves in a positive light and to be proud of who we are. Any comments or experiences that undermine those feelings of self-worth can be uncomfortable and it’s only natural to want to avoid them.
But the thing is, whether your self-worth really is being undermined is, to a large degree, subjective. Much of it comes down to your perception of what someone said or did.
When you take things personally, you’re interpreting these situations as saying something significant and negative about you as a person. Say your boss picks holes in your sales report, and you come away feeling like this means she thinks you’re a poor member of staff.
Or, two of your friends cancel your planned get together at the pub and you interpret this as meaning they’re bored of you. Psychologists have a term for this way of thinking: personalisation.
But the reality is that your boss might view you very highly. It’s just you made some mistakes in the report and she wanted to point these out so that you do better next time.
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Similarly, in the case of your friends cancelling, perhaps they both felt unwell that weekend or they just changed their minds.
In both examples – and others that we all experience – there’s another process at work that psychologists call mind reading. This is when you assume to know what other people are thinking about you when you can’t really know without asking them directly.
In the examples above, if you assume your boss thinks you’re useless or you assume your friends think you’re boring, then you’re engaging in mind reading.
One simple way to avoid engaging in personalisation and mind-reading is to challenge your negative assumptions of what’s happened. When you find yourself taking a situation personally, try to think of other interpretations that are less focused on you – especially in the sense of saying anything deep or fundamental about you.
When you do this, it might help to try to put yourself in other people’s shoes and see things from their perspective. For instance, it can be tricky to give negative feedback in a tactful way.
But the fact your boss took the time to give you feedback at all means they care enough to want to help you improve. When it comes to your friends – maybe it’s because your friendship is so strong that they felt able to cancel at late notice.
And can you honestly say you’ve never backed out on plans, sometimes just because you felt tired or not in the mood?
Wanting to be proud of yourself is healthy. But pride comes in different forms – if you take pride in the idea that there’s something inherently exceptional about you (‘hubristic pride’), it’s bound to make you more sensitive and prone to taking things personally.
Try instead to take pride in your efforts, good intentions and achievements (‘authentic pride’). This shift in focus will also help you become less sensitive and less inclined to take things personally.
This article is an answer to the question 'How do I stop taking things personally?'
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