The struggles of life or poor mental health can profoundly affect the way you perceive the world around you. Negativity is insidious in that it can worm its way into your brain, tainting everything it touches. If you’re unhappy about one thing, that unhappiness can carry over into other areas of life. If you’re stressed about one thing, you may have a shorter temper and more negative emotions about other things.
That’s a big problem if you don’t notice it, because it will cause you to become a more negative person. That’s why you want to be aware of these signs that negativity is affecting your personality more than you may realize.
1. You complain often.
Chronic complainers can always find a cloud on a sunny day. Nothing is ever good enough, and they feel the need to make their displeasure known. It doesn’t matter how large or small, good or bad, a chronic complainer will find something wrong to complain about.
Complaining is draining to everyone involved. For the audience, they may just be trying to vibe and have a good day, which requires control over one’s thoughts and feelings. It’s hard to exert that control if you’re constantly subjected to emotionally draining people. Whatever you were doing for mental management gets pushed aside to pay attention to the conversation of the complainer.
It’s just as harmful for the complainer. If they’re complaining, they’re focused on negativity, which means they are reinforcing their own negative feelings. The more you reinforce them, the stronger the feelings are. There are so many things you can do rather than complain, which would be far more productive and much healthier for you.
Additionally, as Psychology Today informs us, the complainer may find themselves lonely because other people don’t want to be around them. I ran into this issue with a coworker whom I was forced to spend a lot of time with.
Like, okay, this job isn’t great, but you don’t have to make every day worse by complaining about it for nine straight hours, every day you’re here. If you hate it that much, find another job! I know I’ll sound like a boomer saying this, but suck it up, buttercup. It’s work. Enjoying your job is a luxury that not everyone can afford.
2. You’re highly critical of everyone, including yourself.
Hypercritical, overly judgmental people are exhausting because nothing is ever good enough for them. They will look for any flaw they can find in a good thing so they can convince themselves that it is actually bad. The hypercritical person is quick to point out shortcomings, flaws, and mistakes, usually claiming that they are just being “realistic”.
In reality, it’s not realistic to scrutinize everything to look for what’s wrong. What is actually realistic is that people are flawed creatures by nature. Nothing is ever perfect, so a hypercritical person pointing out a flaw or shortcoming isn’t some “Gotcha!” moment. It’s what any reasonable person would understand as a possibility.
Hypercritical people may find themselves alone sooner or later. No one wants to have the flaws in who they are or what they do constantly pointed out to them. Why bother being around that person?
3. You feel drained most of the time.
Body and mind health are closely intertwined. As WebMD tells us, a person who is constantly negative is not only taxing their brain, but also causing their brain to disrupt their body. That may cause problems like feeling more anxious and stressed, not sleeping well, being sick more often, or just feeling drained of energy.
Fatigue and physical symptoms are common, yet underacknowledged symptoms of depression and negative thinking. It’s a vicious cycle where your mind can wear your body out, and then that exhaustion can keep you from properly mentally relaxing to have an opportunity to recover.
4. You dwell in the negative instead of moving forward.
Chronically negative people often do what they can to stay in that mental space. They may just sit and stew in negativity instead of acting on a solution. Not only that, these people will often create problems of their own and self-sabotage just so they can vindicate their own negativity.
An example of that behavior would be the person who keeps going back to a toxic relationship after they’ve identified that it’s bad for them. They may like the fact that they can portray themselves as the victim and bemoan the negativity of the situation without ever addressing it. They may be fully aware that the right thing to do is to break up and move on, but they just don’t.
In many cases, these people aren’t interested in solutions. They don’t look for solutions because they aren’t trying to be or feel better. They are miserable, and they want to stay miserable, so they choose to keep themselves stuck, reinforcing a victim mindset.
5. You assume negative intent.
Most people in the world are out for themselves, first and foremost. That’s not to say that they are lurking, lying in wait to take advantage of you to get ahead. It’s just that in most cases, when someone does something wrong or negative, it’s not because they are out to get anyone. It’s more likely that they just made a bad decision based on what they thought was best for them at the time.
We are surrounded by people. You can’t go through life assuming everyone is out to get you or that everyone is fake, or else it just turns you into an isolated, bitter person. The world is a complicated place where people do bad things and make bad decisions. However, it’s much easier if you can keep in mind that other people aren’t out to get you.
6. You’re always expecting the worst.
The anticipation of failure or disappointment can often become a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who feel like their efforts are going to be wasted just don’t try as hard as those who can maintain at least a neutral disposition. Sure, sometimes things go badly. In fact, one should always at least consider what may happen if things do go south.
But this worst-case thinking is not a mental space that you want to live in. You have to be confident in your ability to handle things if they don’t go as planned. Do have a Plan B, and know that if things don’t go as you envisioned, you can always try something else. Sometimes things just don’t work out, and that’s okay. That’s just life.
Chronic negativity about your potential outcomes will just keep you drained and stuck.
7. You dread any kind of change.
The familiar is comfortable, even if it’s miserable. There are a lot of people who stay stuck in a bad situation because they are just comfortable in their misery. They are afraid of things being different, even better. Furthermore, a person can actually fear improvement and personal growth. Why? Self-improvement not only brings new challenges, but also new responsibilities.
That can be uncomfortable for someone who is used to dwelling in a negative mindset. New responsibilities mean they have new opportunities to make things better or worse. Instead of being happy about that, they reject it because it does not reconfirm their negative biases.
8. People often say that you’re too negative.
Though we can be blind to our own traits at times, other people may see more clearly. Other people telling you that you’re too negative or constantly expecting bad things to happen is a sign that something is wrong. Sure, people can have mistaken impressions, but if you find that multiple people are telling you that you’re difficult or impossible to be around, it may be time to stop and assess.
This kind of feedback is invaluable because many people will instead choose to just distance themselves or cut ties with negative people like you rather than make a statement. They may not want to make a scene or make you feel bad about yourself, so they just say nothing instead, which is quite unhelpful if you want to be better.
Final thoughts…
Life can be hard and stressful. It’s easy to slip into depression and negativity without realizing it. It’s insidious in the way it infects your thoughts and filters out into the rest of your life. However, you can’t let negativity be your defining character trait.
It doesn’t help you prepare for bad things by assuming the worst, all the time. All it really does is rob you of positivity, good experiences, and healthy relationships because most mentally well-adjusted people don’t want to hang out with someone who is always negative.
And speaking as someone who’s lived with Bipolar-depression for decades, I know that’s not something I wanted to hear when I was that person, but it’s the truth. If this article resonates with you, you’ll want to talk to a counselor about it.
