A recent comment on one of my posts talked about cutting loose the negative characters in your life.
This was a really interesting comment and one which prompted a bit of a gut reaction.
My response was that everyone deserves a compassionate response and we should only contemplate removing them from our circle of influence after we are comfortable that we have provided such a compassionate response to them.
We all have our negative times in life, for whatever reason, and we all need other people to invest their energy in us at some stage, even if we are usually full of energy ourselves and able to cope with most things in life. When we hit these periods I am sure we would all like to think that we could rely on others to provide us with a bit of a boost, without simply deciding to cut us loose.
For some people it does become clear that no matter how much we invest in them these characters are not going to change and are going to continue to be energy suckers.
It does raise an interesting question though.
What is the threshold for determining that you have done all that you can?
How do you determine that you have done all you can for the negative characters in your life? Let us know in the comments.
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Thanks Mandy, I think you provide a good example of how the problem manifests and the impact that it begins to have personally if we continue to try to assist beyond what is both compassionate and reasonable. If the person can not or will not change their thinking or behaviour patterns despite seeking the advice this is probably a really good trigger for cutting them loose.
Hi Mick. This is a good think piece. In my experience, it's someone who you have discussed challenges with. They ask advice, agree with you, but the same issues, or various manifestations of them, keep returning. I realized that this person wanted air-time. They wanted to feel loved and needed and the center of attention, and their way of creating this was living in a problem-filtered universe. In their mind-set, if there was no crisis, no problem to solve, they lost center stage. I knew the gig was up when I started dreading the calls and making lame excuses not to meet. I tried to help. But in hindsight, I felt much better being free of this person. Sad, but true.