Unconditional Love for a New Life and a New World

This post is not to be taken out of its context. Please read part I, part II and part III first.

How To Deal With Chronically, Tenaciously Complaining People

Before you decide this is a “difficult case”, I suggest you really apply everything I wrote so far in parts I, II and III. Maybe their continuous complaining simply was the result of being stuck and having nobody to properly help them get unstuck. Try this first. In my experience, it can really work wonders! If necessary, make notes and keep them with you during the conversation.

If you really apply all this and nothing helps, you need more muscular methods. Not to help them (they obviously don’t want or aren’t able to take your help) – but to protect yourself.

If you are dealing with people who

• regularly complain without making any real, tangible changes
• don’t like your productive questions, get upset at you for asking them, refuse to answer them or don’t even let you ask them
• get upset when you don’t agree with them
• try to start arguments with you
• won’t let you change the topic of the conversation when you try to
• come up with drama all the time
• or just adamantly insist on keeping complaining endlessly even when you apply everything I wrote above

and if you feel that their complaining does drain your energy, ruin your mood and affect you negatively, and that you are at this time not able to be immune against it

then you need to protect yourself more drastically. If you don’t, you will end up depleted.

Protect Yourself

Your first duty in life is to protect yourself and make sure that you feel good. It is an elementary duty towards yourself to not remain in situations that drain your energy or harm you in any way. When you let yourself being drained by other people’s endless complaining, you are failing yourself.

Then you are also failing others, as you cannot effectively shine your light, go your path or inspire others when you are exhausted and vibrating low yourself. You cannot spread happiness when feeling crappy yourself. We are all energetically connected, so every time you let your mood being ruined by a complainer, you negatively affect the entire world.

If you want to allow this to happen, that is your choice, and it is perfectly valid. I guess you wouldn’t be reading this if you really wanted such a thing, though. So how can you prevent hardcore complainers from relentlessly poisoning your life?

Kick Them Out

The most effective way to protect yourself is to kick such people out of your life.

Break the Pattern

If you are not able or not willing to do that, remove yourself from the unhealthy situation every time it arises. As long as nobody holds a gun to your head, you don’t have to listen to their complaining. When they start complaining again, you are free to just get up and walk away.

Yes, just get up and walk away. Don’t be afraid of being rude. Staying in a situation that drains you is a violation against yourself. Honoring yourself is more important than any politeness in the world.

Alternatively, you can clearly tell them “I will not listen to your complaining. I will now take a walk, and come back when you are in a more positive state of mind.” and then get up and walk away.

At least, insist on changing the topic. Say “I don’t like listening to people complain in a non-productive way. That is a waste of energy. Let’s either search for a real solution to your problem or change the topic.”.

Stay firm. DO NOT TOLERATE the complaining to continue.

Tip: Do this every single time the complaining happens, and only then. Avoid generalizing in “we need to talk”-type conversations. Don’t tell them “You always complain” or “I hate that you are permanently complaining”. In my experience, generalizing outside of the actual situation is not effective at all. Instead, wait for it to actually happen, and then point it out to them. But then do this every time it happens. You need to be congruent. This is more difficult, but way more effective. If you maintain a high level of awareness, you can do it.

Delegate

Tell them to get professional help. You are not their therapist.

Defend Yourself

Check out my post about non-violent verbal self-defense techniques. Resort to humor. Just as a few examples, you could:

- Agree and exaggerate:

- “My life sucks, I am so unhappy, I am afraid of X and upset at Y, blablablah.”
- “Oh my God, this sucks so incredibly much! (fake crying) (hair pulling) You must be looking forward to DYING to be put out of your misery at last!!”

- Pay them a (completely unrelated and possibly silly) compliment:

- “My life sucks, I am so unhappy, I am afraid of X and upset at Y, blablablah.”
- “Your nose looks really great today”.

- Deliberately talk about something else:

- “My life sucks, I am so unhappy, I am afraid of X and upset at Y, blablablah.”
- “Btw, did you know that the multiplication of quaternions is not commutative? I find that totally fascinating.”

- Quote an inappropriate proverb:

- “My life sucks, I am so unhappy, I am afraid of X and upset at Y, blablablah.”
- “Absolutely! A bird in the hand is worth two in a bush.”

If you keep consistently pissing them off, and they see that complaining to you does not give them what they want, they will either stop complaining or stop choosing you as a listener.

Let Go of Your Own Resistance

How much of your feeling bad when they complain is caused by your resisting what is?

When they complain, do you think things such as “They should not be complaining like this!” or “How annoying that they are such wet blankets” or “Being so negative is not good for them. They should be more positive” or “Oh no, argh, they are ruining the afternoon again!”?

Of course you want your life to be as you want it, and the people in your life to be as you want them… but that is not the case. What is, is. And what is, is that they are choosing to complain and hold a negative focus. Would you be willing to accept that this is what is for now? ;)

You are not responsible for the way other people feel or behave. Their feelings or behavior don’t need to affect you in any way. Even their negative energy can only affect you if you believe it can and allow this to happen. Nobody can drain your energy, ruin your mood or make you feel bad, unless you let them.

Don’t feel sorry for them. The place they are in now is just perfect for them to be in. All is well. If some day they are ready to get out of this, they will find appropriate help. Maybe you need to have a bit more faith in the Universe. :)

Do you think you could be willing to fully embrace what is, including fully embracing that they are choosing to complain and feel like crap, and that they are perfect this way? Maybe you can learn to see them differently, and accept that this is the path they are going now. You might not approve of this path, or not understand how someone can go this path – but that is none of your business.

Make your Choice

If they choose to keep complaining, that is their choice, and that is perfectly fine. It is their right to do so. Now it’s up to you to determine the consequences of their choice on your relationship. It is your choice to decide whether you will tolerate this any longer or not.

Accepting what is, and accepting that they are going this path, does not mean you have to play the victim part and give them your energy just because they would like you to. You can fully accept someone as they are and embrace what is without resistance – and choose to not tolerate it in your life.

It is possible to walk away or defend yourself peacefully, without inner resistance. The mistake we often make is that we do the contrary: we resist, judge, feel bad, disapprove… and do not really make the clear choice to engage or not.

We cannot help others against their will. We can only help others within the frame of what they want for themselves and what they are able and ready to do. Everything else is none of our business. You did everything you could, now you need to let it go – and make your own choice.

All the being present and non-judgmental and nice and all the listening in the world is useless if you aren’t willing to say NO and STOP at some point. You can listen lovingly and ask helpful questions until you are blue in the face, if they’re not motivated enough to step out of the crap, you are just wasting your time and energy.

We would like to be nice and helpful and that all the world feels good – but it’s not up to us to decide upon that. We can only decide for ourselves.

Now you are facing the choice: do I want to hurt myself in order to be nice to others, or do I want to honor myself even if it pisses others off?

That is what it boils down to in the end. There is no magic pill. One way or another, you’ll have to suck it up.

Related posts:

1. How To Deal With Complainers – Part I
2. How To Deal With Complainers – Part III
3. How To Deal With Complainers – Part II
4. How To Defend Yourself Against Manipulators