Stay away from the three destructive relationships: the critic, the victim, and the narcissist

We Chinese are more care about interpersonal relationship, most people are easily affected by others, so when you learn self care such a new concept, new method, when you use, or, in theory, when you are a person, you may find this concept is not difficult to understand, these methods also is not difficult to operate. But when a Chinese person places himself in a family, a company, a community, things start to get complicated.

If you're surrounded by an atmosphere of caring, where everyone cares about themselves and everyone cares about others, that obviously makes it easy and easy to cultivate. But the truth is, most of the time, you're probably surrounded by people who don't know what self-care is, who don't know how to support and care for you, and who, in quite a few cases, despise your self-care. Maintaining self-care in such an environment requires certain beliefs and skills.

First, how to deal with people who don't share your philosophy of self-care? It's simple, don't care, they do their self-care, you do your self-care. Self-care is something you can handle on your own. You don't need anyone's permission to care about yourself. If there is someone around you who thinks he has the right to decide whether or not you can care for yourself, you are almost certain that he has been poisoned by egotism. Such a person is not easily influenced by others, whether what you say makes sense or not, so your best strategy is to stay away from him.

Of course, there are two sides to the story. On the other hand, I do not encourage some friends who feel that they care about themselves so much that they desperately want to sell their ideas and methods to others. In the end, we are all learners on the road to life, and none of us is 100% sure how life should be lived. I encourage you to sit through my lessons, selectively accept, and explore independently, and I look forward to you leaving that space for the people around you -- allowing them to discover for themselves what works best for them. You can share, but you don't have to stress about it.

Another issue related to self-care in real relationships is that there are people who have responsibilities to others, such as doctors and nurses, whose job is to care for others, or parents, who have parenting responsibilities. Caring for others, both professionally and at home, is a very demanding job, and because caregivers are assumed to be the caregiver by default in the context, their own needs often have to take a back seat, and little attention is paid to whether they are receiving basic care. Most of the time, they are too busy to care about themselves -- the doctor is often the most irregular eater and the mother is often the least assured and reassured.

Caregivers' self-care is a very important issue in foreign countries, and the factors involved are relatively complex. But if your daily life and work involve caring for others, the most important thing is to be aware of the need for self-care for you and your responsibilities. You might explain to the other person that while this may take some of your caring time away from you, this is the only way to ensure that you are giving them real care and attention, and not the resentment and indifference that comes with exhaustion.

In practice, interpersonal self-care also focuses on staying away from relationships that are emotionally and physically destructive to you.

Usually, if people get along with each other, it is impossible not to have some conflicts and comfort everywhere. Most of these conflicts and discomfort are healthy and belong to the organic component of interpersonal relationship. But a few people, because of their early experiences, may form relationships in very specific ways, and those relationships are often destructive for the participants.

1) Critic. This kind of person is characterized by his dislike of everything, especially the performance of others.

They may criticize you, accuse you, or they may be a little more technical, coming in uninvited and explaining to you every time why your performance is still not good enough, why you are not the way you are... Anyway, every time you see him, you feel like you're half a head shorter. These people gain a sense of superiority mainly by belittling or destroying others. They may be well-analyzed, but because their starting point is implicit self-promotion, the advice they give is often unhelpful and only makes the audience feel bad about themselves.

2) The victim, or pitiful, is a person who presents himself as weak, powerless and pathetic, and sometimes believes himself to be so, when in fact they are powerful manipulators.

They are adept at emotional and even physical extortion. They can elicit sympathy and rationalize their excessive needs by presenting, or even exaggerating, their own hurt, or by using a moral narrative that works best for them. They claim, or make you feel, that you have to help them, that you have to take care of their emotions and feelings, and that they have no responsibility or obligation to you, or that they have "already done too much for you." Because each other's weak performance, there are times when you first may be difficult to realize that you have become the target of each other for, but if you have a relationship, let you feel tired and unhappy for a long time, but guilt, self-doubt, that the relationship is likely to have such qualities, and is the need to you as far as possible away from some.

3) Narcissists, whose destructiveness is often more insidious because they are usually outwardly perfect.

It's not that they're perfect, it's just that they're good at creating a perfect exterior and knowing how to blame people around them when something goes wrong. If you are willing to be their pure admirer, your relationship usually works fine, but you will gradually find that no matter how you communicate, the topic is always about his personal thoughts, feelings, experiences or achievements. When you can't satisfy his narcissism, you may find that he will suddenly pull away from you, or turn on you outright, and even more troubling, they won't hesitate to throw the blame on you if something does go wrong. People often flock to such people for resources and protection because they appear to be charismatic, but in reality they are shrewd exchangers who will not invest in someone they can't use. In short, you get nothing, but you get used.

Some people may be relatively lucky. When you look back, you don't have many such relationships in your life, or even though there are such people around, they are not important in your life, so it's not too hard to get away from them. But there are others who are not so lucky. You may find that not only do you have such relationships in your life, but they are not easy to get rid of in a short period of time. They may even be close to you. Children can leave home when they reach adulthood, and marriages can end, but for the players, things are far from simple.

Whether you're lucky or not, self-care is even more important, especially if you do have to deal with some damaging relationships over the long term. And that goes to another important part of interpersonal self-care: taking the initiative to find truly caring relationships and supportive communities in your life.

You can look for people who are going through the same things as you, who are going through the same difficulties, and they may not be exactly like you, because everyone's life may contain a unique combination of experiences, but there are always a few experiences that overlap with someone else. Seek out people who have experienced something similar to you, or who, at least to a certain extent, understand and accept the difficulties in your life.

If it's a common problem, you can speak up and see who understands and identifies with your experience. If it's a more complex and profound problem, you can also drop a little bit of it in random situations, and then slowly talk to the people who respond to you, gradually feeling deeper. You can also volunteer. In some ways, volunteering is actually a form of interpersonal self-care. When we help others, we tend to feel more valuable, and it's easier to connect with others when we help together.

As social animals, everyone needs a certain amount of social support and affirmation, something that no amount of self-care can completely skip. Then, from the perspective of caring for yourself, when you realize that you have such a need, accept it, and take the initiative to find ways to meet it, is the greatest self-care in interpersonal relationships.

Sometimes we find a friend, or a peer group, so quickly that we finally feel accepted and supported, and sometimes we find it for a long time. But no matter what, I advise you not to give up looking, because when you don't lose hope in others, you don't lose hope in yourself as a person, and that hope will sustain you and give you the opportunity for a warmer future.

I also encourage you to ask yourself if you are a critic, a victim, or a narcissist in your relationship. No one sets out to create a relationship that hurts others. Everyone is the way they are now for a reason, whether it's endless criticism, excessive demands, or ruthless self-interest, but it's all developed to satisfy some basic legitimate need.

It's just that from a psychological point of view, these ways do harm to others while not really meeting the needs of the parties themselves. They are empty at their core, and empty is not enough for anyone. So, if you find that you are doing such a thing, even more hurt someone in the relationship, then at least occasionally, stop to think, to try to find, may have a better relationship models between you, do you have any other way, you can better and more truly meet the needs of your heart, first of all, for example, try to self care!!!!