I think a fundamental aspect of ‘how that works’ (not taking it personally) begins by understanding that when a person is ‘attacking’ you verbally they are most likely in their primitive brain and aren’t really commenting on ‘you’…the actual you…their words are not really about anon46665354 or Glenn…it’s about whatever you represent to them as a conceptual threat in that moment (since we’re not talking about a real threat). You represent an idea or a past trauma or a belief that they are feeling as a threat and believe they need to defend against and that’s what they are attacking…not you but the perceived threat. So you can easily de-personalize it knowing that… because it’s really not ‘you’ that they are attacking in the first place. It just appears that they are. Now, they probably aren’t aware of that consciously. Another example of a ‘Magical Misconception’ perhaps. You’re just being used as a target because ideas, past traumas and threatening beliefs are invisible and therefore difficult to ‘aim at’ unlike actual people. So I guess the next step is to have the ability to forgive the ‘attacker’ for not understanding their role in how this works. My experience is that not many people understand this dynamic. I’m able to use this understanding a lot of the time but I still can get lured into the misconception that it’s me that’s being attacked more often than I’d like.
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