How To Behave With Devaluing People

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

"I would be a man, I would have nailed a shelf long ago"

"Is this your salary or a handout from your boss?"

"Do you really think this suits you?"

"When you earn as much as I do, then we'll talk."

“New curtains? Are they made of an old sheet?"

"Sveta's boobs are so boobs, but what do you have?"

“What do you mean, change jobs? I can't do anything. Who needs me?"

You are sure to throw in here a hundred more devaluating lines that have ever sounded in your life.

From time to time we sin with all of this - we belittle or ignore someone's (or even our own) merits, exaggerate shortcomings, we will “omit” someone somewhere, we will belittle someone.

And there are people for whom depreciation is practically the only communication model. This is a way to think and a way to live. Moreover, they do not notice this, do not realize and do not even imagine that something can be done differently.

Devaluation is a defense mechanism against negative experiences. Shell, in a word. It is thick, heavy, not too comfortable, but reliable. Armor.

Why is she?

Devaluation is a way to maintain your own positive self-esteem. The self-esteem of people who devalue is unstable and vulnerable. It requires outside support.

Devaluing people, as a rule, do not understand the language of love, they only understand the language of strength and respect.

First of all, you need to respect yourself. For what? You can respect yourself either by developing in every way and achieving impressive successes (a constructive path), or by “lowering”, humiliating, devaluing others (and against the background of these “nonentities” to feel strong, competent, right, and in power). Which is easier? Of course, the second.

Devaluation is (as strange as it may sound) a way to keep your own low self-esteem. In this case, people devalue not others, but themselves - their knowledge, skills, goals, achievements.

Naturally, not just like that, for something: so that once again not to be disappointed in myself in case of failure (well, I'm unable, what can I take from me? What achievements can losers have?).

Or react not so painfully to criticism of others, or maybe even avoid it altogether - when you yourself warn everyone about your failure, nothing is expected of you.

Devaluation is a defense against feelings. "All women are fools, all men are goats."

They usually devalue those who are in great need and who are not trusted a lot. They devalue so as not to get closer, not to get attached and not to open up. And so that later, when they hit (and they will certainly hit - all past experience speaks about this), it would not hurt.

Devaluation is the inevitable downside of idealization. As psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams said, “We all tend to be idealized. We carry the remnants of the need to ascribe special dignity and power to people on whom we are emotionally dependent."

As in childhood, when we considered our parents to be the inhabitants of heaven, capable of any miracles.

In general, the less mature and independent a person is, the more he is prone to idealization. And since there is nothing perfect in our world, the search or expectation of something completely suitable, satisfying, impeccable always turns into disappointment.

“The more an object is idealized, the more radical devaluation awaits it; the more illusions there are, the harder the experience of their collapse”.

I have already written: there are certain types of people (severely traumatized, not fully grown, deprived of love and acceptance since childhood), in whose life the idealization-depreciation pair goes in a close bundle in a stable non-stop. A kind of roller coaster - up and down.

Carried away by someone, such people give the object of adoration the status of exclusivity.

At the stage of courtship, he (if it is a man) will blow off the dust particles from you, carry in his arms, bathe and lull in his care, tell everyone how wonderful and most wonderful you are.

But as soon as the tremor of adoration subsides, as soon as he sees in you a real (and in something very ordinary) person, you will suddenly be surprised to find that a cruel and total depreciation has begun - they will point out flaws, make claims, insult and intensify transform from a princess to a cinderella.

Therefore: do not buy into care, do not get involved in a relationship before you get to know the person well.

Look not only at how the person treats you now.

See how he treats other people (parents, friends, ex, coworkers). What he says about them, how he communicates with them.

And it turns out - he adored, adored, and as soon as they began to live together (got married, a child was born) - he suddenly turned into a cattle. He did not turn, he always was.

Where does depreciation come from?

Naturally, from childhood.

Parents are also people with their own wounds and traumas. Someone once told them that a child needs to always poke at shortcomings, say that he can be better and cooler, and then he will wiggle his fins, try and he will turn into a Human. They themselves were raised that way.

Very often the parents themselves base their communication and interaction on devaluation. And the child this model, as a native and the only one where he knows how to exist, takes with him into adulthood.

Parents are people too. With low self-esteem, self-doubt and a feeling that everything in their life is not going very well.

They can be devoured by an unaccountable, but burning reluctance for someone to be better (more beautiful, smarter, better arranged) themselves.

Even (and even more so) if this someone is the one to whom they gave life.

Plus, if at the expense of other adults it is not possible to raise oneself qualitatively in their own eyes, the child will help to drain the negative and feel more weighty. He is defenseless and always at hand.

The need to confirm one's own significance, the desire to be an indisputable authority, "master of the house", "navel of the earth" - what does it tell us about? About the experience of humiliation in childhood. What can you fix here? Nothing already.

What do we get?

"All children are like children, and you!.."

- Look, mother, what a castle I have built!

- And what is so crooked? It will fall apart!

“I've been collecting my models all day again. It would be better if I did my homework!"

"Goonies! Moron! Nothing good will come of you!"

And then a “child” embittered by the whole world grows up instead of an adult who is confident in himself and knows what he wants.

His friends become traitors, his girlfriends become brainless chickens, colleagues at work become worthless dumbass and idiots, the boss becomes an idiot.

And only then a person realizes that people around are happy, and only he is one fool, only he has no brains, only he is unsuccessful, only he is alone and completely unhappy.

How to deal with devaluing people?

Devaluation is a form of psychological abuse. Therefore, if there is an opportunity - do not get involved, run, delete them from your life.

If this is a close person and cannot be crossed out, then you can talk about your feelings, reactions to his words and actions - that this is unpleasant, offensive, painful to you.

Ask not to do this anymore, say what kind of attitude you expect and will demand.

If this does not work, but you want to continue your relationship with this person (think, why do you need this?), Clearly catch the moment of depreciation, recognize it and in no case "be led", not take it personally, but look deeper - what is behind it.

And there is, as a rule, unconscious, panic, hidden in a thick stone shell of fear (intimacy, absorption, rejection, pain) and neurotic (that is, unsaturated) need for love. Published by econet.ru. If you have any questions on this topic, ask the specialists and readers of our project here.