Asklemmy

43495 readers

1505 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

what has worked for you to stop getting angry thinking about people who hurt you? (linux.community)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

39 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm letting people who hurt me in the past live rent free in my mind.

One episode involves a former landlord that tried to run me over in an intersection with no traffic cameras.

Another one involves a manager that fired me for informing that one of his favorites yelled during night shift and ignored alarms to talk. He fired me the next day, used the exit interview to tell me everything I didn't do right (but kept quiet about his favorites, even though I did the job like them), still had the utmost confidence on his favorites, accused me of being lazy and instead of simply firing me and keeping neutral he chose to take it personal, proceeded to try to scare me insinuating I wouldn't work for his system again, when that failed, tried to humiliate me and then fired me. This was in an non union hospital.

When I think about it I get angry. Id like not to be so thin skinned, but here I am.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] kava 1 points 8 months ago

There's a cognitive bias called the "fundamental attribution error".

Essentially, when we do something wrong we have an internal justification. If we cut someone off in traffic we have a good reason

"i'm late for work and i didn't mean to cut him off"

When someone else does it, they are an asshole. They cut people off because they have an inferior character.

Some people have more of an issue with this bias than others. Essentially, we all have an internal narrative. A certain "identity of self" that we believe in. For example, I like to think I'm a good person. So if I walk past a homeless guy and don't give a dollar of change I have in my pocket - it creates cognitive dissonance. I'm a good person - yet I didn't share my change with the needy.

These are two contradictory ideas and therefore something needs to be done by the psyche to bridge this gap. This is where self rationalization comes in.

"he's probably just looking to buy drugs anyways"

With the rationalization, we can keep our "good person" narrative intact and we move on with our life. This is a perfectly normal and healthy way of living. It's part of how humans learn to interact with reality and society at large.

The issue comes when we see actions done by others that we feel wrong us. We cannot see what is going on in their brain. We don't know what is going on in their life. Like Gandalf said

Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.

When someone else does something, we do not have the same ability to rationalize away their actions. Therefore we are much more critical of them for an action that if we took, we would have justified away.

What does this mean? Don't hold a grudge. Try and give people grace and move on with your life. Maybe the manager is just an asshole - or maybe they believed, incorrectly or otherwise, that you were a net detriment to the team. Perhaps they were having a stressful time and they felt you made a mountain out of a molehill.

Perhaps if you were sitting in their position, you would have made the same decision to fire you. It's hard to see all ends.

tldr: forgive and forget, stop judging people so harshly

i've found people who are like this have an awful internal "mental space". always negative, everyone's always out to get them, etc. Life is much easier when you assume the opposite. Reality is what you make it.