How to communicate with a person who is infuriating, but likes

Valeria Markelova dug in and gave the base. “I hate and love” is as old as the world, but every time it happens in a new, individual, Markelian way, we would say. In general, I am happy to read about the suffering of a young colleague.

This week I had to talk to a man who annoys me to the core.

Well, I like him, even if you do.

At the same time, I understand that this person is quite ordinary – with his own set of qualities, achievements, reactions, relationships.

There is nothing in it that is directly repulsive or disgusting.

A normal kind of aunt, professional in her field, wife, mother, daughter.

But annoying.

I see her and she's shaking. And for me, for a moment, this is not typical at all.

She and I were in the elevator. Together.

She asks me something, and I defiantly pretend that I am not interested.

You know, you know, teenagers can be pretty ignorant. Like, "Get off me, Marfa Petrovna!" Not to you, you know

No, I even say hello to her and sometimes I answer my phone at work, although it's a pleasure to hear her hysterically rattling me on the phone.

I think she didn’t like me at first sight. And then my border guard put on a defensive response.

And so, when I sat here thoroughly with this feeling, began to understand why this is happening, it turned out that this reaction contains a whole chain of quite understandable psychological mechanisms.

Chemistry, though!

Sometimes the most “normal” person hits exactly the pain point where everything inside us is stretched like a string.

And my teenage ignorant doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me.

I'm fine. Amen.

It’s just that the nervous system is very honest and loud about being uncomfortable with this person.

That's why we have to figure it out.

First, the notorious “mirror” effect can work here.

Most often, it is not the person himself who infuriates, but what he reflects in us.

In my particular case, her energy, her pressure, and even her way of speaking touches a part of me that I don’t really accept and that is now completely exhausted.

In psychology, it's called a trigger!

Her behavior coincides with my inner tension, and the brain sees it as a threat, even if there is no threat.

Second, projective identification is easily included.

When we are internally tense next to someone, the brain in anxiety mode begins to read neutral signals (look, tone, question) as hostile.

The more you wait for a catch (and I know the trick), the more detail you pull under it.

So my sense of "she didn't like me" may not be so much about her as it is about my own perceptual filter at that moment.

Third, it is a pure defensive response.

When we are emotionally unsafe, the psyche includes the usual ways of defense.

Someone has aggression, someone has tears, and now I have distancing, ignoring, ostentatious indifference.

Yes, it looks like a teenage rebellion, but the function of this rebellion is quite mature - to keep your boundaries and not to spend the last drop of resources.

No one has reversed cognitive dissonance.

The gap between the image of a person as “objectively normal” but “subjectively intolerable” causes additional irritation.

And then I get angry with myself, “What’s wrong with me?”.

Just in case, let me remind you that logic and emotions live in different parts of the brain, and logic cannot turn off emotion by an ordinary order.

What I learned by the time I was 40 was that emotions don't have to be "good," they have to be lived!

I reflexed a little and it became easier.

So it comes to the fact that I will call her for tea with cakes ... but God forbid.

Hug, your infusoria shoe.