Dealing With Selfish People

We all know those people who think they are alone in the world. No matter what happens, these people always think they have it worse than you. They think they’ve been through more, and their lives are oh so much harder. We would all like to tell them that they can look around and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around them. However, because it is better to be polite yourself, in this article we want to teach you how to deal with selfish people in an appropriate way.

The egoists around us

These people lack emotional balance. They feed on the energy of others and use pity and guilt as weapons of temptation. They obviously have multiple faces, and which face they put on depends on what suits them best.

We know exactly who they are. It’s the kids screaming for attention by stepping on another’s soul. It is the people who go to emotional extremes to describe their pain and who make up stories to deceive you.

These stories are generally exaggerated realities that they may have once experienced. However, after repeating it so many times in their own little world, any resemblance to the original event is perceived as mere coincidence. They try to conquer and provoke you with these stories.

Selfishness and the Art of Selfishness

Selfishness, or the art of selfishness, involves going through life in such a way that you only think about yourself. Yes, the ego is characterized by the ‘me too’ and ‘mine is worse’ attitude. It includes thoughts and statements like, ‘I really only get the worst of things!’ and ‘I really have the worst bad luck in the world.’

These people complain that they are not listened to and that no one understands them. However, they themselves are the first to stop listening when others complain about their grief. Often this behavior is unconscious, as it is the only way they don’t feel so alone.

We are therefore talking about people with low self-esteem who do not know how to communicate their feelings in the right way. Often they lack the social skills that allow them to communicate better and, above all, to understand another person and not to show such conceited behavior.

In other cases, this selfish attitude is deliberately adopted. If so, then there is a complete lack of empathy. These are selfish and harmful people. Their selfishness will then cause them to become emotionally manipulative.

Characteristics of Emotional Egoists

These continuously selfish, emotionally manipulative people try to take advantage of the empathy of others. They tend to have the following traits:

• Dissatisfaction with life: They don’t like the life they lead and therefore imagine a parallel reality. With this reality, which is full of dramatic stories, they try to attract the attention of the people around them.

• They love to suffer: They often love to complain. After all, this is how they can perfect the role of the “poor victim” and get the attention of others. However, it only succeeds in the beginning. At first people might fall for it, but eventually it gets boring.
• Emotional blackmail: This is what they are good at. After all, someone who cares about them won’t let them suffer on their own. It’s that simple. Therefore, they constantly beg for attention through pity. The only purpose of this is to make us believe that we are bad people if we don’t do what they want.
• Deep egocentrism: This egocentrism often stems from a lack of empathy. These people assume that they earn more than others. If they don’t get this, they will complain. When they don’t get the attention they feel they deserve, they complain. In short, they believe that they are the ones that matter and that the rest exist to serve them.

How can you deal with selfish people without having to confront them?

It is extremely difficult to deal with this type of person while avoiding blackmail and confrontation. Silent coexistence with these emotional manipulators is complicated. After all, they are true energy vampires who completely suck you dry by constantly making you feel guilty.

The first thing to realize is the point of their complaining or stories: getting what they want. This does not mean that the complaining was not justified in the first place, for example because they have experienced a loss or very negative experience.

It just means that they discovered that by complaining about things, they could find support from those around them. They proved to be a (suffering) victim, and probably got attention because of this. This attention became the substitute for their own emotional flaws. Complaining and being selfish thus became their way of relating to others.

This is a skill that can be learned just like any other skill. However, this first requires the egoist to recognize what it is that he or she is doing that attracts the attention of others.

A powerful communication technique

What you can do, you as an acquaintance of a poor wretch, is help the egoist to become aware of his problem. This way he can ask for help if he wants to. To do this, communication strategies such as the sandwich technique can come in handy.

The sandwich technique is one way to ensure that criticism is well received. You start by naming a positive characteristic of the person. Then name what you think he or she could improve. Finally, end the conversation with some positive words for the person

In this case, it could be something like, “I understand that what’s happening to you is difficult, even though you’re a strong person. However, I was thinking about what worries me and I would like you to listen to me just as I always listen to you. After all, that often helps me a lot.’

In this way you can express what is bothering you without allowing this ’emotional vampire’ to drag you into his or her cycle of selfishness. After all, even if we want to tell these people to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around them, it’s not the most appropriate way to hold people accountable. If we want to be treated well, we must first treat others well, and then it doesn’t matter who it is.