I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.
Today’s tip is to challenge negative thoughts. Find an alternative interpretation.
In general, I tend to be a positive person. Not always, but most of the time. That being said, I do get negative about conflicts and discord when I don’t get along with others. Most of the time, I do get along, which is good for my mental health.
I’ve had some concerns lately about how I interact with a new person in my life. I will deal with this person regularly across the next year (maybe longer), and I don’t know them as well as I’d like. We had some tough interaction getting started, more about a situation than us not getting along. This lingered a bit as a decision was put off.
However, it was easy for me to take the disagreement personally. I struggled a bit to not feel that something was my fault, or it was the other person’s fault. In either case I felt upset, a little angry, sad, and concerned. Not good emotions to hold on to.
In talking things out with my wife, I tried to look at things from another point of view, from the other person’s, from an independent view, as if this were someone else. I could see that there might be other reasons why we hadn’t come to a quick, smooth, easy resolution.
Finding an alternative interpretation was good for me to step back and not take things personally. It isn’t resolved as of this writing, but hopefully soon.