This is something I've made great strides in over the years. When I was a kid just about any negative comment directed my way made me very upset. I'd cry and scream and be very emotional for hours. People who knew me took full advantage of this. I'd try to insult them back but they were always older than me. Bigger than me. More emotionally stable than me. So I always lost.
Flash forward to today and it is very difficult to upset me. Some of it is due to being very jaded and apathetic about life. But I like to think that most of it is due to a fundamental change in how I approach comments. When someone says something, good or bad, I no longer just take the words at face value. I take the word and analyze body language. I take that and ask myself...why? Finally, I ask myself "Does this actually harm me?".
A word by itself has absolutely no value. A word without any context has absolutely no meaning. Any word can mean any number of things based on body language and the intent of the user. If I said "Hello" and waved my hands and had a big smile on my face, I'm giving a friendly greeting. If I said "Hello" with my arms folded and a scowl on my face, I'm probably really saying "Why are you here?". Same word, completely different meanings. But we already know about these things from a young age and for the most part act accordingly.
The hard part is judging the intent behind the words. If you don't know the intent, it is easy to just assign something negative to it and get upset. Back when I was a retail manager, I had an employee walk up to me and just bawl me out with every nasty and negative word you can imagine. My response was to just calmly stand there and wait for her to finish. The words were really bad, the body language was really bad, but what about the intent? I could have just assumed she wanted to hurt me, but that wasn't it at all. She was at a really low point in her life and she came to a tipping point where she had to either vent or explode. I just happened to be the target. Despite how awful it sounded, there was no ill intent.
After all of that is taken into consideration, I feel it is just as important to ask myself, "Does this actually hurt me? Is this worth getting upset over?". Several weeks ago my Mom made some rather disparaging comments about transgender individuals. What was said didn't leave much room for interpretation. So I went through my process. The words, the body language, and the intent behind them were all negative. But I'm not out, so the comments were not specifically aimed at me. Do the words actually hurt me? I had to go with no. They were just generic sound waves that I've heard many times before. These specific words used did not change how the world views me or how I view myself. I did not incur any kind of physical damage from the words. I did not suffer any monetary losses because of the words. Nothing happened.
If I'm not hurt, I'm not going to let myself get upset. People have opinions. Sometimes those opinions are racist. Sometimes they are sexist. Sometimes they are based purely on ignorance. I certainly don't agree with those opinions. But I'm not about to give away a part of myself because of those opinions. Getting upset won't have a positive impact on negative comments. In the case of my mom's comments, I use subtle logic to reasoning to prod at her beliefs. Sometimes I get her to walk things back. Sometimes I don't. We're all entitled to our opinions and our words, good or bad. It's up to us to decide if we want to embrace other people's opinions and words or say "No thanks".
