Last update: April 12, 2017
Our personality and our unique way of seeing life affect our relationships with others. In certain situations we project our characteristics on the people around us, attributing to them behaviors or thoughts that, after all, belong to us. Precisely for this reason, having “enemies” may have more to do with the way we deal with certain situations in our head, and not with the objective circumstances that occur in reality.
Sometimes the worst attack we can suffer does not come from outside, but from ourselves. In some situations where we feel attacked from the outside, it is actually some internal conditions - such as anger, helplessness and social shame - that make us feel weak and insecure, making the breeding ground for us to perceive other people as enemies. .
For our emotional stability, it is essential to be able to identify where the anger caused by certain situations comes from. Knowing what circumstances are causing us discomfort is important in understanding who or what we are facing.
There is no doubt that the worst attack is not the one that comes to us from the outside, but the one that occurs within us, generating in us a negative judgment about ourselves, which ends up diminishing our person. This negative self-evaluation turns us into our worst enemy because our emotional stability depends, in large part, on our own self esteem.
"If defeating the enemy is a victory, defeating oneself is an even greater victory."
-Jose de San Martin-
When the enemy is us
Robert J. Sternberg, a professor at Yale University and former president of the American Psychiatry Association, distinguishes at least two types of enemies: external and internal.
The internal enemies, as the name indicates, are those who are inside us, like our thoughts. When negative thoughts trap us in a dead end path, they inevitably lead us to anger, fury, hatred, making us see the other as an enemy with the sole purpose of causing us a feeling of pain.
This internal enemy comes from irrationality, which leads us to formulate all those negative thoughts. Emotional well-being basically depends on not letting ourselves be carried away by automatic thoughts, because the latter have very negative characteristics:
- They are irrational, that is, they do not stick to objective facts, to reality.
- They are automatic, they function as a bodily reflex that occurs without our voluntary and conscious decision.
- They are exaggerated, dramatic and always negative, they generate enormous emotional malaise and, moreover, they do it for free, without allowing us to make any profit.
"Not even your worst enemies can hurt you as much as your own thoughts."
How to control the enemies?
Gandhi practiced a passive method of "fighting" his enemies: constructive non-resistance. It is an active way of relating to the enemy through positive means, a proactive approach to managing adverse situations. In personal relationships, there is a wide range of situations that we will have to deal with. To be able to manage conflict situations, it is important to:
- Don't fight just because you want to fight.
- Don't fight to inflate our ego.
- Don't fight to exalt our pride.
- Do not fight to defeat an opponent or to punish him.
- Arguing only for a greater purpose.
- Struggle to be able to overcome our problems.
No matter how hard we try, conflict situations will not disappear from our lives, so it is important to learn to control the effect they have on us.
“Our enemy is said to be our best teacher. When we spend time with a teacher, we learn the importance of patience, control and tolerance, but we don't really have the opportunity to put all of this into practice. True practice comes only when we encounter an enemy. "
-Dalai Lama-
