Even your worldview can become skewed by their incessant lack of enthusiasm. Under the influence of a negative person, you might even second guess yourself on important decisions, feel sad, uncomfortable or depressed.
Being around a negative person can cause you to feel depressed or sad as well. Research even confirms that negativity is contagious. 5 Communicating negativity in social interactions, even through facial expressions, can pass that negativity on to others. (The good news is: Positivity is contagious, too.)
Studies have shown that being around negative people can seriously damage our mental and physical health, making us more depressed and anxious, putting us at increased risk of a heart attack or stroke, and harming our immune system.
The effects are also drastic. Research has shown that even a small amount of negative brain activity can lead to a weakened immune system, making you more prone to illness, and even lead to a heart attack or a stroke.
Act with intention, don't react
Carefully and tactfully handle them. The less you care about their negative behavior, the more you will gain the power to guide yourself towards constructive action. Eventually, when they see that it doesn't impact you, they may learn to stop their rants and take them elsewhere.
A toxic person is anyone whose behavior adds negativity and upset to your life. Many times, people who are toxic are dealing with their own stresses and traumas. To do this, they act in ways that don't present them in the best light and usually upset others along the way.
Constant exposure to such negativity can make deep inroads into your bank of positivity, leading you to either become negative—diffident, anxious, and distrustful—yourself, or to become indifferent, uncaring, or even mean towards the negative person.
The effects of toxic people on physical health are also significant. People who are exposed to toxic behavior are at a higher risk for developing stress-related physical health problems such as headaches, digestive problems, and chronic fatigue.
A person has an increased risk of depression if their family has a history of depression, they have experienced trauma, major life changes, stress, or certain physical illnesses (such as diabetes, cancer, or Parkinson's), or as a side effect to certain medications.
Research suggests that depression doesn't spring from simply having too much or too little of certain brain chemicals. Rather, there are many possible causes of depression, including faulty mood regulation by the brain, genetic vulnerability, and stressful life events.
Also, think about the people with whom you surround yourself. High-stress people can cause you to become more anxious, too. Obviously if the high-strung people in your life are family members and coworkers, it will be difficult to completely avoid them.
Very often the anxiety we feel around other people is a reflection of the way we perceive ourselves. Projection is a common defence mechanism which causes us to take aspects of ourselves (which we find uncomfortable and unsettling) and ascribe them to other people.
You might find it stressful to interact with specific people, especially if they have a different personality or style of communication than you do. If all of your interactions feel stressful, it may be because you are anxious, introverted, or have a lot of other stress in your life.
If someone is exposed to negativity or constant criticism early on in their lives, they may mirror that behavior. Children raised in an environment where criticism, pessimism, doom and gloom, and negativity are common will end up having that mapped into their developing brains as typical behavior.
Pessimistic describes the state of mind of someone who always expects the worst. A pessimistic attitude isn't very hopeful, shows little optimism, and can be a downer for everyone else. To be pessimistic means you believe evil outweighs the good and that bad things are more likely to happen.
Is your happiness dependent on your neighbor's? To some degree, yes. “Happiness isn't just a personal experience, it is actually affected by the individuals around you,” said UW Health psychologist Shilagh Mirgain, PhD. Mirgain uses the description of a ripple effect.
Isolation is a result of anxiety and depression in that some individuals use it as a self-induced coping mechanism to deal with excessive worry and avoid human interaction.
It's easy for someone with depression to become isolated. Withdrawing from other people, even best friends and close family members, results from feeling sad, hopeless, ashamed, fatigued, and apathetic. Social isolation is dangerous and can increase the risk of certain health problems.