For nearly two years we have been living under social pressure, and its influences are starting to show on various levels.
I work with and for people every day, as long as I can remember. I see new, unknown people daily; in equal measure I interact with very well-known people I've worked with for many years.
This year, more precisely since around September, I've noticed a strongly negative change in behaviour — the kind of change that makes you say every few days: "I think I'm losing it; something isn't right with us"! If before I encountered "bizarre" behaviour every few months, today we have at least one every week.
Education and therapeutic experience taught me to look first at my own behaviour, at how I relate to others. Has something changed? Am I doing something different, wrong? It doesn't seem much has changed, maybe I have less tolerance for "shit." But that's more about my maturing.
I turned and looked more attentively. In short, I concluded that yes, we have changed our behaviour. Some less, others more, depending on how well we remain in balance.
With a deeper look, we find what the saying says: "the bad are probably unhappy." When from outside we receive only signals of frustration, unhappiness, helplessness, these simply cast a shadow on our personality. We are no longer in the light, but what psychologists call "the shadows of personality" manifest.
Thus, conflicts, tense situations and the feeling that the world has gone mad emerge. People who once kept their promises today put only their own interests first; people who seemed calm and gentle feel abused and become passive-aggressive.
This unhappiness can spring from resistance to change, from anxiety about illness, from loss of freedom, or the loss of a loved one. Literally, a thick cloud of unhappiness floats, accompanied by a strong feeling of global helplessness.
What can save us now is to become aware of where we are and, above all, that by turning our natural defense mechanisms on those around us, we are only amplifying the state of unhappiness that affects us all.
There's something magical in the human psyche: once we become aware of a situation, a reaction of our behaviour, change already begins to occur!
PS: This text is a Christmas wish!
