The Punishment Of Indifference

We are human because we are in constant interaction with other people. This is why it is so disconcerting and harmful to be treated with indifference. Indifference manifests itself when one person treats another as if they didn’t exist, ignores them, or limits their conversations to simple answers.

Below we list some harmful effects that indifference can cause:

– It causes a strong mental tension. If we don’t know what the other person thinks, if we can’t “read” them, the mind will make the effort anyway to decipher the other person with the scant or no information available. In the medium and long term, this attitude causes anxiety, the search for new answers and stress, which translates into mental tension.

– Causes confusion. Indifference breaks a basic mechanism in human consciousness: the mechanism of action and reaction. Every time we act in a certain way we expect the other person to react accordingly. Although sometimes this reaction is not what we expected, it is very difficult to understand its total absence. Communication becomes impossible and the attempt to interact is forced and exhausting.

– It causes low self-esteem. Without getting any kind of response from this person, it cuts off any kind of feedback we might have. In the stages of personality formation, this can have serious repercussions on self-image. It is likely that the person who received indifference in these periods will come to think that it is not worth interacting with him, giving rise to strong insecurity.

In case you receive indifference from someone important to you…

Although no one has the obligation to pay attention to us, we always aspire to establish a relationship of constant interaction with our loved ones : family, friends, couple. In case you receive indifference from someone important to you, try to make this clear:

• Try to explain the situation from an objective point of view and also expose your own feelings. You will need to explain how you feel about your attitude and ask the person to reflect on it.

• There will be people who simply cannot abandon this indifferent way of treating others. If it’s someone very important to you, you’ll have to work hard to look for an interaction. It is important that you do this little by little and gradually, or you run the risk of causing a “boomerang effect” and increasing indifference to yourself. It is very likely that people like this have been treated indifferently in childhood or during adolescence.
• If the previous point doesn’t work and you feel that you are beginning to suffer the harmful effects of indifference, the healthiest thing is to withdraw from these people. If you feel that the harmful consequences are already “settling in” on you, it is urgent that you give up having a close relationship with these people and try to reach out to others for whom you are important. Be part of groups where you are heard and your way of being is valued.