Have you ever encountered someone who seems intent on criticizing every single thing that you say and do?  Or how about the type of people who subtly hint that you should be doing something different with your time or that you should be behaving in a different way?

No matter how hard we try avoiding these types of people, the fact remains that we are going to have to deal with them at some point.  Hopefully, they will be people on the periphery of our lives.  But what if it turns out that our own mother-in-law, or even our own spouse, operates with judgment and negativity?

First of all we should be clear about one thing:  we have all been judgmental towards others at some point in our life.  It’s part of being human to want to be right or to have our own way of doing things to be “the best.”  Hopefully, we can realize that we are being narrow-minded and learn to be more accepting.

However, certain people never learn to be more accepting.  In fact, they make being judgmental towards others their modus operandi.  The reason they must always find fault with others is because of their own deep rooted insecurities about themselves.  They refuse to admit that someone else can live their life according to their own values.  If they admitted this, there might be something wrong with their own life — which would be too much for their fragile egos to handle.

This “black and white” thinking is too narrow to allow for any other points of view.  If we try to reason with or challenge a person that thinks this way, we will almost always be met with defensiveness and anger.  Usually the best strategy is to avoid people like this, because they will rarely change.  If we can’t entirely avoid them because they are a close family member, therapy can be a big help.  We can always learn to change ourselves in relation to challenges in the environment.

Read the full article here:  The Quickest Way to Destroy Our Relationships