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Why do They get Mad at You for Pointing out the Dysfunction?

Written by Rhonda Wasserman

Original content by Ashley Berges

March 4, 2024

 

We often call out a situation and get in trouble for doing it. We may be dealing with people who dislike dealing with the truth. When the truth is called out, they do not want to hear it.  Why do they get mad at you for pointing out the dysfunction?

Many of us may find ourselves in relationships right now that when we have called something out, something that they have done, it does not work out very well. We have called it out in hopes that we could have communication and talk about it. What happens is the opposite. It’s almost as if we have not called anything out. Suddenly, we are getting clobbered and in trouble because we called something out that wasn’t right, but they are not going to take responsibility for what happened. 

People do not want to look at the truth of their actions. They also do not want to take responsibility for what they do either. When we do bring something to light, and share it with the other person telling them that we did not appreciate something or let’s look back at the situation because we did not feel good about it. When we bring something up like this, usually the other person will reply by telling us that we don’t trust them, they do everything for us and we don’t care about them, they can give us the silent treatment, or massive passive aggression. All this happens because we call out the situation. 

Many of us accept this but why are we accepting this reality? How many relationships do we have in our lifetime right now that we have called out a situation and it did not get resolved? When something like this happened most likely we did not even talk about it. We brought it up and the conversation completely changed. Everything we were trying to say got swallowed up by an entirely different agenda. The next thing we knew, we found ourselves having to dig our way out of a hole. It seems that we were the jerk and it is our problem. 

What is interesting is that many of us had this type of family dynamic growing up. We grew up doing this exact thing. It may have been our mother, father, or grandparent. When something went wrong and we called it out we were punished. Our punishment may have been physical, shunned, given the silent treatment, or even messed with in a passive-aggressive manner. We acquiesced and realized that we did not want to call out the situation again. We chose to stay quiet because any time we brought up anything wrong we got in trouble. 

The more that we experience this in our lives the more we allow people to do crazy things. We believe that it is not worth rocking the boat. We may not like the situation but we would rather deal with that than deal with the conflict that arises from us calling the situation out. Some of us are in living arrangements where any time we bring something up or point out the truth we get clobbered. 

How do we deal with this? We need to realize is that it may not feel as though there is any solution because the other person will not allow there to be a solution. The only solution that the other person will allow is for us to be quiet, stop talking about it, and apologize.

Are you currently experiencing this type of situation in a relationship? Are you blindsided by it when it occurs? When it happens are you triggered by it? When we become adults, these types of things happen in a split second. What is interesting is that the mind works in different ways. The mind begins to make us feel a certain way or think a certain way and then we have certain emotions based on those thoughts. We go in and out of the feelings that we had when we were younger when this would happen to us. 

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