“Don’t take it personally,” you’ve probably heard a thousand and one times.
But how can you not take personally the traffic jam that prevented you from arriving on time for an important job interview? Or the neighbor’s loud music until the wee hours of the morning when you have to get up early for work the next day?
Although this advice/mantra/maxim has the best of intentions and rivers of ink have been spilled trying to explain to us how not to take things too personally, the truth is that everything that happens to us is personal for a very simple reason: it happens to us.
In life, it’s difficult to find a truly “neutral” emotional experience because our subjectivity filters even the smallest events. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The real problem isn’t that we take everything personally, but that we’re unable to manage it and let it affect us too much. It seems the same, but it’s not.
“Don’t take anything personally,” the absurdity behind the mantra of maturity
Telling someone not to take something personally is often like asking them not to feel what they’re experiencing or to ignore it and carry on as if nothing happened. And that rarely helps.
In fact, this advice often creates additional psychological pressure because, in addition to the impact of what happens to us, we also feel guilty for “reacting badly.” Then a second act begins in our minds, fueled by phrases like: “This shouldn’t affect me” or “I’m exaggerating.”
Pressuring ourselves not to take things too personally often masks an implicit need for emotional numbness. It’s as if we believe that emotional maturity consists of not feeling, or feeling as little as possible.
However, emotions are not a choice. We don’t have a switch that allows us to turn our emotional world on or off. We can’t choose the initial impact of things; we can only work on our subsequent interpretation and decide how to react from that point onward.
Everything is personal… but not everything is an affront or an attack
There’s a key nuance we often forget: just because something affects us doesn’t necessarily mean it’s directed at us. A person might seem distant simply because they’re exhausted. A comment might be clumsy or even hurtful, but not necessarily malicious. A rejection might stem from someone else’s limitations, not a judgment of our worth.
When something affects us, it’s because it touches a nerve, in some way. It’s not because we’re fragile or immature, but because we feel involved. And being emotionally involved isn’t a bad thing.
Feeling something touch us isn’t the problem; the real problem arises when:
- We add intention to random gestures, behaviors, or events
- We confuse emotional impact with a harmful intention
- We are ruminating, searching for evidence and reliving scenes
In fact, studies on rumination show that dwelling on things excessively is one of the main predictors of depression. Researchers at the University of Bordeaux also found that ruminating after experiencing stressful situations worsens mood and exacerbates the symptoms of depression and anxiety.
This means that, regardless of the severity of the stressful event, how we deal with it is key. Dwelling on what happened generates greater emotional distress and less adaptive behaviors. Therefore, the key lies in letting go.
We don’t need less sensitivity, we need more perspective
The advice “don’t take it personally” doesn’t mean becoming a stone that nothing bothers you or an unflappable Zen monk, as we often believe. In reality, it simply encourages us to look at things with perspective and not assume that behind everything that happens to us there is a malicious intent directed specifically against us.
Why is that nuance important?
Because it helps us eliminate rumination. If the universe isn’t conspiring against us and others are simply too busy with their own problems to hatch a plan to upset us, we’ll avoid spending hours dwelling on what happened, amplifying its impact on our minds.
Therefore, not taking something too personally does not mean shielding ourselves from emotions, but rather being able to avoid getting stuck in them, so as not to take things out of context and give them more importance than they deserve by taking them as a “personal attack”.
In other words, it’s not taking things personally that wears us down, but rather not being able to let go. It’s like holding a paperweight. We can hold it for a while, but it’s impossible to hold it for hours on end.
Everything that happens to us is personal because it happens to us. Because it impacts our story, disrupts our plans, or shatters our expectations. To deny this is to dehumanize ourselves. Psychological work isn’t about ceasing to take things personally, but about learning not to always experience them as attacks, judgments, or threats.
Feeling isn’t the problem. Holding on is.
References:
Ruscio, A. M. et. Al. (2015) Rumination predicts heightened responding to stressful life events in major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. J Abnorm Psychol; 124(1): 17-26.
Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008) Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science; 3(5): 400–424.
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