Pick the craziest person in your life and place them squarely in the center of your mind. It might be painful, but they’re probably already there; crazy people have this habit of camping in our subconscious mind.
That’s probably the person you’ve thought about through the first part of this book. As you’ve read, you’ve tried to keep an open mind, applying the concepts we’ve covered:
But you’re still afraid it won’t work. After all that work and energy, you really don’t expect your crazy person to change.
That is a very real possibility. There are a lot of crazy people in our lives who try to pull us away from our set point. But our happiness and security shouldn’t depend on whether they stay crazy or not. If we have to fix all the crazy people before we’re OK, we’ll be cashing our retirement checks. We’ll spend our whole life driven by the brokenness of others.
Living a life free from the effects of crazy people might seem like a fantasy. But notice the key thought: We might not be free from the presence of that person, but we can be free from their toxic impact on our lives. Even though the other person doesn’t change, we don’t have to be hijacked by their craziness.
Finding Freedom
From his perspective as a concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl said it best: “When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
We can’t just decide that our crazy person isn’t going to get to us. That’s an exercise in willpower and will only last until we run out of energy. We need to work on ourselves. It’s not just acting like we’re OK; it means becoming the type of person who is OK, regardless of what other people say or do.
In other words, we shift the focus from fixing others to fixing ourselves. We put our energy into building the character traits that make us healthy people, which in turn lays the foundation for healthy relationships.
Changing ourselves has two benefits:
The first benefit is primary, which is where we’re headed in the next few chapters. The second is a fringe benefit of the first. If we genuinely become different, people will respond to us differently. It might be a positive or negative response, but it will be different.
We can probably think of a time when someone changed and how we responded to them. We didn’t know why, but we noticed that they didn’t get upset as much as usual, or they chose kinder ways of responding, or they demonstrated more self-control. At first, we wondered what was happening and how long it would last. But when they stayed consistent over time, we began to explore the reasons behind the change. Eventually, we realized that they really had changed and that it seemed permanent. We felt differently about them because they had changed, so we interacted with them differently.
In a sense, they became a different person. When we interacted with them, we weren’t interacting with the original person but the person they had become.
Years ago, one of my work colleagues had a reputation for being arrogant and self-serving, always manipulating situations to his advantage. He was friendly enough in conversations but would often talk negatively about other people behind their backs. No one trusted him, because they assumed that he would do the same with them when they weren’t around.
One day, I was surprised to hear him say something positive about a co-worker. He affirmed the person’s competence and skill in a situation, admitting that this person did it better than he could have done it himself. It was out of character for him and took me off guard.
When I shared his comment with the co-worker, his response was, “Are you serious? Where did that come from?”
Over the next few weeks, it happened more frequently, and the man’s negative comments tapered off. Everyone was suspicious, assuming it was a gimmick to present himself more positively. But the changes became consistent. No one knew why, but he was just easier to be around.
The change had come from an “aha” moment during a training session where he came to grips with his own lack of security. He thought that the only way to build himself up was to put others down. Realizing the source of his struggle, he began a journey to genuinely change his self-perception. When he worked on changing himself, it impacted the people around him.
We can’t get others to trust us until we deserve their trust. When we genuinely change on the inside, we’ll relate to people differently on the outside. Others will see the change and will respond differently. That doesn’t guarantee everything will be better and the relationship will be healed. But when we change, we become a different person. Others will be relating to that “new” version of us, not the old one they’re used to.
Our goal is to become the people we need to be, regardless of the reactions of others. It’s the foundation for avoiding the victim mentality in our relationships with crazy people.
Changing from the Inside Out
I’ve spent more than three decades in ministry and corporate settings. I’ve been able to interact with different people daily, both one-on-one and in group settings. That’s given me the chance to observe how people relate to each other and the dynamics that happen in those relationships.
Sometimes I’m with people who have known each other for years. Other times my audience is a group of strangers meeting for the first time and spending the day together in a seminar.
In either case, it seems like there is at least one crazy person. In a group setting, that person might be disruptive or aggressive, monopolizing a discussion or asking inappropriate questions. In a one-on-one conversation, that person simply seems more focused on their own needs than caring about anyone around them. If we’re looking for a crazy person, they’re usually not hard to find.
When I talk with people who have a crazy person in their life, I usually hear one of two responses:
Over the years, I’ve studied these people in the second group who are not victims. I was looking for the techniques or mental gymnastics they went through to cope with the craziness. But I discovered that it wasn’t a matter of techniques. Instead, they had focused their energy into the one thing they could genuinely impact: themselves.
In doing so, I recognized the seven key qualities that they had developed through the process. Though there are many areas of internal strength that build character in people, these seven consistently enable them to deal effectively with other people. We’ll develop them over the next few chapters, but here’s an overview:
Humility
Most people see themselves as either better than they really are or worse than they really are, with an imbalanced focus on the positive or the negative. Humility means we see ourselves accurately, accept the way we have been created, and celebrate our uniqueness.
It’s easy to see others from a distorted perspective as well. When we look at crazy people, all we see is the craziness to the exclusion of every other part of their lives. We’ll never be free from their grip until we see them (and us) the way we really are.
Joy
Life is filled with ups and downs. Healthy people learn how to live with both. They enjoy the good but aren’t devastated by the bad. Joy means appreciating the positive experiences in life but finding meaning in the tough times as well. It means living lightly and realistically, no matter what happens.
A photographer friend tells me that cloudy days are the best for photographing flowers. The dark background provides a stark contrast to the brilliant colors. Without the contrast, the colors would simply fade together.
Perspective
Some people get their undies in a bundle about everything that happens around them. It’s like they’re always finding the negative, and they appoint themselves as the caretaker of everyone else’s behavior. But that perspective keeps them steeped in drama.
Healthy people distinguish between what they’re responsible for, what they’re not responsible for, and what really matters. It’s like the popular adage, “You pick your battles.” As we give up trying to fix everyone, we develop a credible claim to peace.
Patience
Living in a microwave-paced society makes it hard to have healthy relationships. We’re used to high drama television shows that find a satisfying ending in sixty minutes with ten commercials. Emotionally healthy people recognize that while change is possible, it doesn’t happen overnight, no matter who is changing. The more we can accept that reality, the less frustration we’ll feel. It’s more important to embrace the present, finding our fulfillment in the reality of today instead of being driven by the uncertainty of the future in our relationships.
Kindness
Kindness is often seen as a sign of weakness rather than strength. But in relationships, it becomes the social lubricant that minimizes friction between people. If used as a tool to manipulate change in others, kindness loses its power. But when it genuinely becomes the foundation from which a person interacts with others, it provides a path to freedom. It doesn’t minimize the need for appropriate confrontation, but we can do it with kindness.
Integrity
Many people make decisions based on avoiding pain and embarrassment, choosing the easy way over the right way. But without a basic moral compass, there is no foundation for a genuine relationship to grow or heal. People learn to trust us when we possess and demonstrate personal integrity, which reduces the drama that comes from a lack of trust.
Integrity is who we are when we’re alone. It’s when there’s alignment between who we are on the inside and how we come across to others on the outside.
Commitment
An old joke portrays a couple saying, “Divorce is not an option. Maybe murder, but not divorce.” In our society, we expect people to disappear when things get tough. That’s why a person who sticks around when the going gets tough makes such an impact on any relationship. It doesn’t mean there is never a time to leave. But for a healthy person, escaping is a last resort, not a first impulse. They know that when there is commitment in a relationship, things happen that don’t occur in any other way.
These seven key traits aren’t behaviors that we pull out of a toolbox when needed. They have to become part of the fabric of our life. It doesn’t matter how crazy people treat us; we can respond in a healthy way. Based on these seven keys, our true character doesn’t disappear under pressure.
So, Where Can I Buy These Ingredients?
If we’re lacking some of these character traits, it almost seems impossible to imagine them becoming a genuine part of our lives. Fortunately, all of them are realistic. It’s completely possible for them to characterize who we are.
It won’t happen overnight. We can’t take a pill and be all better in the morning. It’s not something we work really hard at when it’s not genuine. It’s not what we do—it’s who we become.
In the next few chapters, we’ll look at that journey. We’ll find out what it really looks like to have something new happen in our lives, anticipating the people we’ll become. We’ll gain hope for dealing with the crazy people in our lives without becoming victims.
God won’t necessarily make your crazy people go away. But when we become different, we’ll see those people differently. We’ll hold the keys to unlocking healthy relationships.