Bitter people are no fun to be around. They drain the energy out of others, and try to bring them down to their own miserable, resentful level. But often they don’t even realize they’re doing it, because bitter people generally lack the self-awareness to look inward at their own thoughts and behavior. Everything is always someone else’s fault.
Could you be that person that everyone secretly finds exhausting and tries to avoid? If you’re doing these 11 things on a regular basis, there’s a good chance you are.
1. You Constantly Complain
Bitter people are often pessimists. They have a difficult time seeing the positives in their life because their perspective is so heavily influenced by whatever caused their bitterness. The pain of life lingers because it’s hard to let the negative experiences and lost opportunities go.
Pessimists can find the negative in any neutral or positive situation. If things are going well, they focus on what could go wrong. They can’t enjoy success because they assume there are some strings attached, or something just hasn’t gone wrong, yet. In some cases, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
2. You Find Yourself Resenting Other People’s Success or Happiness
Jealousy is a common trait of bitter people. If you are a bitter person, you may not be able to feel happiness for other people because of the incredible weight that you are carrying. As author Shasta Nelson writes, in many cases, resentment and jealousy happen because we crave social connections we aren’t getting.
It isn’t just about “this person has something I want.” Instead, it’s the feeling of being left out, of not reaching your own goals to celebrate, of not feeling like you can relate to others. As a result, jealousy and envy can actually undermine those relationships, which further fuels bitter unhappiness.
3. You’re Being Passive-Aggressive
Bitterness is not always blatant and open. In many cases, a bitter person may not realize that they are indirectly pointing negativity at others. Perhaps you make indirect jabs or hide your issues behind sarcasm because you aren’t necessarily looking for a fight or to talk about your problems.
Instead, it’s a defense mechanism to try to justify your own negative feelings. It may also be that you are just trying to undermine others’ happiness without realizing it. Many negative behaviors like passive-aggressiveness do manifest without the person realizing.
4. You’re Withdrawing from Relationships
Bitter people often withdraw from healthy relationships because they require vulnerability. Vulnerability would make it easy for others to see that they are bitter and hurting. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. Psychologist Dr. Susan Albers reminds us that suppressing emotions we need to feel causes long-term emotional complications.
It is a temporary coping mechanism, but as the resentment builds up, the bitterness comes along with it. That stews into anger and depression, which are also responsible for loneliness. All those negative emotions feed each other.
5. You Dwell on Past Offenses
Moving on is difficult even in the best of circumstances. A bitter person who’s fallen into a cycle of pessimism may focus on past failures or wrongs done to them. Instead of looking forward, their negativity keeps them trapped and drowning in the past, unable to enjoy the present or hope for the future.
Bitter people may hold grudges for years or decades when they feel as though they were attacked. But that significantly worsens the present because it drags your thoughts back to those experiences and causes you to ruminate on an issue that the offender may not even remember.
6. You Refuse to Forgive Other People’s Transgressions
Forgiveness is the key to present and future happiness. Life is hard, and painful things happen to everyone. Sometimes, those painful things are done to us by another person. It may not even be out of maliciousness, but rather the result of the imperfect nature of humanity.
Bitterness stifles one’s ability to forgive because it’s hard to look past the wrongs done. However, in many cases, you may not be able to get an apology from another. Sometimes forgiveness is just the act of letting go of the wrong so you can move forward and heal.
7. You Are Always Anticipating Negative Experiences
Bitterness causes pessimism, and pessimism often fuels depression, which can cause black and white thinking. If you’re a bitter person, you may not be able to hope for positive future experiences because you convince yourself that the future can’t be good. You live in anticipation of things going wrong.
The truth is that everyone experiences failures and setbacks. Past experiences don’t define future ones unless someone is repeating an unhealthy pattern. Bitter people may find themselves locked in that pattern, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Breaking the pattern is the only way.
8. You Play the Victim
Life can sometimes be unfair. The best-laid plans can be smashed to pieces by external factors you have no control over. However, bitter people tend to view the world as out to get them because of their negative experiences. They may feel like they are being targeted by existence itself.
You may struggle with accepting that life is just chaos, and sometimes there is no rhyme or reason as to why things went badly. Instead, you just assume that life sucks, that everyone is out to get you, and that you can’t succeed because of it. That way, you give yourself permission to not even try.
9. You Assume Negative Intentions Without Good Reason
The pessimism that comes with bitterness often colors one’s interpretation of others’ actions. Instead of seeing an action as neutral or accidental, they are instead interpreted as an attack. The bitter person assumes that other people do not have good intentions, and they act accordingly.
Of course, the issue is that most people are not actively malicious. Most people care most about themselves and their own lives. They don’t go out of their way to cause problems for you because they are just trying to get through their day.
10. You are Overly Critical
Instead of looking at others’ strengths, you focus on flaws and weaknesses. In many cases, you want other people to feel as bad as you do, even if you don’t consciously realize it. You may even take joy in “knocking someone down a peg or two” by pointing out their flaws.
Naturally, this causes bitter people like you to lose friendships and become more isolated, because who wants to hang out with someone that tears them down? That’s a behavior that becomes a self-fulfilling cycle because others don’t stick around.
11. You Have Difficulty Expressing Gratitude
Gratitude is a practice of optimism and joy. It’s the ability to look at the present moment and see that everything is not only okay, but it’s worth being thankful for. Of course, this is often far easier said than done. Life can be hard and painful, even when you do have good things to be grateful for.
Bitterness breeds negativity, and negativity sours one’s perceptions on the good things that they could be appreciative of. With regard to people, you may not be able to appropriately appreciate others because you are assuming the worst out of them. And, of course, that’s further fuel for the fires of bitterness.
