Dealing with difficult person with acceptance

Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons.

Jessica Lange

On that evening my husband suddenly asked me,” Lina, do you have any article about dealing with difficult people?” I just realized I never wrote about that. It was easy to write about good experiences in life. In my life I have lots of experiences dealing with people and most of the times I just wrote about the good one.

I curiously asked my husband, “Why do you ask me about that? We have the book somewhere in our book shelf about Dealing with difficult person” He looked at me and smiled, “I think you have one article about it and I want to share to my friend” The only answer came out from my mind was,” If you can not deal with difficult person, deal with yourself first. Just accept and change the way we deal with that person. It is hard and takes time to apply in your life, but it works” It was so simple but also too hard to apply in life.

Sharing this story it is not easy for me. Many years ago I had seen problem with one of my family member. He used to be a very nice person when I was a little child. During his teenager life he involved in many problems. At that time I was too young to realize what his problem was, I just knew that my parents struggled with him. Times went so fast while I was a teenager he stayed at home and he started all the problems at home. In my eyes, he was like a bomb. It could exploded in a minutes, he changed from angel to a monster. I lived with a big fear in my mind. I couldn’t stand to see him creating problem in the family. I couldn’t stand to see how my parents struggled to handle him. And sometimes at the end I had to involve in that situation.

I remembered one night he had a problem with his family and his wife came to my parents’ house bringing two little children. I had to take care of the children the whole night while the next morning that was my university final test. I couldn’t run away from that situation and I hated him.

From problem to problem without solution, the only thing, which I remembered, my dad always sent him to hospital and after treatment he would be normal again. There wasn’t any right explanation for his behavior. My dad spent a lot of money to heal him but it didn’t work well. My parents always asked me to give him tolerance. I thought I had given enough for him. My dad passed away in 1995 and only my mom took care of all the problems in our big family. He started to disturb my mom. I saw his behavior and sometimes I thought that was unfair for me. If there is a problem, I have to involve and to be there to help. I hated to deal with him.

My husband always said to me, “Lina, please forgive him” I said, “It is hard for me. I can not forgive him. He always gives me hard time in my life. And he is my brother”

Back in the year 1999, he made a big problem again and my mom sent him to hospital and he was under treatment with a psychiatrist. My other family didn’t want to take care of him. One night my mom cried and talked to me, “Can you help me to take care of your brother?   I will go to India for 10 days and nobody will talk to the psychiatrist. Please help me, you need to come to see the doctor” I screamed in my heart, “Oh God … why me… why I have to deal with him again” I couldn’t say no to my mom even though I thought that was the hardest responsibility in my life. The only thing I know life is responsibility and it runs in my blood.

That responsibility brought me to deal with the psychiatrist. The first time I met the psychiatrist, it was like in the classroom discussion. The psychiatrist asked me whether I knew about stress, phobia, depression, paranoid and schizophrenia. Many questions from the psychiatrist and he also gave a great and detail explanation to me. He told me at the end,” Your brother’s problem is called Paranoid schizophrenia, you can learn about this … I will teach you to understand more about this” The psychiatrist made a deal with me that he would teach me and at the same time my brother would be under treatment for three months. Every week for three months I had to meet the psychiatrist and before I entered his room I observed the behavior of his patients. My husband gave me articles about schizophrenia and I also read the book. From discussion to discussion, I learnt more and more from the doctor. The psychiatrist was a great teacher for me and he opened my eyes about lots of thing can happen in someone’s mind. It became my new subject to learn. At the end I understood my brother’s mind problem, sometimes he couldn’t control his mind and his depression and it created problem in his life. All of sudden everything became so clear in my mind.

I wished my parents knew about this many years before, he probably would have a different life. I also didn’t need to live with fear for many years. Anyway… everything happened for a purpose. Times couldn’t be reversed.  That learning experience made me easy to forgive my brother. The freedom came into my life by forgiving.

In life, once I can accept … I can forgive.

Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.

Albert Ellis

**Lina Kartasasmita** Jakarta, May 14, 2011 at 11.51PM

I decided to post this on March 4, 2018.