No matter where you go, you’re surrounded by emotional energy. The ways we connect with others have a profound effect on us. This means it is important to choose wisely when spending significant amounts of time with friends, relatives, or romantic interests. Each person brings a unique energy to a relationship, but the more positive the energy is, the better. When you’re around someone who makes you feel good, you gain a sense of confidence, feel happier throughout the day, and look forward to seeing the person again. A pessimistic person has the exact opposite impact.
When the majority of the people around you give off negative energy, you risk adopting that negative energy. This can affect the way you view life and has a tendency to change the way you treat people. When you don’t have enough positive energy in your life, you can increase your chances of depression and anxiety.
At times, the negative traits present in your friend or relative’s personality may be hard to spot. It may not always be easy to detect that someone you love is profoundly negative. But after some time, you’ll start to see and feel the difference in your own energy.
15 Actions That Show Someone is a Pessimistic Person
You must protect your energy and ensure that you spread positivity no matter where you go. So here are 15 behaviors that will help you spot a pessimistic person.
1. Constant Pessimism
Pessimistic people have a difficult time seeing the good in any circumstance. This occurs even in happy or positive situations. If you notice that someone close to you can never truly be happy “in the moment,” no matter how upbeat a situation is, you like won’t be able to convince them to adopt another viewpoint. Their thoughts are wired to see the bad in everything, and if you spend too much time with them, you’ll find that you won’t enjoy the things you used to love.
2. Always Playing the Victim
People plagued with pessimism are always painting themselves as the victim, even in situations where they have inflicted pain on others. Pessimists believe that bad things are destined to happen to them, which means they will always believe that they are the victim even if they are the ones who are responsible for the situation they’re in.
3. Using People
Pessimistic people will usually only pay attention to you when it benefits them. If they need you to give them money, do a favor for them, or want emotional support, they will be sure to contact you and keep in touch. However, when they have no need for you, they will pretend that you don’t exist, especially when you need them for support and encouragement. If they do decide to show love or concern toward you, they will only do so if they feel they will be rewarded with validation or gifts.
4. Never Making Time for Relationships
If you have a friend or loved one who is a pessimist, you may notice that they will always make excuses when you need something. They don’t want to expend any of their emotional energy loving and supporting you but expect you to always be there for them. When you’re not able to drop everything to be by their side, they may sulk or pout to make you feel guilty. Beware of friends and loved ones who only want to hang out with you when their schedule permits, but have no regard for your time.
5. Being Emotionally Draining
Spending time with the people you love should be a fulfilling and rewarding experience. However, when you’re interacting with a pessimistic person, you may feel depressed, exhausted, or anxious when you’re with them or immediately after leaning their presence. Negative energy can suck the life out of you and stop you from having a healthy outlook on life.
6. Always Complaining
A person who is a pessimist rarely has anything good to say. No matter what is going on, they will look for something to disapprove of. If you buy them a gift, they complain that it’s the wrong color or size. If the weather is sunny and the skies are clear, they will complain about the heat. This type of person will also complain about parts of your personality and accuse you of not being a good enough friend/partner/family member.
7. Being a Gossip
It’s not always a bad thing to exchange information with your friends. But pessimistic people will find a way to say cruel or hurtful things about someone they say is a friend. This will try to get you to engage in these salacious conversations and may get upset when you don’t want to gossip with them. Keep in mind that if someone wants to gossip with you, they will also gossip about you when you’re not around.
8. Never Being Satisfied
No matter what you do or how you try to make a pessimistic person comfortable, they will never be satisfied. Nothing you do is good enough and these people often attack parts of your looks or personality to deplete your confidence. If they find something about you that they don’t like, they will try to eliminate it or change it, which can take a toll on your self-esteem.
9. Spreading Feelings of Negativity
If you notice that you start to feel more negative energy in your own life, it could the result of being around someone who is pessimistic too often. If you naturally have a positive and upbeat demeanor but find that you’re sad and anxious more often than normal, this is likely because pessimism spreads. This behavior could be a sign that you should limit your time with the negative people in your life as much as possible.
10. Displaying Signs of Envy
Whether we want to admit it or not, we all experience feelings of jealousy at some point. However, a pessimistic person’s envy will make it impossible for them to congratulate you or be happy for you, even if you’ve achieved a huge milestone or the negative person has great things going on in their own life. When someone is jealous of you, they will try to make you feel bad about your accomplishments to keep you from appreciating your accomplishments.
11. Straining Your Positive Relationships
If you let pessimism affect you, you’ll, unfortunately, notice that your relationships will suffer. If you notice that meaningful relationships in your life start to suffer because your friends or loved ones are pulling away from you, you could be giving off negative energy.
12. Being a “Realist”
Some people who struggle with pessimism think they are realistic by negatively viewing the world. They are afraid to be disappointed, so they feel that if they always expect the worst, they won’t have to go through the emotional anguish of getting their hopes up for nothing. It’s important to be balanced in our thinking but to always think something bad is going to happen has a negative effect on the mind and body. This mindset also keeps up from enjoying life to the fullest.
13. The Inability to Be Spontaneous
When people have a mindset that is rooted in pessimism, they are unable to do things without planning first. If they can’t control as much of a situation as possible, they are sure something is going to go wrong. While planning and being organized are noteworthy traits, it’s important to enjoy life and do something unexpected every once in a while to create beautiful memories.
14. Worrying Too Much
If you have a friend or family member who is a “worrywart” you may avoid telling them certain things. After all, if you’re already concerned or nervous about something, you don’t want their worrisome energy to transfer to you and make the issue worse in your mind. On the other hand, if you have exciting news to share, you may avoid telling the worrier in your life because you don’t want to walk away from the conversation feeling discouraged or hopeless. Since pessimism makes it difficult or sometimes impossible to see the good in anything, people with this trait may seem like they’re looking out for you initially. However, by the end of the conversation, it’s easy to see that they are projecting their worries onto you.
15. Never Trusting People
It’s wise to “go slow” when you enter a new relationship. There are certain things you shouldn’t reveal to someone about your personality or your past until you’ve established a bond of trust with them. If you have a loved one who is constantly negative, it will be negative to get to a place where they can trust you, even if you’ve done nothing wrong. However, this person will likely want to know everything about you so they can pick apart your personality to find “reasons” why they can’t get close to you.
Final Thoughts on Identifying a Pessimistic Person
While you may not be able to do anything to make your loved one aware of their pessimism, knowing the signs to look for can help you avoid living with negative energy and spreading it to others.
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