Negative Personality Traits: 4 Subtle Types of Negativity (and How to Get Rid of Them)

Think about this:

Two people.

One is the most vivacious, most positive, most life affirming person you’ve ever met.

The other is the most toxic, the most bitter, the most negative person you’ve ever had the displeasure of encountering.

After interacting with these people, how do you feel?

The answer should be obvious. Positivity brings up you, negativity brings you down (duh).

But what if you’re so used to negativity that you can’t even detect subtle signs of toxic negativity or negative personality traits in yourself or other people?

If you’re on a journey of self-development- you have to inoculate yourself from these forces as much as possible or else they will completely dash any chances of success you might encounter or may have had.

In this article, we’re going to be diving into 4 subtle signs of a toxic negativity.

After reading this, you’ll be able to spot these negative traits in yourself or others so you can take action.

Negative Personality Trait #1: Sarcasm

Many people associate “sarcasm” with comedy because many famous comedians use it in their routines.

While the occasional use of sarcasm can be a way of broadcasting one’s witticism to the world and giving a well-timed zinger, it is more often than not a cover for latent negativity.

Sarcasm is defined as:

the use of irony to mock or convey contempt.

Usually, the target of sarcasm is someone or something who is resented.

Because overt resentment is a sign of low social intelligence, someone will often use sarcasm as a way to throw a barb without coming off as toxic.

And because sarcasm is so widely accepted, even so widely cherished – it’s easy to overlook the harm that it causes to a person internally and to their immediate environment.

Someone who is chronically sarcastic often puts a damper on everyone’s mood instantly.

How to fix: If you are sarcastic, try and go a day without saying any sarcastic comments. See how that feels. If you can’t do it, that means that the habit has very deep roots and you’ll need consciously monitor your conversations until the habit is changed.

If you know someone who is sarcastic, see how much room you can place between yourself and that person. If you see them every day, try to cut it down to 6 days, then 5 – and so on.

You may even want to challenge them on this and say:

“Hey, don’t take this the wrong way – but I don’t really appreciate you making sarcastic jokes like that. I’d appreciate it if you could stop.”

See what the response is.

Someone who is chronically sarcastic often puts a damper on everyone’s mood instantly. Click To Tweet

Negative Personality Trait #2: Apathy

embracing boredom, how to deal with being bored, doing hard things, productivity

“Apathy…the core of the disorder is identifiable as the inability or refusal to take personal responsibility which results in guilt, shame, and low energy that may end up as homelessness, vagrancy, and social dependence. Lack of life skills leads to periodic descents into severe depression, which may result in suicide.” – David Hawkins, Transcending the Levels of Consciousness: The Stairway to Enlightenment

In Transcending the Levels of Consciousness, Dr. David Hawkins describes apathy as one of the lowest states of consciousness, due to its lack of energy and purposeful intent to life.

In an era where people don’t have enough emotional capital to process and properly utilize emotions, people resort to extreme anger, extreme sadness, or a numbing type of aloofness.

This numb aloofness is characterized as a type of apathy or “whatever”.

In this context, apathy is an attitude that is deadly, especially as a man.

Apathy causes you to be asleep to life, which means you’ll miss out on windows of opportunity.

At very extreme levels of apathy, someone might recklessly injure themselves out of an indifference to even pay attention to what they were doing, if they were handling a dangerous object such as a knife or even a gun.

However, many people use apathy as a weapon to purposefully harm others in a passive-aggressive way.

This is the person who hangs you out to dry on a team project or the slacker at work. They don’t give a shit either way, as long as they aren’t woken out of their perpetual stupor.

How to fix: If you are “apathetic”, gauge your level of indifference. Is it mild, moderate, or severe? Did something happen to you to cause you to be this way or are you just using it as a cover for passive-aggression?

If you know someone who is “apathetic”, see how you can minimize their impact on your projects, your wellbeing, and even your life. Someone who displays apathy at work, avoid them at all costs. If you have to be paired with them for a task, again, try to minimize their involvement and try to compensate for their slack.

Apathy is usually a problem that self-corrects when a person hits a life crisis. Attempts to “baby” the person out of apathy will usually sink them deeper into a passive mode of being.

Apathy causes you to be asleep to life, which means you’ll miss out on windows of opportunity. Click To Tweet

Negative Personality Trait #3: Self-Deprecation

Imagine this scenario: you’re at a gathering or a party.

If you’ve been into self-development, improving yourself, working on your social skills, getting fit – you seem like the perfect package.

You may make other people feel less about themselves.

You get into a conversation in a group and then you hold the stage. Everyone is mesmerized.

In an attempt to not seem like a douche, you crack a self-deprecating joke. Instantly the tension is broken.

While self-deprecating humor can be a way to make yourself seem relatable if done right, it can easily lead to toxic negativity and a lowering of self-esteem if you’re not careful.

It’s very easy to still have cracks in the foundation if you’ve only been doing self-development for a little while.

You can improve your appearance, net worth, and social status over the short to long run; but the improvements to your self-image may take longer.

Self-deprecating humor can easily become a crutch or something you use to magnify small personality defects into major ones.

Eventually, this self-deprecating humor can take on its own life in the form of an “inner critic” and become something larger than you thought it would be.

How to fix: Determine if you are making self-deprecating jokes or humor as a way to loosen tension or as an easy crutch. It’s easy to make fun of yourself. Real humor is more nuanced and harder to pull off.

The same vein, ask yourself if these self-deprecating things were something you’ve been constantly ruminating on or something you’ve spontaneously pulled out of your back pocket.

Self-deprecating humor can easily become a crutch or something you use to magnify small personality defects into major ones. Click To Tweet

Negative Personality Trait #4: Evasiveness

toxic negativity, negative personality traits

This one’s a bit tricker to nail down (that’s why it’s evasive) but it will make sense as you think about it.

Think about the last time you chickened out going to a social event, asking out that woman, or even picking up the phone when a friend calls.

Why didn’t you do these things?

It all comes down to a negative personality underpinning called “evasiveness”.

Evasiveness is described loosely as:

Avoidance and unambiguous, sometimes to the point of being untruthful or false

Evasiveness is a catch all for fun things like:

  • avoidant personality disorder
  • antisocial personality disorder
  • obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
  • social anxiety
  • fear of public speaking
  • fear of potential romantic situations
  • paranoia

And the list goes on and on and on.

Evasiveness is essentially a way to compensate for lack of mental fortitude dealing with the world.

This then results in not going to social events, shyness, and hiding away from the world.

You create entire fantasy realms and scenarios in your head to compensate for your lack of self-efficacy.

These are often the people who medicate their problems with drugs, television, or video games and build their life on escapism.

But the thing is – when you escape, your problems don’t grow smaller, they often compound and get massively bigger.

How to fix: Most problems in life are solved by a direct approach. Rarely will you ever fix a problem by avoiding it.

This is why it’s important to implement the straight line philosophy to get rid of your problems. Face them head on.

I talk about it more in the episode below, if you’re interested in hearing more.

Most problems in life are solved by a direct approach. Rarely will you ever fix a problem by avoiding it. Click To Tweet

Toxic Negativity and Negative Personality Traits – The Wrap Up

Looking over these, you’ll realize that all of these are learned behaviors, which means they can be unlearned.

A learned behavior is something that is done in response to a situation in one’s environment.

These were often learned in a person’s youth or adolescent period to deal with various situations that came up.

For example, if your father yelled at you whenever you tried to assert your opinion, you quickly learned that yelling = me giving my opinion. In order to prevent drama at home, you didn’t speak up whenever something bothered you. It became a habit and now you don’t speak up at all. You may even be “quiet”.

That’s one example, and there’s many more.

But simply put – no one is born sarcastic, apathetic, self-deprecating, or evasive. Undoing these all require different approaches and the ones I listed were just the start.

Do you have any of these as part of your personality? What are you doing to help fix them? Let me know in the comments.

2 Responses to “Negative Personality Traits: 4 Subtle Types of Negativity (and How to Get Rid of Them)

  • Gaurav Agarwal
    6 years ago

    Dear Sir

    I am much inspired after reading such a valuable article. I am 31 years old with dependent family (parents, wife & 3 years old kid). I have made a big mistake of my life, i have put down my papers from a reputed company just beacuse of my negative attitude. Now I am regretting a lot on my decesion. Now these days I am in full of depression and every time thinking what I have done with my career and life. I am fully disaapointed now and not able to do anything.

    • Hello Gaurav,

      Thanks for commenting. First of all – you need to believe in yourself. That’s the first step to any achievement. Believe that you can win and then achieve. Just take ONE step. That’s it.

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