I lost my temper last night :( Not happy with myself

Last night at work I was working with a coworker who started there the same day as me. We became friends and talk a lot. I noticed lately that most everything she has to say is very negative or is whining. Last night during her whining about the way certain people at work treat her I tried to tell her she should speak up and let people know their action/words were out of line. She disagreed with me and felt it was better to shut up and let them say mean things to her. Ok I get it she doesn't want to rock the boat. Then the conversation moved to another area of work concerns and again she was very negative and had an argument for any positive suggestion I had to offer her to make the situation better for her. As we were standing in the parking lot talking I realized that I was physically shaking/trembling and my legs were out of control with the shaking. I finally lost it and told her she was just to negative and needed to change her attitude. Long story short I suddenly got the feeling that she doesn't want to change and I couldn't take her negativity anymore and just snapped and told her she will do what she wants to do and doesn't really want advice and abruptly walked away to my car.  Now I feel badly that I snapped and am not sure if I was wrong or not.

How does everyone handle situations/friends like this? I feel I need to apologize to her today for snapping last night but I don't want to put myself into the position of going through these kinds of negative conversations anymore.

I would apologize for the way you blew up, but let her know you still feel she needs to be more positive and stick up for herself. I would feel bad for hurting her feelings, but i think the message was sincere. Don't sugarcoat it for her....it was coming from the right place....

Thank you for your advice. I appreciate it very much!

I am finding that if someone is too negative that it effects my outlook towards the world around me and even about myself. For my own sake I just start to separate myself from the negativity. I try to do it without hurting anyone. This is putting myself first which is something very new to me, and sometimes very hard to do.

 

Most negative people (complainers) don't want advice or solutions, they just want to gripe.  Yes, you should probably apologize for blowing up, but let her know that while you want to remain friends, that she's going to have to lay off the chronic complaining.  Maybe she just needed someone to "wake her up" to her negativity.

Thank you. I did apologize to her tonight after work, I didn't have time during work as we were too busy. She told me she knew she had been to negative and we left it at that and went on talking about other things.

Say sorry for blowing up, but that you meant what you said about all the negativity. I'm the same way. I don't like negativity in my life and I always try to put a positive spin to everything.

That's exactly what I said to her and she agreed with me that she was being way to negative last night. Now I have to learn to step back when she whines again and just listen and be a sounding board for her and not try to offer suggestions on the situation.

I try not to let the negativity of another person affect my life.  I just listen (sort of) and move on.  Yes, you probably should apologize but in the future don't let Negative Nellie get to you.  Life is too short for this.

I think I was more upset that she was telling me things and I was offering her some advice and she would just come back with  more negativity