From the author: Is there a “reasonable” limit for those who complain? Why are they doing that? This article is about this. Much has been said about the role of beliefs and convictions in our lives. Often it is because of them that people can both come closer and diverge, and even conflict and fight. But what are our beliefs? After all, in essence, they are nothing more than punctuation marks that help structure our experience and give it some meaning and meaning. Remember “execution cannot be pardoned”? Here the question of placing a comma takes on truly existential significance. This often happens in our everyday life. For example, the other day I heard a story from a friend about how she did not agree on her beliefs with her friend. Not only did they not get along, but they had a good fight, although they had been communicating for almost ten years before that. The friend was playing the classic “pity me” game. Wherever she ended up, wherever she came to rest, troubles immediately began to happen everywhere, as if confirming the main belief of her world map: “everything is bad.” Sellers in the store cheat, doctors in the clinic are rude, in the rest home they check into the wrong room... In general, there was always a reason for discontent and the outbreak of another scandal with the “culprits”. And at the same time, this turned into new stories where the girlfriend constantly found herself a victim of events, intrigues, circumstances and malicious actors. As you know, the position of the victim is generally very advantageous and, it seems, the most effective for attracting attention and receiving various benefits in the form of strokes, pity, sympathy, emotional and even material assistance. Not that it is bad or immoral. But the position of the victim itself, in a certain sense, can “delay” and turn into a real life position. Which, in principle, is what happened to a friend of mine. The latter, in turn, continued to play along with the first, pitying and calming her down. But she did this based on her map, the essence of which was that “everything will be fine and work out.” In the end, the foundation of friendship cracked. One day the game started to crash. Either the friend was tired of playing along, or the friend was no longer satisfied with the support provided to her, or there was a conflict between clearly divergent maps of the world. But what happens is what happens when the game goes too far: the actors suddenly drop their masks and step out of their roles. Both sides are finally starting to tell each other what they think. In this case, continuation of the game turns out to be impossible. The main reason for mutual dissatisfaction turned out to be precisely the discrepancy of beliefs. The friend didn’t really need support in the spirit of “everything will be fine” and optimism. She even considered this approach hypocritical. In her map, the idea that “everything is bad” was a kind of value, a way to receive support, care and love from others. And for a friend, support has always been associated with encouragement and optimism. In other words, for a friend, support consisted of telling her how “everything is bad and hopeless,” rather than looking for ways out and hope that “everything will be fine and get better.” The victim’s position usually does not imply that she wants how -correct the situation or switch to a positive worldview. Rather, on the contrary, recognizing the possibility of solving her problem will take away from her all the “trump cards” and benefits from the existing situation and, as a result, will turn her from a victim into a person capable of coping with difficulties. But in this case, there will be no need to complain, and since you don’t want to lose the benefits of being a victim, the person starts a game. In conclusion, I want to say a few more words about complaints. First, of course, you need to complain. After all, in this way we express our dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs and give appropriate feedback to the outside. As they say, “silence is a sign of consent.” By remaining silent once, we seem to agree with the current situation, and next time our dissatisfaction>>