"Dude, I was hurt today by what you said".... How many times have we said this in our lives or thought about? Countless? Hurt? What was hurt? Do we really sit n think what was really hurt? Or was it how the person expressed his/her feelings?.. What is it ? Do we know it's the simple and plain 3 letter word which was hurt? Our 'ego'? So what does this 'ego' look like ? M. Scott Peck says there are 2 kinds of people, One are the 'Neurotics', these are people who blame themselves so much that they get used to blaming themselves for every problem and lead a horrible life, the other set the 'Character Disordered' people, these people blame only others for their problems and never will accept their mistake in the situation... So what's it like to see these people? How do you ever deal with the latter kind of people? Do you think they would ever sit in one place n think they can solve their issues by looking deeper into why the problem was there in the initial, and would they ever accept their mistakes? 

Why don't these people see beyond a certain point? It's simple again.. It's their 'ego' that stops them... So what is this 'ego' really? Who defines our ego? Other People? May be? Ourselves? Or do we define it under pressure of others? The latter's the problem... We always define ego with respect to others.. So why do we have this problem? Have we ever known that 'fear' could be the reason? Why do we get angry? Cause our ego is hurt, why does our ego get hurt when someone shouts at us? It's simply cause we 'Fear being dominated'.... Human beings easily tend to feel dominated by others and try to escape this problem... Deep down inside we know we would be dominated... When we always think someone would dominate us, we tend to try 'escape routes' or 'retorts'... When this becomes a part of our routine, we don't even realize all this and simply blame others for the misunderstandings... We don't even realize that this is ego... and we never realize that this a deep fear which we have never been able to get over... 

Face the Fear... Our fear defines the person we are... Whether we are neurotics or character disordered let us face the fear... Let us see where the fear emerges from, and once we know where it emerges from don't you think we can easily solve our fear and let go off our ego? 

Let me take the example again.. "I was hurt by what you said"... Why was I hurt? I was hurt cause in the same situation I would never tell such a thing... When I would never tell such a thing, I feel I am right.. When I feel I'm right I can easily see the other person being wrong... When I'm right and you're wrong I don't want you to tell me I'm wrong... :) So this is infact the 'fear of domination'.... We make mistakes... Let us allow people to make mistakes... Keep your ego away for a while... :) Teach that person "this is not how it should be dealt, it should be dealt in this way... " "This is what you could've or should've done.. " "This is wrong.. Let me share a few experiences on what happened when I said the samething to someone else"... These are ways we can calm others down... and calm ourselves down... When doing this you'd find Neurotics who would easily falter off a situation, you would find Character Disordered people who would never let go off their ego and would keep blaming you that it was not their fault... Stop getting afraid... You're 'not' being dominated... Keep assuring yourself that the ego is not hurt and empathize with the other person.. Deep empathy is needed to see why the other person is doing it, and why it should even hurt you or the 'ego' that is being defined at that moment..  The other person is just delaying the problem and blaming you, but when they 'do' realize it, it hits them hard... really hard... 

This is just one of the examples which I have learnt only recently and it works for me.. :) Maybe I'm leading an 'ideal' life, but it's definitely working and my fears are slowly vanishing... For Good, and for My Good.. :) The Neurotic in me doesn't fear the Character Disordered anymore :)