That part of me that has learned psychology and that from the air, it is on children’s programs and such, and from yoga, says, if you find it hard to keep people in check you have a problem with people and that one that is hard to deal with, that will take you years to get over. It is hard to get used to hitting a bit harder if you think going for peoples throats in any way at all is mean and holding your own means a little going for other peoples throats because they most certainly do go for people throats and if you hold right back which can be the case of those who can’t manage the human part of life, then they will walk all over you, convert you in their dance floor and pretend they are doing you a favor they will say it is good for you to learn to be humble or to learn how to take blows..
For one If someone says they have problems with others it is probable that they can’t handle the milling crowd, don’t have
enough teeth to stop others eating them up and for the other, if they say people are fine then you may presume they know how to hold their own so my psychiatric self say teach those who complain about others self defense, verbal, and social self defense.
The other school of thought is that the person who complains is unable to take the normal amount of punishment so kick them in the teeth to harden them up. That is the school who is pretending there are no tigers in the woods. They make no attempt to evaluate if the person is holding their own or not, and tend to pretend that holding your own is easy when it is difficult and it is easy for people to be totally at sea in this respect.
May be they just want to keep the status quo, you down and the powerful up.
You should worry when people can’t cope as you should worry about bullying at school. It is arrogant to imagine they can cope but want everything perfect, they probably know better than you what their problem is though they don’t know how to handle it.
It is not true that arguing works, the means to taking the reins of the situation are what they always were and they are uglier than just making the other reasonable through speech, other people try to take a unfair sized part of the cake and don’t mind about being called unfair when you argue with them, it is when you can provide a stronger argument like when it is to their advantage to back you up and to their disadvantage to mess with you that you will be persuasive.
One of the ways of keeping people under is moral invalidation, so, I am not teaching people to squash anyone I would teach people to hold their own, those who are unfair learn these things any way so there is not much danger of creating even more bullies if you explain the ropes to people.
If you try to be kind you will not mine away at other people and most people do mine away at others whatever their public face is. If you draw back your teeth the situation will become so unequal you will lose so much ground that everyone will run circles round you.
Some parts of the world of psychiatry says trust others, it is a silly thing to say, asking people to trust others has always been a way of creating a servile
class. Can a democrat trust a republican o vice a versa not to vote for the party they don’t belong to at any rate?
The way to hold your own is what it has always been, people admire the rich and think they must have been clever to get there even if they hate them. In my family those who earn most get most credit right or wrong and I thought my family they were clever and were fair people but they are not, they follow the money.
If you are rich you will have friends that is why you may suspect those who are totally against material wealth. You may ask yourself, “do they want an under class a cap doffing class”? Though I know they may be just a bit unreal and so innocent of what they lay up for others. Apart from the influence you get if you are rich there is just the fact that ist is hard to ask a friend to the pub if you are poor.
You’re xan impose on people any way if you are very canny but your situation is much better if you have a bit of money it makes it harder for others to treat you as shit.
It sounds as if you are nice if you say, “trust people”, in fact you are only taking people off their guard and creating an unreal assessment of their situation, You are gulling people. My mothers cynicism is what has always turned out to be true in my life, when I have given my back to it I have been food for the dogs. My mother was a cynic who loved people, she would never have told you to learn to trust people, I have met those who say that you have to trust everyone and then you find they despise others in a very total way. Dealing with this sort of complexity in the human mind is the reason that there are no easy answers on how to be happy, given that happiness has a lot to do with the pecking order. The religions don’t like the novel, the serious ones, they describes all the complexity of human relationship and the religious like simplifications that end up helping them to be very manipulative.
Apart from being rich you should be careful to have a group of friends, don’t let your husband or wife stop you having your own group of friends.
You need to keep up your moral authority in the group and criticizing others is a good way to keep it up and necessary because others will criticize you so if you are not liming away at them they will do for you. It keeps others at bay a bit, if you don’t do it you will be a walk over and if you do it too much you will commit what is called “social assassination”. Slighting remarks in public are useful, again enough to keep order or maintain an equilibrium not enough to dish other people’s confidence or the esteem in which others hold them totally and if you are to judge your fellows on whether they criticize other or not, it is how much damage do they do that matters, have they done for anyone, if they have it is a sign that they may well do for another person, if they have not, then it is unlikely that they will do for those they attack. You need to know when to stop and when to back track, if someone was being mean and has stopped well it is time to back track and pull people into being their friends again. The trouble with punishment is people seem to be so lazy at judging situations that they will more likely than not punish the wrong person. Sometimes it is hard to know how much damage you are doing if you don’t live in the same place as them.
I know those who tell you not to judge and also tell you to pull your weight by telling off others at the same time, they do some impossible bits of mental gymnastics. Of course criticism is positive as well as negative that is why it has to be a question of how much damage the person has done or can I accuse them of wanting to write the other person off or were they just righting things a bit.
Holding your own does mean sticking your neck out, losing friends and as such is painful, if you fight with your fist you may get physically hurt when fighting verbally you may lose friends, it is also morally hard, if you lose a friend you also lose the ability to help them, you will not be around for them they won’t let you come near them but if you don’t learn to fight you find yourself in the position of the soldier Spielberg’s film Private Ryan who has not helped the soldier being killed because he was too scared to fight. It is a question dealt with in David Copperfield, David considers he has reached manhood when he gets up the nerve to publicly denounce his wicked step father at the end of the book.
If you start to hold your own late you find you have so much ground to cover that your efforts to right things make you look very violent.
People also admire the clever and don’t know if you are clever or not unless you spend a lot of time on self promotion, so if you are trying not to be overbearing or not to squash people and holding back on showing off about your knowledge you will be trodden underfoot. What is your attitude to talking others out? If you are squeamish about it, this maybe one of the reasons for why you find that others get you down, you have not commanded the situation enough to have your say through and they can interpret your character and abilities to be whatever they please and everyone feels easier if they can decide they are cleverer than the next person, which is not so bad, it is when you discover how very tremendously stupid they have decided you are that your breath gets taken away, you have a sickening dizzy moment when you feel faint about the extent of the damage, about the reality of your situation. You have to show them that you are not stupid even if it bores them, they like to find others silly and can’t be expected to know about your abilities unless you shove them down their throats.
A religious person can be poor with a less frightening consequences than exist for the merely poor. Mind you priest of some sort or other will be open to being squashed by other priests, still he will not be totally at the mercy of others, people will admire him though he is poor, he has position, and he has his future cared for, his economic problems dealt with, the old age home provided and no children to worry about, also the churches has facilities he can use, such as books, he has more than the poor though it might seem that he does not. In the religious you get an example of a sort of false poverty that does not separate them from all consideration and respect. It is also a poverty that can start projects like youth hostels, the very poor have greater difficulty in starting projects, such half way house poor can make it look as if poverty is better than it is.
Whole sections of society like women can be taught to leave their best interest to one side by a whole series of phrases like don’t be overbearing don’t bore people don’t make a scene you need to make scenes when necessary, don’t use emotional blackmail, men use it all the time they look sad if you don’t do what they want though they don’t actually cry.
The middle road is the hard one to hold your own without squashing others. I don’t know that it is so very hard you need to have a clear intention to do as much. It is hard to learn to hurt others a bit if you are pacifist. Agri rose macaskie.
I think you might be lucky to have family and friends that want to help out! 
Maybe come up with some projects they can help you with. That way they can feel like they're included.
