Surprisingly there are people who thrive on being grouchy. They realize that they are difficult to get along with but that doesn't stop them from being grouchy. They are grouchy anyhow.

Being grouchy is normal and acceptable if it comes about for a specific reason. If you know why a person is being grouchy or if a person is usually not grouchy but has a bad day, then there is no problem at all and everybody is entitled to have different moods at different times.

The problem occurs when the person's continuous, usual, and continuing personality is grouchy. If the person can be characterized as being a grouch and he is rarely anything but a grouch, then it is a good idea to ask some basic questions. Why indeed would a person remain a grouch? Why wouldn't the person want to do something so that they would be able to be happy all of the time instead of grouchy all of the time?

A deeper analysis of this person might reveal that he or she actually wants to keep other people at bay. The person might have a reason for wanting to exclude others from their lives, either because they are afraid or because they feel unworthy or because they are in a position which they feel or they consider to be embarrassing. They do not want to share their lives with others and by being grouchy they are aware that other people will not want to bother with them.

Under such circumstances, they may try various kinds of weapons in order to keep people away and they discover correctly that being grouchy is its own reward by simply affecting this mood they accomplish their purpose of keeping others away from them.

The solution is certainly not to tell them not to be grouchy. They are accomplishing their goal by being grouchy. They want to be grouchy.

The solutions lies in discovering or analyzing the reason why they want to keep others away from them and then determining whether something can be done about that cause. If something can be done, and if they are willing to do something about it, if they understand the importance of doing something about it, then it can be corrected.

In all too many cases, however, people don't want to do anything about it because they like the idea of keeping themselves away from others. After all, they had a reason for keeping themselves away. That reason has not changed and it will do little good to make them change the cause for them being grouchy.

You can make a change, of course. But ultimately if you have changed the reason why they are grouchy, then their need to keep people at bay will simply have to come out a different way. In other words, not only will you not have accomplished anything, but you may have created a different problem.