My curiosity is venturing out here, kind of teetering on a limb, with this heated question. During a given week, how many of you have had encounters with difficult people? The choices vary, a relative, client or coworker, each one can create a state of chronic, low-level dread. Correct? Unlike a minor confrontation, the predictability of encounters like this too often leads to emotional fatigue where you don some mental body armor, anticipating the next conflict. Sound familiar?
These frequent, high-conflict encounters often trigger a “fight-or-flight” response which leads to a release of stress hormones like cortisol. The result can impact both your health and well-being. We find the need to constantly monitor our behaviors, almost always walking on eggshells, in order to avoid any triggers to a given situation which is pretty damn exhausting. Unfortunately, when that difficult person is often belittling or critical (sometimes both) it takes a toll on your self-esteem.
I think that most of us know that difficult people often fall into patterns of behavior that are hard to change. Whether family, a friend or business client, you often feel like dealing with them is similar to a roller coaster, alternating between periods of calm and periods of intense conflict. Then there is the tendency of that other person to always deny responsibility and deflect their frustration onto others with no clear understanding of how their actions affect others. Dealing with someone who consistently questions work, constantly finds unecessary faults, imposes undue stress and is demonstrative of micromanagement at its worst! Of course, it’s all about control, a huge factor as well in that boundaries are constantly pushed to see how much control they hold over others.
What to do, what to do? Well, if you cannot avoid that difficult person, you need to change your approach with managing any interaction. Just for shits and giggles, become uninteresting, like a grey rock. Keep your responses short, very factual and totally unemotional; this denies that person the drama, emotional reaction, or baiting, they’re likely seeking. Emphasise that you’re open to a particular discussion but you refuse to be spoken to in an adverse manner. Keep conversations focused and short and, when completely necessary, especially in a work environment, keep a log of conversations while reminding yourself that the behaviors they demonstrate is a solid reflection of their overwhelming insecurities and issues, not yours! The end result is never to change them but to change your reaction to them! The important thing to do is focusing on minimizing the damage that a difficult person is capable of and what they can do to any given encounter and your peace of mind.
From the Writer’s Workshop: Write about an encounter with a very difficult person. (Hard to write about just one, there are so, so, many!)
