Dealing with difficult people

Not everyone is as easy to love as I am...I hope you are laughing at that and that you realize that we all have "our moments" when we can be a "difficult person" for someone else. There are times that we may respond through our pain with defensiveness. We withdrawal in fear of conflict or attack. We may even use anger to push others away. These common defense tactics are developed in response to abuse and its damage and sometimes we may be able to see this behavior and attitude within ourselves.

A difficult person, is, like, you know who I mean. You have a picture of a loved one who rages or acts irrationally or immaturely. Their behavior is at times irrational, rage-filled, unloving and even abusive.

We are accused of many things:

1. Not listening
2. Being disrespectful
3. Interrupting when they are talking
4. Twisting their words
5. Not speaking English
6. Being "crazy"
7. Being "evil"
8. Not caring about them
9. Only caring about ourselves.
10. Being "the problem" that they have.

These behaviors are not rational, kind or reasonable. They are far from being considered "loving" and if someone is saying these things to us, we have the right to ask them to STOP the accusations, blame and just plain senseless behavior (JPS...coined by Patricia Evans in her book Victory over Verbal Abuse (Amazon) ). They are "defining" us when they call us names like "crazy" and "evil". Defining, or telling someone what they are thinking or what their motives or feelings are is considered to be symptoms of abusive behavior; verbal, emotional and mental abuse. It is not only hard to remain in a loving relationship with someone who behaves in the above ways, but one must question "why" we remain in such an unloving situation.

We could "label" them as being verbally abusive when it is more likely a situation that is revealing how mentally and emotionally unhealthy they are. They are unable to see how their behavior is affecting us. Some have said that "hurt people hurt people" and I have found this to be so true. We do not cause their behavior, we cannot change it and we cannot cure them. We need to radically accept that "something is wrong" and do our best to develop good self-talk, mindfulness and "taking good care of ourselves". In some instances, when the difficult person is refusing to accept responsibility for their own behavior and denying its affect on us, we must develop detachment and see ourselves with objective eyes rather than the eyes of our difficult person.

We deserve to "find ourselves, heal from abuse and learn to dream again". We deserve to have loving, supportive, fun and happy people in our lives. We really are worth it!!!