Dealing with Difficult People

While compassion won’t make difficult people any less difficult, it does make it easier to help them.

Some people are cranky.  You may never know why.  They just are mean and angry.  Dealing with these people is unpleasant. And that’s obviously being kind.

It is very easy to dislike difficult people. They are difficult to deal with and I know I would prefer to interact with people who are pleasant and nice and understanding.

But I live in the real world and that isn't always possible. Our instinct, when confronted with difficulty is to want to get away from it. But if you encounter a difficult person as part of your job, you can’t do that. You have to find a way to deal with them.  So you do your best to not be cranky back and them and do your best.

But what if you decided to override your instincts and decided not to dislike them. I’m not saying you should like them, but not disliking them, as difficult as that may be, can make a huge difference in how you respond and whether or not you allow these people to ruin your day.

Here’s why whenever I deal with a difficult person, I try to think of them compassionately. I don’t know why they are cranky and difficult.  I have no idea what their life story is. I don’t know if they are mentally ill, or suffering from a mental health crisis. I don’t know if they are terrified of being out in public and their cranky demeanor is their way of coping. I don’t know if they are going through a bitter divorce right now. I don’t know if they have recently lost a loved one and it is all they can do to keep themselves together and their gruff exterior is how they are protecting their fragile emotions.  I don’t know if they were abused their entire lives and so don’t trust anyone.  I don’t know.

And because I don’t know, I don’t like to assume. Whatever is causing this person to be so difficult is a problem for them. Their behavior isn’t about me. It’s about them and their pain and discomfort and anxiety. And it seems to me that if they are stupendously difficult to deal with, then whatever it is they are dealing with, is probably pretty bad.

So instead of getting annoyed with difficult people, I feel sad for them. And I don’t have to fake being kind to them. I genuinely am kind to them, because I feel so bad for them. Even if they yell at me and call me names and do whatever it is they are doing in their crankiness, it doesn’t upset me. I don’t have to take their crankiness towards me personally.

My compassion for them won’t help them be any less cranky because I’m unable to fix the underlying cause of their emotional problems. But whatever I can do to help them be a little less stressed – I am willing to do. And instead of feeling crappy about these encounters, I feel good. It’s like in that moment dealing with that difficult person, I did being human right by being the best most compassionate person I could be with someone who is clearly suffering.

Can compassion help you deliver better customer service, even when your customers are difficult? You bet it can.

Getting over the hurt

How do I not let people ruin my day by their hurtful words?

This is a skill that can be learned, but it takes practice.

Here's how I do it. My first response when someone is mean is to feel hurt. But as soon as I can consciously recognize I feel hurt.  I have two questions I ask myself

1) Did I do anything to trigger this?  Ie: was I being a complete jerk?  If so - I apologize and resolve to do better. If not, which is usually the case, then I move on to my 2nd question.

2) Why did the other person behaved the way they did? I can't actually answer this question. But ... thinking about what a horrid day the other person must be having to make them behave so rudely to others helps me to feel sorry for them.

I find that as soon as I start feeling sorry for them, I stop feeling bad about their hurtful words to me.  Compassion is an amazing thing. It helps you to be a better human. Be less emotionally volatile and respond in a professional compassionate and ethical way to people who aren't able to behave as they should.  In short, it will help you to not add to the sorrow in the world if you can master it.

Here's where practice comes in.  No one is able to make the switch from hurt to compassion automatically. You have to consciously choose to make that shift.  And it's hard at first. Really hard. But the more you practice, the easier switching from hurt to compassion becomes.  I can usually make that switch in about 5 to 10 seconds - depending on how hurt I was in the moment.

And if all else fails - you could imagine the mean person as John Cleese in full French knight mode yelling – “Your mother is a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!” Laugh and move on.

What does it mean to think compassionately?

4 ways compassion helps us to think better.

1) Compassion works to calm our minds so we can think more clearly. I don’t do my best thinking when I am angry or upset.  I find I think better when I am calm and actively choosing to consider my problem or adversary compassionately helps me to reduce my anger and calm my mind so that I can think clearly.

2) Compassion helps us frame our interpersonal problems in a way that helps us better solve them.  Most of our difficulties are interpersonal. Either someone is annoying us or making our lives more difficult, or we are waiting on someone to do something for us so we can move forward with whatever it is we need to do. People are problematic. I find that when I stop focusing on what I need and start remembering that this other person, as much as I find them annoying, are doing what they do because they have their own problems and issues they are attending to, helps me to not only be less frustrated, but it helps me to figure out whether I can help them and thus help myself, or whether I need to work around them entirely. Regardless, compassion for even the most annoying people helps me to solve my problems with them more effectively.

3) Compassion helps us to exercise self-control when we should. When I am facing a problem, often, the best thing for me to do is nothing. But that’s really hard to do when I’m upset or frustrated. I find that compassion helps me calm myself down and calm my fears and frustrations and this in turns helps me not act rashly so that I am less likely to do something stupid that would make my problem worse.

4) Compassion helps us to find the courage to act when we must. Robert Ingersoll talked about wielding compassion like a sword. Compassion is an interesting emotion.  It is both fierce and unyielding and calming at the same time.  It is my compassion that makes me furious about public policy that causes the death of children through institutionalized violence against poor communities. And yet, it is also my compassion that helps me to calm the anger my compassion evoked so that I can actually solve the problem effectively. Anger is a great motivator, but I always find when I remind myself of the compassion that caused my anger, it is easier to invoke my compassion to reap the benefits of self-control and a calmed mind that only compassion can provide.

What does it mean to think compassionately?  It means to actively choose to be compassionate when you are most agitated and upset. Is it easy to do? No. It takes practice. But the more you practice, the easier it gets and the improvements in your thinking and outlook are immediate. Your  assignment for this week is to spend some time thinking about how you think about compassion.

Enjoy.

Is Giving Really Better Than Receiving?

And if it is, why is it so hard to motivate ourselves to care about others?

For me, there is no doubt that I would rather give than receive. Giving is easier. It feels good and doesn't bruise my ego.  Admitting I need help is really hard to do and I resist it, even when I shouldn't.

I suspect that this aversion to being seen as weak is instinctual. My son has a physical disability that makes it hard for him to do fine motor skill tasks, like zipping up a jacket. As a result, he won’t zip his up, even when it is really cold out. Also, if he is zipped up, he won’t take off his jacket when he is inside and gets warm because his fear that when he needs his jacket again, he won’t be able to put it on properly is so great, he would rather be uncomfortable than admit that he could use some help.

I think another reason why it’s better to give rather than receive has to do with our focus. When we are receiving, our focus is on ourselves. Whenever our focus is on ourselves, we isolate ourselves from others. It is only when we focus outward on others that we are connected to others and that is a hugely important feeling to have for our emotional well-being. We are, after all, social animals.  Giving, especially giving without expectation of reciprocity (which is focusing on our own needs), connects us to others and helps us feel secure as a result. So giving in this way is far superior to receiving.

So, the question is – how can we motivate ourselves to give more, to others we don’t know and how can we be less afraid to admit when we ourselves need help?

I think the answer is to understand that by accepting help, you are allowing others to give. And the more you are willing to accept help, the easier it is to see and understand the benefits of helping others.  I don’t know if there is any research on this, but I know that the more I accept help when I truly need it and am afraid to admit it, the more my sense of gratitude compels me to give to others in need when I can.  It probably has to do with our innate sense of reciprocity and justice. Again, someone should study this dynamic.

The point is, if you are having a hard time motivating yourself to care about others, stop trying to force it.  Instead, focus on admitting to yourself that you are not an island and allow people to help you when you need it. You just may find that whatever  philosophic or emotional hurdle was preventing you from truly reaching out to others in compassion is less of a problem. It’s worth a try anyway.

Feeling Compassion for People you Hate

How it is not only possible to find compassion for people you hate, but why doing so can actually help you respond better.

The other day I was tweeted by none other than Shirley Phelps of The Westboro Baptist Church. She was responding to a tweet I had done about bullying. As a Humanist, progressive and liberal, I don’t care for the Westboro Baptist Church or their tactics. I thought her comment was interesting, but off topic. I was more tickled that I had been noticed than anything else. I mean, this is a woman who is notorious as is her church.

As I was trying to figure out whether or not to respond to her I realized, she only has a few hundred followers on twitter. Her posts aren’t horrid rants, she is mostly complaining about celebrities using foul language and that sort of thing and defending her church.  She struck me as rather human.  While I don’t believe what she does and I don’t agree with her tactics, she clearly cares passionately about it and most definitely thinks she is doing good by helping people to wake up by being intentionally offensive.

I realized she isn’t the caricature that she is made out to be.  All I could think was how sad it is that she is so panicked as a result of her theology that all she and her church can do is rant. She isn’t someone who should be demonized. She is a human, who has chosen to be rude and antagonistic to complete strangers in their times of grief as a way to spread her theological beliefs.  The media attention the WBC gets is really just a way for us to make fun of the village idiot. It isn’t a nice thing to do to anyone. We should not be making a media circus out of their antics.

My heart wants to reach out to her and tell her, there is a better way. But there isn’t really anything I can do to help her. As I was thinking about possible responses to her I realized something important. At the heart of the disagreement I have with her and the WBC is that she is certain that all we have to do is obey God’s will for us in an Uncle Tom passive sort of way.  In other words, suffering is noble. As a Humanist, I don’t believe suffering is noble. I believe that we have the ability and responsibility to try to make things better, not just for ourselves, but for everyone. If there is a God, surely It must want us to help ourselves and to correct injustice.

The lesson in all of this is that by considering someone who stands for the opposite of what I work so hard to promote as a real human, I didn’t do something stupid, or mean or ill thought out. I took the time to think about whether or not to respond and what if anything good might come out of it, not just for me, but for her as well.  It seems to me that if we all took the time to think of our adversaries with compassion, perhaps there would be a little less fighting.