Tolerating Difficult People

I focus specifically on tolerating people that cause you to be uncomfortable. And I'm going to give you two sort of skills or ways of looking at a situation that are going to make tolerating people that are maybe a little difficult for you a lot easier. First, I want to give you just this little backstory. And one of the things I remember learning was that when someone in a group and they were talking about it in a group, but really this is just in life in general, gets really annoyed or aggravated with someone else in the group, then it usually means that that person, the person that's annoying you, allows a trait in themselves to come forward, to sort of surface, to manifest that you don't allow in yourself. Now, I know that may sound a little confusing, so let me explain. Basically, it's like someone allows a part of their personality to come out that you don't let come out, and your personality, you keep it locked up. For example, one of the traits that I don't tolerate well in other people, and I know this can be surprising as a counselor, I don'. Tolerate victim thinking very well or whining, feeling sorry for yourself. I just don't do well with it. And that is because I don't really let myself feel sorry for myself very much. I'm sort of a pull yourself up by the bootstraps, do what you got to do. You know, I came from a hard background myself, so it's pretty hard to make me feel super sorry for you because I'm like, yeah, I've been there too. Overall, just don't think feeling sorry for yourself is very productive. So I don't tolerate that. Well, obviously we all feel sorry for ourselves every now and then, but I'm talking about like, that kind of like constant chronic victim thinking, feeling sorry for myself, blaming everybody else and not taking responsibility. I don't deal with that. You can tell even where I describe it, that I don't deal well with it. So that's just an example of sort of knowing what your button is. If you find that part of yourself that you don't let surface very easily, that's probably what's going to annoy you in other people. So let's talk about how to tolerate other people's maybe characteristics that rub you wrong. Okay? The first skill or thing that you have to do to practice that's going to make that a lot easier is holding very healthy boundaries. Now, when I say healthy boundaries, what I mean is say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. Don't agree to do a lot of things that you don't really want to do, because once you start doing that, then you're setting the stage. For example, if I know that I don't tolerate victim thinking very well and over whininess, then I don't engage in those kind of conversations with people, whether it's in session or in my real life. I also as a counselor, I kind of know what clients that I do well with and what clients I don't. So I sort of steer my practice that way. Some of the other counselors do better with that. And so I know which clients to take on and which clients not to take on because of that. And that's what I mean by practicing healthy boundaries. When you don't practice these healthy boundaries, what ends up happening is you end up being more and more resentful of that person, which is then going to lead you to act out in some kind of inappropriate way, either passive aggressively or say something mean or do something not very kind. You're probably going to end up doing something hurtful if you don't hold those healthy boundaries. And one of the best ways to hold healthy boundaries is to start with them from the get go. Getting boundaries in place when the boundary train is kind of ran off the track is very difficult to get it back on track. And we do, you know, on the YouTube channel we have a ton of videos about that. But your best bet is to start the boundaries in a really good place because you sort of, you're training someone how to interact with you from the get go, which is much easier than retraining something. So if possible, even like, let's say you just meet someone, you know they want something from you out the gate, maybe it's like a co worker of yours and immediately you've met this co worker, even on them five minutes, and they're asking you to take their shift. Even if you can take their shift and even if you don't mind taking their shift, if within five minutes of meeting someone you've taken on that responsibility, you have literally set the stage for your relationship with that person going forward. So that's going to be the dynamic going forward. So out the gate, I would start with a stronger boundary and then see where you can lax it. As you bring new people in your life and have new relationships and that kind of thing, you're going to be a lot better off doing that, going to tolerate people better because you're not going to be putting up with stuff you don't want to put up with. You're not going to build resentments, you're not going to act in a hurtful way and that sort of thing. So number one, have healthy boundaries. Number two thing that is going to help you tolerate other people's like in recovery, we call them character defects. They're difficult things about the personality which we all have. Got my own character defects, I promise. The other thing that's going to help you tolerate other people well, and this one's hard. This, the first one sounded hard, but this one's harder. Okay. Is to really try to get to know them on a deeper level. And the reason I say that is because even if you don't agree with someone's behavior, if you understand their history, you can at least understand why they think, feel and behave the way that they do. It gives you a lot more empathy if you actually understand that person. And once you know a person like the real person, get underneath their mask and underneath all those behaviors and really sort of know who they are on a deeper level, it's kind of hard to have hard feelings towards them. You may not enjoy them, you may not really want to spend all your time with them, but you don't have that hard hearted feeling towards them because you kind of get it. You know this person, if you understand why someone does what they do, it's just easier to tolerate. Even if you disagree with it. For example, like understanding how and why addiction happens to someone, it doesn't make you agree with it, it doesn't make you like it, but it does help you have more empathy for it. It does help you make better decisions about it. And then once you can add in the healthy boundaries to that, now you're really getting somewhere. In recovery there's a like a Recovery saying. In 12 step recovery there's a million sayings. There's like a saying for everything. I almost feel like it's like recovery via slogan. One of the slogans is principles before personalities. And to me that's the slogan I would attach to this particular topic. It's going by the principles. It's acting with integrity and sort of pushing out all the personalities. And the reason I think that's so important in 12 step type recovery and in life in general is because when you're in a group of people, you're going to run across people you don't like and that you don't tolerate well. And if you have your guiding principles, your integrity in life, that's going to keep you on the straight and narrow and keep you out of the realm of being really reactive to every personality that you come in contact with, every character defect, it's going to keep your sort of compass pointed north so you don't get all derailed by all the personalities and people around you. So principles before personalities. Once I had a client who told me they were complaining to their sponsor about someone in their AA group or NA group. I can't remember which one that they didn't like. And they were just fussing about how this person monopolizes meetings and does this and does that. And their sponsor gave them an assignment, and the assignment was to sit down and ask that person some questions and try to get to know that person's history better. And once they did that, this client was telling me they really felt completely differently about the person. It's very difficult not to have some positive feelings to someone that shows you their real self. Like, if you think about these days when you watch, like, all these, like, Netflix shows and these movies, they do such a better job of character development because even the bad guys have backstories. And you can even have some empathy, even for the bad guys. And the reason you have empathy if you don't agree with them, even if you're against them, is because you. Once you understand the backstory, you really understand why people do what they do. And I think Hollywood does a better job these days of really kind of understanding that there's not a real clear line between bad guys and good guys. It's pretty great. We all have some good and some bad in us, and we. And those traits come out in each of us all the time. So once you understand someone's background, if you can get them to let their guard down and be honest with you and be a little vulnerable with you gonna tolerate them better because you're gonna feel differently about them. A lot of times people ask me, you know, how do you. With addicts? All day. In fact, this morning I had to take an Uber to work because my car's in the shop somewhere. And the Uber driver was asking me, you know, what do you do? What do you do for work? And so I was telling him, and he's like, man, I don't know how you do that all the time. I don't know how you don't burn out on that. And I get that kind of comment a lot, you know, like, how do you sit in the room with people struggling with an addiction all the time? How do you tolerate that? And that's because when people show you their real self, it's hard not to connect to them. It's hard not to like them. Now sometimes when I have clients who come in here and they're just being super fake and it's just all mask and I can't get them to take down their guard at all, it's hard to connect to them because it feels like you can feel inside your bones. It's like, okay, we're both playing this game, but once you get people past that point and they let you see a little bit of who they are, it's like a magnetic force when someone is really genuine and really honest with you. So if you have to be around someone in your life that you're having a hard time tolerating and you're going to have to keep being around them, like maybe the first choice would be have healthy boundary and don't be around them. Right. But if you can't and you have to be around them, see what you can do about getting to know them a little bit more. Engage them in a conversation, go a little deeper, find out more about their history. Like I said, I don't think it's going to make you like their behavior, but I think it's going to make you tolerate their behavior well. It's going to be easier for you.