Effective Ways to Deal with Difficult People in Your Life

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Most people can identify someone in their life who is “difficult." At a cocktail party or lunch meeting or during a neighborhood walk with a friend, many conversations revolve around the people in life who you find difficult to deal with. However, what is difficult to one person is not always difficult to another, there is no common definition of “the difficult ones.”

What is considered difficult for your friend at work is very different from what is difficult for your sibling, or for your high school friend, or what you would consider a problem. Is it the pushy, aggressive person? No, to someone else that is just directness and clear communication. Is it the stoic, non-emotional, stuck-in-the-mud personality? No, to someone else that is a calming approach. Could it be the person who clips their nails or slurps their drink or talks loudly in the next cubicle? No, to someone else that is a person to feel sorry for, someone who never learned good manners.

The inherent problem is that a difficult nature, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Understanding this, however, doesn’t mean those difficult people automatically go away. In fact, the more aware you are of their difficult nature, the more you notice the things you simply cannot overlook.

When dealing with someone who is difficult, you change your approach and attitude also. Imagine a friend calls you on your cell phone; as long as you are in a good place with that person, you pick the phone up with a smile and some enthusiasm to hear from the person. Now imagine the person calling is difficult in your life. If you even pick the phone up, instead of pressing the “decline” button, you will likely be short, or gruff, or disinterested. You certainly are not smiling and enthusiastic.

When you aren’t as nice toward someone, are they often gregarious and forthcoming in return? Of course not. They dig their heels in just as you are digging your heels in. This creates the difficult dance where you take the same dance steps, and so does your difficult partner. You can never unhook from the person with whom this happens; you are locked in these dance steps.

If you want to eradicate difficult people from your life, you have to deal with them differently. You benefit from seeing that their behavior is not the cause of the reaction; your emotional response to them is the problem. If you can change those dance steps and deal with them differently, the relationship changes entirely.

Pick someone in your life who is difficult and try a few new dance steps:

1. Instead of being emotionally triggered by their behavior, become curious. Be an investigator who wants to learn what’s underneath the difficult behavior. What drives them? What motivates them? What, in their background, led them to where they are today? The more you are curious and want to learn, the less you will focus on what you don’t like and the more your attention turns to being interested in them. Whenever you are interested in another person, it is hard for them not to want to respond in one way or another.
2. Consider your triggers. What is it about that person or those people that annoy you? Can you make a list? Can you explain why the behavior is so troublesome to you? Oftentimes, people carry some ideas they have learned in childhood, or from one life experience, and they apply them broadly. See if you can do some forensics on your own beliefs to find out where your impressions originated and whether they are still accurate for you. Be a bit self-reflective and force yourself to question your own viewpoints. This can be hard because you will believe what you believe, but ask yourself if it is still relevant – for you.
3. Reframe the person’s behavior. Move from “obnoxious and pushy” to “direct” or “self-obsessed” to “acting out insecurity,” or from “uninterested and not invested in anything” to “unable to show emotion.” Take the subjective, often judgmental terms you use and see if you can change them to something that is more objective and data-oriented. If you can be more factual about what is happening with the person, rather than getting drawn into the subjective viewpoint you currently have, you keep your power when dealing with that person.

Realize you are the one who is in charge of your response. The person will do what they do. You have more choice than you believe about how to respond to what they do. Use your ability to make different choices.