How to Deal with Difficult People
Protect your peace and set boundaries
There’s no shortage of difficult people in the world.
You can find difficult people in the workplace, groups, and organizations, in your relationships, and maybe you even live with a difficult person!
While you can’t always control how others behave, you can control how you respond, protect your energy, and decide the role they play in your life.
Understanding how to navigate challenging relationships and handle difficult people is essential because these people affect your mental, emotional, and even physical well-being.
In this blog, we’ll explore strategies to help you set boundaries, preserve your peace, and make empowered decisions when dealing with difficult people.
As we gain resilience and skills in dealing with difficult people, we create better habits and scripts so we can stress less, use less energy, and create stronger boundaries for ourselves.
What Makes a Person “Difficult”?
“Difficult” is in the eye of the beholder. What constitutes a difficult person for one will be entirely different for another. In fact, in someone else’s world - you might be their version of a difficult person!
That said, we all have difficult people in our lives and while relationships are one of the great joys in life, they can be challenging and draining when we find ourselves constantly encountering difficult people.
Here are some examples of how difficult people show up in our lives both personal and professional:
Energy vampires: Draining your emotional and mental energy either with constant negativity, drama, neediness, or problems
Chronic complainers: They’re not looking for solutions, they just like to complain and dwell in their misery and suck you into it too
Passive aggressive people: Subtly resistant and sabotaging, these folks might show up making snide, sarcastic remarks, guilt trips, or backhanded compliments
Gaslighters: Twists reality to make you doubt yourself, denies things they’ve said or done making you feel confused and uncertain
Narcissists: Self-centered and manipulative, these are people who lack empathy and think the show is all about them and only them
These are just a few! There are also boundary-tramplers, jealous friends, know-it-alls, underminers, and button-pushers. The question isn’t when they’ll show up, it’s what to do when they do!
Should You Stay or Should You Go?
Once you’ve identified a difficult person or situation in your life, it’s time to evaluate the patterns and relationship as a whole. Not all challenging persons and relationships are toxic or bad, but some can be deeply harmful. The key is pausing so you can recognize when a relationship is doing more harm than good.
If you consistently feel drained, anxious, on edge, criticized, manipulated, or guilt-tripped when you’re with this person, it might be time to make a change.
If you’re always the one making an effort and your needs and boundaries are consistently ignored, it might be time to walk away.
Some of these relationships can be salvaged with clear communication and setting stronger boundaries but if someone is continually disregarding your well-being, removing yourself from the friendship or relationship and limiting contact might be necessary.
Recognizing the impact of a difficult person is the first step in reclaiming your peace as you decide what your next step will be.
Preserving Your Peace
You can’t control how people act, but you can control your response. Protecting your peace is about managing your reactions and not letting the difficult person negatively impact you.
Here are four tips to preserve your peace and not let negativity, drama, or otherwise consume you:
Pause. Perhaps my top advice for most things in life, pausing is powerful. Pausing before reacting can help you determine whether or not a response is even warranted. Take a deep breath, assess, and proceed.
Detach from the drama. Not every comment or action needs your engagement and don’t take what is unfolding personally.
Remain neutral. As much as possible, use neutral responses and don’t fall for their attempts to rile you up.
Limit exposure. If someone drains you and is your version of “difficult”, reduce your time with them as much as possible.
Simply by choosing how you’ll engage helps you reclaim power and control over your emotional and mental space.
Taking time away from the relationship can help prevent you from exposing yourself to further stress and situations that don’t serve your well-being. You can politely decline invitations and take space for as long as you need.
Reflecting on Patterns
Recognize the patterns you fall into with people in your life to avoid falling into the same cycles. Oftentimes, the types of people we interact with show up in different ways and different relationships until we break the cycle.
Identify recurring issues in own life:
Do you constantly find yourself in relationships where you feel unheard or misunderstood?
Are you always the one making compromises?
Can you observe patterns of manipulation, passive aggressiveness, or disrespect?
Commit to Setting Consistent Boundaries
With difficult people, setting strong boundaries is essential if you’re choosing to remain in a relationship with the individual. Committing to consistent boundaries is a promise to your own mental health and emotional wellbeing.
Decide your limits, hold firm, and do expect pushback. Especially when dealing with difficult people, your boundaries might be tested and it’s essential to hold your ground and have your own back.
For more information on setting boundaries that go beyond protecting you to teaching others how to treat you with respect, check out my Boundaries blog here.
Forgiveness for Difficult People
Whether you decide to walk away for good, take a break from the relationship, or remain with newly established boundaries, offering forgiveness can provide a sense of release and letting go of resentment so you can reclaim your peace.
Forgiveness is not to be confused with inviting their toxic behavior back into your life or putting up with mistreatment, it’s not an excuse or dismissal of their bad behavior, it’s about releasing resentment and attachment. Forgiveness is a gift you can give yourself to prevent anger, hurt, and negativity from the relationship from weighing you down further.
Even after you forgive, you can still choose to walk away. You can choose to redefine the relationship on your terms. It gives you a choice of how you want to move forward and allows you to navigate without reactivity from a healed place.
Find Your Support System
When dealing with difficult people, whether in work or at home, lean on trusted friends, a mentor, a therapist, or a coach to help you make sense of confusion and gain clarity on your next steps. Surround yourself with people who uplift, encourage, and support you without all the drama and negativity. Let them be a part of your healing as you distance and recover from toxic relationships and unhealthy circumstances.
Difficult people will always exist. By setting boundaries, managing your reactions, and intentionally choosing which relationships you want to invest in, you begin to reclaim your peace and find aligned and mutually-beneficial relationships.
