As a therapist, a good deal of therapy time is spent addressing how to deal with difficult, annoying people in our lives. Sometimes, it’s the person at work, the grumpy neighbor, the horrible roommate, the person in your family that you can’t stand—we all have them in our lives.
Difficult, annoying people are those who behave badly as determined by us. Difficult people are those who trigger us, sometimes those whom we are closest to, those we love but who behave in ways that we find hard to deal with. The behaviors might or might not be objectively awful, but nevertheless, they annoy us. We may have figured out ways to cope, but oftentimes those ways do not work—we’re still annoyed, still angered, still triggered, still reactive, and their behaviors occupy choice real estate in our brains.
So, what’s a better way to deal? How can we be less annoyed? We must first understand the “why” of what makes them so annoying and bothersome to us.
What makes some people so annoying to us?
Source: Photo by tima miroshnichenko 7047011
We as humans are wired for “fight or flight” when confronted with difficult situations, and difficult people trigger that response. It’s not a bear or lion in the wild that we’re reacting to but another human who comes with their own set of problems, challenges, and personalities.
We don’t have to like everyone, just as we don’t have to like all foods or all things—we all have distinct tastes. That goes for people as well. We have tastes that may be determined by our DNA, our habits, our family of origin, learned preferences, and our choices. Interestingly, sometimes we react strongly to people we don’t even know just based on not liking their face or mannerisms.
It’s helpful to explore our own predisposed likes and dislikes and to entertain the concept of “transference.” By definition, transference is our own idiosyncratic neurotic reactions, rooted in our significant childhood relationships, projected onto someone else. This makes it possible for us to have an intense reaction to someone, perhaps a stranger, or someone we do have dealings with, without understanding the cause.
In trying to find ways to better deal with those people and situations that inevitably come up, the following are some questions to ask ourselves that might shed some light onto why we are so annoyed, so triggered, so upset.
Questions we need to ask ourselves
- Who does this person remind me of—perhaps a mean uncle, my emotionally unavailable parent, my horrible kindergarten teacher?
- What things trigger me? For example, do grumpy people set me off?
- What feels familiar about me being annoyed? In what situations have I felt the same?
- Where am I today in terms of my own mood? Do I feel okay, in a peaceful place? Or is something bothering me? Am I already agitated about something else? Oftentimes, our own mood determines how much patience we will have with something or someone who is difficult.
- Is there something that I am struggling with that I have replaced with this annoying person?
- Does this behavior remind me of me and my own annoying behaviors?
- Do I really have to engage with this person, and if not, why do I engage? What can I do to limit my interactions with this person?
These are all questions that help give us agency when dealing with annoying people. We have more control over ourselves and the situation than we believe. Thinking about why we are so annoyed might help us discover that perhaps our annoyance is rooted in something other than this person. It might give pause to our reactions and afford us enough space to react in a less intense way and even circumvent dealing with that person at all.
Some people will always rub us the wrong way but we do have the potential to save ourselves some aggravation if we take some introspective time to think.
