Social Minefield: How To Deal With People You Hate

But it doesn’t end there — you can then take the lead in the situation while establishing common ground. Brinkman offers another example: “In order to solve your problem fast, I’ll need to ask you a few questions. It’ll only take a minute. Do you mind?” Giving the person the option to decide whether to move forward helps establish “common purpose” — and the person will be more likely to want to help you. So you can solve her problem — whatever she’s mad about — and yours — having someone yelling in your face — by taking charge of the situation with a few pretty simple steps.

Brinkman has tips for other kinds of obnoxious behavior as well (some are available here, with registration), but one thing that struck me about our chat was how much depends on being able to stay calm and take charge. Someone who’s being a jerk can make you feel helpless, but you can actually take control of the situation, without being a jerk about it. For instance …

A student

My friend Frank has a lot of teaching experience, and he’s also extremely good at getting along with people. When I asked him what his secret was, he said, “one strategy that I use is to exert calm control over the conversation.” He explained,

If students are whispering to each other instead of paying attention, I might say, “Deborah, do you have a question?” Once I was substitute teaching for a class, and I must have asked that question 50 times. But by the end, the students did see it as kind of funny, including Deborah, and she eventually stopped whispering and started paying attention. I wasn’t really mean or nasty about it either — I would just ask honestly if she had a question.

Frank cautioned that, “the moment you get mad at them, they can feel it, and it makes them less motivated to comply with how you want them to act.” But how to keep from getting mad if someone’s being obnoxious — especially while you’re trying to do something hard, like teach a class? Frank says, “I think what works best for me is to live by the assumption that everyone is doing the best that they can at all times. It means that when someone is behaving ‘badly,’ I am much more likely to feel sorry for them than to feel angry with them.”

Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is kind of a cheesy old piece of advice — but it can keep you from getting pissed off long enough to actually solve the problem at hand. When I used to teach, it helped me to remember how I and my friends were in high school. It was incredibly important for us to establish who we were, and to prove that we were awesome, interesting people worth getting to know, and we did that almost exclusively by talking to our peers. So when we talked during class or made stupid jokes, it wasn’t because we hated our teachers or were evil, it was because we were all engaged in a constant project of identity formation that was frequently at odds with the project of learning — a project we could care about too, if our teachers reminded us enough. Later, when my students were texting each other instead of listening to me talk about Frankenstein, I could understand what made them do it, and this prevented me from getting resentful. They, in turn, could tell I wasn’t resentful, and this made them way more likely to pay attention to me and do what I wanted. In essence, as long as I was able to avoid getting mad, they saw that we had “common purpose” — we were on the same side.

A family member

Brinkman’s strategies for dealing with a bullying coworker will work with a family member too — but it’s hard to change your behavior if it’s been entrenched for years. And in families, the conflicts can go back to the womb — or before. For dealing with these, Klausner recommends a measure of acceptance, and humor: “Just expect it and go into there loaded to the nines on Klonopin if you’ve got some, white wine if you don’t. Then laugh at everything.” She also points out that a lot of family conflicts aren’t even about what’s going on in the present: “Remember that your agitation is all about going ‘back in time,’ to quote the scholar Huey Lewis. Your misery comes from your inevitable regression and resentment-harnessing that comes along with that process — and less about what’s happening around you.” You may not be able to quell your sister’s lingering rage over how you always got the front seat growing up, but at least you can recognize that when she criticizes your driving, that’s what it’s really about. And understanding this may make you less bothered by familial criticism or fight-picking — a lot of it is just a rehash of age-old arguments that are never going to be won anyway, so you don’t need to try.

A classmate

For advice on dealing with hateable classmates, I turned to Hannah Friedman, whose memoir Everything Sucks describes a lot of them. First, she echoes the in-her-shoes advice: “Remember that they’re acting the way they do for a reason. If they’re being super cliquey it’s probably because they don’t feel comfortable with themselves outside of the confines of a clique.” Beyond empathy, though, the best way to deal with jerky classmates is not to care too much. Says Friedman,

Be yourself, be fiercely yourself, and you’re already getting one over on those people. They might tease you for it, but in the end the best revenge is living well. Secondly, don’t stoop to mean games that classmates can play. It’s so easy to get tempted into the gossiping, backstabbing, nasty little games, and no matter how satisfying they seem at the time, any moment you spend wishing ill of another person is a moment you’re not using to find your own bliss, to live your dreams, to make the world a better place than you found it. And those are the things that will truly make your life richer and more fulfilling in the long run, not making some bitchy girl cry. Thirdly, don’t give a shit what people think about you. This is probably the hardest one to remember, and it’s a constant learning process, but you’re here in this life with a unique story and a unique set of skills and a unique viewpoint, and you owe it to yourself to find a beautifully unique path. That means doing your own thing even if it’s not considered cool just yet … you might just have the last laugh.

So there you have it: stay calm, try to see the other side, take charge in a non-asshole fashion — and if all else fails, act like you don’t care. Often enough, it’ll actually come true.

Need help with a sticky social situation? Email us! We’ll sweep your social minefield!

For all Social Minefield columns, go here.

Dealing With People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out The Best In People At Their Worst
I Don’t Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, And Other Guys I’ve Dated
Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind And Finding Myself In A High School Quest For Cool
Dr. Rick Brinkman, Conscious Communication [Official Site]

Image via Loskutnikov/Shutterstock.com