How I Deal With Disrespect & Mean Comments As An Introvert
What do you say to someone whose ‘desire’ is to hurt you?
I was an under-confident child. I had no thoughts or opinions of my own. To this day, I cannot recall what I used to think about myself when I was a child or a teenager.
The only thing I can remember as vividly as it happened yesterday are the comments or jokes that smelled of disrespect. Someone called me ‘ugly’ while other relatives said it on my face ‘If I had a bit fair skin, my features would look better’ and then someone else would jump in to say, ‘Stil, your features are okay.’
If not my face, then my grades. I remember I was in my senior year when my English teacher said to me in front of a class of 120 students, ‘Students like you, it’s tough for them to understand Shakespeare.’ I remember feeling ‘inferior’ so much so that I felt I might melt and dissolve into nothingness.
But it didn’t end there.
When I went to college, I became relatively bold. I knew how to shut people’s mouths. I knew how to make them feel just as small as they intended to hurt others. As much as it helped me to keep disrespectful people at a distance, a lot of my classmates started hating on me, even when I hadn’t said anything to them — well except to those stupid boys who thought it was okay to ask me out on a date but if I say no then suddenly, I am….well, you know what certain men are capable of thinking.
Concluding my existence, I can say I have experienced all kinds of disrespect and mean comments, directly and indirectly. I have tried staying silent as well as roaring. And after going through it all, I think I have come to a point when I have finally learned how to deal with people who open their mouths to hurt you, deliberately.
The Answer to Disrecpect:
Why do you think people want to hurt the other person?
There can only be two reasons:
a) You have hurt them so they want their revenge.
b) They have no life, no fun, no love, no empathy in their hearts and the only way they feel superior is by making someone else feel ‘inferior.’
If it’s scenario A, I think you just gulp down the disrespect because, well you deserve it. You can not expect roses when you have been a b*tch yourself.
However, in the majority of the cases, it’ll be case B.
So, how do you deal with such people?
The best way to deal with such people is to NOT DEAL with them at all.
But won’t that encourage them to disrespect you even more in the future? I mean, everyone wants a punching bag. Everyone loves an innocent person who just takes everything in and still smiles like nothing happened.
Well, there is a difference between being silent and smiling like a child who cannot act out.
How?
For example: Just a week back, I was in the gym. I am relatively new so I still have to ask this common trainer if I doing a particular exercise right. I went to him to ask which exercise to begin with when he said to me while pointing to my face,
‘Look, you are growing a beard.’
I said, ‘What? Who are you talking to?’
He said, ‘You.’
I said again, ‘What?’
He pointed his finger at the right side of my face again and said, ‘You are growing a beard.’ Then he pointed at the mirror in front of us and said, ‘Look in the mirror.’
For a second, I was shocked. I didn’t understand what just happened.
Then before I could come back to my senses, he said to this boy, who must be 14 or something, ‘Look, she has more beard than you.’
Before we move ahead, I just have one advice for men, ‘You may think you are being funny but in reality, you are being disrespectful.’
And also, women are not supposed to be hairless from face to toe like a child or a doll. It’s just your fantasy.
Now, that was pretty disrespectful what he said especially when I don’t talk to him or know him well enough to exchange funny anecdotes.
I came home and told my best friend about it. She said, ‘And you just heard him? What happened to you? You should have said something like how you were in college.’
Yet, I didn’t say anything to him. I ignored his comment like he never spoke. I then went back to the exercise he had asked me to do afterward.
Why?
It’s not that I didn’t dare to revert. Trust me, I can be the rudest person alive.
And I had a good response as well which went something like this, ‘Well, God made spinless men like you so he thought, here is another thing that women can do better than men.’
Then, why didn’t I revert?
Because, if I had, it would have given him what he was looking for — a response. A way to stretch this matter to a level where he could have gone out there and created gossip among his peers just to prove how I was being rude and disrespectful to him.
And it would have impacted me.
Do you know why?
Not because I care about what a group of uneducated men think but rather because I know I need to go back to the same place every day and I cannot work out in a place where I have to sit back and hear gossip about me every other day about something I never said or did. It would have only impacted my mental health.
When I looked at him when he was making that comment, I could sense that he was trying to trigger me. He wanted to play with my mood. He wanted a reaction.
If I had given him what he needed then that proves I am a puppet of his words or that I am so easy to control.
You cannot make anyone the master of your mood. If you do so, you will always find yourself in arguments and disputes, in reality as well as in the fake scenaiors of your mind — always wondering what more could you have said or did.
This is not the first time when I didn’t revert back to a disrespectful comment. I ignore such people all the time. One of my cousins, who has no idea what I do or how much I make, keeps commenting on me in front of everyone how I am wasting my best years or how I should start making money of my own.
If I want, I can slap on his face with my bank balance that I made on my own.
But I don’t.
I rather sit back and listen to him with a smirk on my face. Not even for a second do I feel the need to prove myself superior or better. In fact, I find it amusing how people will say things just to trigger you, to get the information out of you. It’s like watching a person inside out. You really get to experience the depth of insecurity and ugliness of a human heart.
In my cousin’s case, he makes comments because he is desperate to know how much I make. He is always asking people this question, always saying ‘he has this much money or they made their money in a certain way.’ He has asked me how much I make too but I never told him. I truly feel some people nurture evil in their hearts to a level that it can impact you.
In my trainer’s case, he made that comment because a month back, I said to one of the guys in the gym that I liked the workout that the other trainer taught me. I wasn’t comparing the two. It was just an expression. But I think it reached to him in wrong way and it hurt his little male ego that he wanted to get back to me.
So, if you see, people don’t make disrespectful comments because there is something in you. People make disrespectful comments because they want something from you — either a response so they can play with your emotions more or they want to hurt you.
If you react, even if you feel like you are taking a stand for yourself, you are just giving them what they need from you + control over you.
It doesn’t matter how boldly or strongly you react or how you shut their mouth, you end up giving them the satisfaction of triggering you. They feel good and satisfied that they could bring you down to their level. When you raise your voice or speak words that you know you never wanted to, you satisfy their cravings.
But if you stay silent, not like a child with hurt or tears on your face, but rather maintain a stoic face with a smirk on your face as if you are enjoying how you can see their true color, you trigger this person even more — they get angrier knowing even after going so down, they couldn’t hurt you.
You will see them going mad — really mad. Chances are they will end up saying worse things — in a way broadcasting their true face in front of all — thus proving how disrespectful they are.
Hence, what started as a hidden intention to hurt you will end up hurting them.
I know, in many cases, you will feel the need to be bold and revert with the sassiest reply. At the moment, you may feel like you stood up for yourself. But in reality, no matter what you say, in some people the hate is too strong that it will bring you down.
Instead, I would suggest that treat these people and their comments as your training for the real world. Let them make you a stoic, so strong that no situation or person can trigger you.
Conclusion:
I have met a lot of people. A lot.
And I have realized there are all kinds of people. Some really good. Some total b*tch. Some people will raise your standard of how you see yourself. Some won’t even look at you. And some, for no apparent reason, will try to bring you down.
It has nothing to do with you. There is a deep hatred, or insecurity in their own hearts.
What’s in you, you will share with the world, knowingly or unknowingly.
If you have love in you, you will find yourself complimenting people as if that’s what you are born to do.
If you have hatred in you, you will end up making other people small as if that’s all you are good for.
In case, you end up meeting hateful people along the ride, remember you don’t have to indulge with them. Even without speaking, you can show them where they belong.
If you liked reading this article, you will love my book — The Art of Being Alone.
