Throughout our lives, we all come in contact with at least one person who we consider nasty, unkind, or mean.
Like me, you might have been teased, gossiped about, shouted at, defamed, backed into a corner, intimidated, and unjustly punished – and your reaction might be “WHY?”
Why are people so mean with you and venomous towards each other? Why do some people seem to actually enjoy bitchiness and venomous behavior?
If you’re like most people your immediate answer might be something along the lines of, “ … because they’re bad people,” “ … because they’re psychopaths/sociopaths/narcissists,” “… because they’re evil,” “… because some people are just like that!”
While these answers are normal and widespread, they are nevertheless two-dimensional and narrow in outlook.
If you’re tired of feeling enraged by other people and want to rediscover a sense of self-sovereignty, keep reading.
**Important note:**
This article is written for understanding those in your life who, as far as you’re aware, are generally psychologically sound (but exhibiting unkind behavior).
Please do not seek advice or guidance from this article if you have come across an individual in your life who has been diagnosed with or shows clear signs of pathological mental illness (e.g., narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy).
If you have been physically, emotionally, mentally, or sexually abused by any individual (or group) in your life, please seek professional help from a psychotherapist or abuse counselor immediately.
Please call a hotline to seek further help and distance yourself from the person hurting you.
Table of contents
Why Anger is Addictive
You’re in a conversation with someone, you say something apparently offensive, and the other person gets angry at you.
They stand up menacingly and say, “You know, I’ve learned a thing or two about you. You’re a real piece of work and you don’t give a DAMN about anyone but yourself. It’s no wonder that you don’t have many friends.” Then, they leave abruptly.
What would your reaction be?
You might jump up in rage and start challenging the person’s unfair assessment of you, hitting back with your own most vicious attacks.
Or you might sit down, stunned, wondering what you said wrong as sadness and resentment slowly builds up within you.
“How could they treat me so badly?” you might wonder, “What the hell did I do?” Then you might boil with hatred for the rest of the day, demonizing the person in your mind in the meantime.
These two reactions are fairly common among us in society and I have personally reacted in both ways on a number of different occasions in the past.
The result of getting consumed in another person’s toxic words and behaviors is devastating to our well-being … but you know what? It feels kind of good to be righteously indignant. It feels kind of nice to be intoxicated with anger.
When we feel unjustly wronged, we are immediately rewarded with the self-righteous feeling of being “victims” and not only that – we also feel a sense of immediate self-superiority.
How often in the past have you raged against a “terrible person” with the underlying assumption that “you are the superior person”? Probably a lot. But don’t worry; this is normal. We all do this.
The truth is that anger is like a drug because not only does it give us a false sense of being “better,” “nicer,” “more correct” and “justified” in our righteous indignation, but it also keeps up the illusion of separation between us and the world (or in other words, it solidifies our egos).
This can be one of the greatest hindrances of looking behind the veil of mean behavior: our refusal to let go of our anger.
Once we’re ready to release our anger and once we’re willing to let go of the benefits it brings us, we can then learn to truly understand “why are people so mean and rude?”
In other words, we can find more peace, spiritual healing, and inner freedom.
What’s Hidden Behind the Veil of Mean Behavior?
In the process of demonizing mean and cruel people, we dehumanize them.
Of course, it can be argued that there truly are “psychopaths” and “narcissists” out there who feel no empathy or remorse, but these types of people (who constitute a very low percentage of the population) are not who we’re referring to here.
I believe it’s reasonable to say that most of the unkind people we come across in life aren’t sociopaths or psychopaths, but are in fact normal, deeply wounded people.
We don’t take time to understand them because we are greatly repelled by their behavior (and because let’s face it, we’re deeply wounded as well).
We spout excuses like, “So what? Everyone suffers but that’s no excuse for their behavior,” but this is only another way of perpetuating our self-righteous indignation and therefore continuing our own suffering.
However, there’s something empowering and refreshing in not getting eaten up by bitterness, hatred, and anger any longer.
There’s something rejuvenating and liberating about taking your happiness into your own hands and understanding that:
All unkind, cruel, and vicious behavior has its root in pain.
If you want to look behind the veil of mean people and bad behavior you have to understand a person’s pain.
You have to be willing to be curious, you have to be willing to be open-minded, you have to be willing to be empathetic – even a tiny bit (as painful and annoying as that is).
Understanding another person’s pain involves disintegrating the boundaries between “you” and “other.”
It might involve reflecting on what you know of that person’s past. It might involve asking your friends or colleagues why a person is behaving the way they are, or it might involve guesswork.
No matter what approach you decide to take, you’ll always discover something surprising: their behavior comes as a result of misdirected pain.
Whether that pain is:
- family stress,
- work pressures,
- a break up or divorce,
- a tragedy,
- triggered inner child,
- something more vague like depression,
- fear of failure,
- fear of abandonment,
- low self-esteem,
- anxiety
- or even a spiritual cause such as the dark night of the soul or soul loss,
… when a person doesn’t know how to deal with their pain they will misdirect it towards others. And that equals pain, multiplied.
But you can break this cycle of pain and you can stop it from impacting your thoughts, your feelings, and life.
Learning how to emotionally understand a person is the best way to do that.
How to Liberate Yourself From Anger, Hatred, Bitterness, and Resentment Toward Another
It’s annoying and triggering to realize that our hatred, anger, and bitterness toward another person is:
- Eating away at our sanity
- Starving us of well-being
- Causing anxiety and/or depression
- Making us feel alone in the world
- Reinforcing victim mentality
- Alienating us from joy
- Disempowering us
Let me be clear:
I’m not advocating becoming a doormat, letting others overstep your boundaries, becoming a bleeding heart, or staying in a toxic relationship.
I’m advocating freedom from hatred.
I’m calling those who are sick and tired of feeling browbeaten by others to reclaim a sense of empowerment through love and compassion.
No, you don’t need to excuse their behavior.
No, you don’t need to enable their behavior.
And you certainly don’t need to bend over backward for these people.
I know this is not easy. It’s a lifelong process.
But if you’d like to experience more inner freedom again, here are some paths:
1. Do some cleansing breathwork
Release your inner rage and disgust through the power of your breath. There are many different techniques described in a step-by-step way in our breathwork article.
2. Purge your inner feelings through intense exercise
Go out in nature. Get some vitamin D. Walk or run it all out. Active forms of spiritual meditation are also another good option for releasing pent-up emotions.
3. Explore how to let go
There are many practices out there – over 40 of them are listed in this letting go guide.
***
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Next time a person treats you badly, stop.
Let yourself feel your emotions of anger and resentment, but also let them pass.
Ask yourself, “What type of pain is this person feeling that is causing them to act out in this way?”
Then, allow yourself to expand as you open yourself to empathy and forgiveness.
At the end of the day, the desire to be free of anger is not about them, but about YOU. How free do you want to feel in life? How much empowerment and happiness do you want to carry with you, no matter what?
You author are way off the beam on this one. There are good dogs and bad dogs. We are just animals. Bad dogs ought to be put down so the herd is safe. You can see just where a child is going from the time its born. Its essential nature is set at birth. This psychobabble is bs. Bullies are born not made. It’s all in the DNA.
Thanks Peter, I can’t say I subscribe to such a simplistic view of the world in ‘black and white’ terms. Modern science has demonstrated enough the role of not only genetics, but environment, in affecting our personalities. And the idea that if we get rid of all the bad people, only the good will be left is ridiculous…we all have the capacity for evil.
I’m going through a crazy time in my life. Not that everything is crazy around me, a lot of that stuff has settled at the moment. But, inwardly I feel very stirred up. I haven’t really delved into my inner world for a long time and it’s been hard.
I appreciate all the articles you have posted thus far. They have been little beacons for me to keep going when I’ve felt sad, lonely, or afraid. Thank you.
If you worked through your pain from this you might see this for what it is. This is exactly the problem with the world. They don’t want to find the root of the problem just jail them or throw them away basically. There isn’t very many humans that are born and just automatically start doing evil things. They are first children. And those children are not nurtured during the most crucial years of their development. Either by circumstance or parents choice. If they’re not nurtured they don’t feel safe. If they don’t feel safe they will do what they have to do to protect themselves. If they have to do selfish acts( as children they shouldn’t be considered selfish acts they should be considered acts of survival since that is all they are doing …acting out of pure instinct to survive) to make sure they eat or get something they need, and that act or behavior works in accomplishing this, then they will repeat it. And there you have the beginning of what you want to continue to label as such, to suit your own painful experiences. While I’m not belittling them, they’re yours. They don’t actually make these people monsters or throw aways. They were children who didn’t get the chance to develop in a civilized way or somehow didn’t get certain basic needs met. Or were abused and felt unsafe from then on. Dont let your pain cloud what is happening. People are being executed and jailed and killed and thrown into institutions bc people don’t nurture their fucking children the way they need to be. It should be told and taught to every person giving birth that you must nurture this child and provide it with food clothing shelter and LOVE in order to create a person who will grow up and stand a chance to be a whole person. This all starts with the first person these babies see. How these babies themselves are treated is their 1st experience. and the relationship of their caretakers or people in their household is their 1st experience seeing it displayed. You mean to tell me that has nothing to do with the relationship that baby will have in its future ? It’s everything to do with it. Nurture your babies even when you think you shouldn’t. Bc right now our world is in so much pain that could’ve been avoided if we weren’t afraid to nurture our sons til they’re at least 3 yo. Jesus they’re treated like they’re supposed to be men already and never nurtured esp by their fathers. Bc why? Possibly bc their father didn’t nurture them and so on. It starts with babies. Who turn into adults with wounded inner child still inside and there you have the shit show that is our world today.
“They are first children. And those children are not nurtured during the most crucial years of their development. Either by circumstance or parents choice. If they’re not nurtured they don’t feel safe. If they don’t feel safe they will do what they have to do to protect themselves.” – yes, I absolutely agree. It is rare that someone is born a total psychopath. It all begins with wounding as a child. We are suffering from a pandemic of **wounded children**, turned into wounded adults who hurt each other. Thank you for sharing this Camille. Let’s nurture our children and extend that to ourselves and each other.
At 70 and always having analysed people and life, from experience, I truly believe that people can be BORN either nasty or good. If anyone has had pain, I have, and yet it would not enter my mind ever to be unkind or take revenge. My narcissistic mother however told me stories about her childhood where unwittingly she was admitting as to what a horror she must have been for her parents (and until she died at 94, she manipulated, triangulated and enjoyed stirring up trouble). My son seems to have inherited her exact ways, (dominating, blaming, arrogant dogmatic, and extremely selfish) while my daughter was and is, always kind and helpful to everyone, ever since she was a toddler.
I am quite a few years from 70 but as a 48 year old, I can vouch what you have said. There are people born this way. We used to call them different terms, but out of political correctness, started just labeling them “sociopaths.” This is what’s so ironic about this article. The author claims that calling people sociopaths is dehumanizing them. On the contrary, the term “sociopath” was created precisely as a form of humanizing cruel people. Before that term, people were just called “evil” or “monsters” or “diabolical”, etc. And then the psychiatry world said, “No, no, no, we mustn’t call them that.”
In any event, I have dealt with sociopaths. They are real, and their cruelty and meanness has nothing to do with pain. It’s literally how they were “wired.” For whatever reason, they grew up completely lacking an empathy chip or sense of humanity that plays out irrespective of “trauma” or “pain”. In fact, many of them are extremely well-adjusted and happy, because their entire state of being is based on acquiring things and seeing other people as merely an extension of getting what they want. Meaning: they don’t really ask for much outside of cheap gratification, so the depth of whatever emotional pain or hurt they experience is very shallow, even in those cases when it shouldn’t be.
To put things in perspective, a bleeding heart might look at a sociopath’s past and see that the loss of his mother at the age of 8 was what made him become a nasty person later in life. The problem with that conclusion is that the person who thinks that doesn’t realize that the loss of a parent is different for a normal person than it is for a sociopath. For a regular person, losing a parent at that age would be a lifelong, traumatic experience, but for a sociopath it would only be upsetting in the sense of, “There is no mommy or daddy anymore to buy me toys and things. How unfair!” This is the type of person who later grows up to be a grifter, gold digger or cat fisher always on the prowl looking for someone to support them financially, because for them, the worst thing about losing a parent was losing out on all the nice things they were given.
I know this example above sounds like exaggeration, but that’s literally how sociopaths think. I’ve seen this too many times to know that their behavior doesn’t come from pain but from a very shallow place, and the person who thinks that sociopaths don’t exist or need to be empathized with because they’re “just like the rest of us” and are merely acting out of “pain” is just setting themselves to be exploited.
Don’t let hatred consume you from being the best person you can be, immersing yourself with hatred for others prevents personal development. Everyone has the capacity to shine brighter than the sun, just make sure you bring the appropriate sunblock for those pesky UV rays that persist on burning you.
❤
As an emotional sensitive person growing up with a sometimes cruel mother Ive learned the hard way that its not my responsibility to absorb or carry other peoples pain. Its alot of undoing and unlearning emotional burdens that were not mine to carry in the first place. I still often feel responsible and guilty for other peoples emotions, especially anger. I now understand more about the pain and fear behind peoples cruel words and violence that I feel more compassion for them but at the same time I release myself of the burdens of carrying their unresolved issues. Ive bettered learned to set boundaries , to stand up for myself and better yet, to stay clear from these toxic people.
I have learned that some of the cruelest, most selfish people live the longest. They don’t hurt others because they are wounded. They hurt others because they don’t care.
Maybe they don’t care because they are wounded?
hi there,
I was wondering why everybody is wounded and hurt? It is said that everything in nature is balanced.But i can not see even a single person who can say that he or she is happy. And i am no different. I have hurt people and have been hurt.Could not find how nature balances it.
Thanks
I was in a toxic relationship with my ex and she hurt me a lot. We both had mental problems (depression) and we broke up in the worst way. But now that I am wiser and older, i look back at that relationship and i feel guilty; because I feel like I could help her to love herself. How can I move on from this feeling ?
There is no guarantee that what works for some people will work for everybody in the same situation. You need to do what you believe is best in your personal situation and not compare with others. Not everything is for everybody.
Well said, Alexandra. Sometimes the best thing to do is to run for the hills! Understanding that all malicious behavior stems from deep inner pain doesn’t mean we should allow ourselves to become pushovers. We need to set strong boundaries and put down a firm foot. This article just helps others to understand the emotional dynamics of this hurtful behavior.
I see how it rolls from a different angle… Floating / hovering like watching animals in a cage in a Zoo. Like the Paul Simon song it’s All happening at the zoo… if that’s how this violent systemic syndrome rules and rolls Detachment is necessary for one’s emotional well-being. A character defect is not something one can fix in another person only in oneself with a commitment to become the best person one can be. Thank God for the person that harms you and hurts you because you could so easily become such without the grace to see possibility of change for yourself! Am I like that? Yes you are to a degree or could be. It’s like getting an injection of an antitoxin when one encounters such people as these. Sure you can forgive but realize that it’s dangerous to trust someone who hasn’t changed. One doesn’t have to let them in your life no more on an intimate level if that’s what you’ve done. Yay you can be free of commitment to Tar-Baby.
So in other words we are expected to have compassion and understanding for people who have issues that hurt us? most of my life have have been hurt by others who had issues. i thought it was me. it altered my life and hurt me in a profound way. i cannot understand why they have to make life so difficult. i see it as an act of selfishness.
For example in the workplace. we all have to put in our eight hours. why be ignorant and mean to your co-workers? if everyone does their job why is it that there is so much disrespect? It is absurd. I don’t care if no one likes another for whatever reason but they need to cut it out. i have never had malicious or devious intent towards anyone. It creates a toxic enviroment.
It seems I’m repeatedly the butt of my bf’s cruelty and I can attest it doesn’t feel good to be hurt. But I’m stupid for staying I guess. My confidence has been worn down so much that I feel I’m such a failure so what’s the point of leaving. At least I have some good days. I feel so pathetic. In the past I’ve looked within, tried to understand his behaviour and words, tried to put myself in his shoes and I forgave. It doesn’t work if you keep allowing that person to hurt you repeatedly.
Fran, I don’t know if you’ll see this, but I hope you’ve gotten away from him by now.
Forgive him but get away from him. There’s a certain point where forgiveness won’t help anyone but yourself. You’re not pathetic, you’re not a failure. He is directing cruelty toward you for his own reasons, but you shouldn’t tolerate that. It would help both of you if you were away from him. You must put yourself first, and show him that his behaviour will not be tolerated. You’re worth so much more than this. You deserve better.