5 Tips To Deal With A Difficult Person In Your Life

There is going to be a time in everyone’s life when they have to deal with a difficult person, or at least someone that they perceive as difficult. These people can cause a lot of unwanted stress in your life and affect almost every aspect of it. Sometimes there are quick solutions to help when dealing with a difficult person, while other times it can be a long process.

If you find yourself in this situation, it can be easy to want to give up and walk away. However, we have some tips to deal with a difficult person that may make things much easier for you.

1. Establish and Enforce Boundaries 

When dealing with a difficult person in your life, it’s important to set and enforce boundaries.   Keeping your personal space comfortable and safe is important when taking your own mental health into account. It can be emotionally and mentally draining to handle the crushing weight a tumultuous relationship with a difficult person can put on you. 

So, drawing a line in the sand and giving yourself and the other person a set list of hard boundaries can be a helpful tool. Along with enforcing them as needed if the other person crosses any of those lines.  

2. Share Your Feelings With Them In Private

Sometimes all it takes is being down to earth, open, and honest with a difficult person in your life. The human experience is incredibly unique and we all experience it in different frequencies.  A difficult person may not understand the effect their actions and words have on others. 

Sharing your feelings with them in private isn’t always easy, but could be the right thing to do.  Practicing open communication with the difficult people in your life helps you to let go of the mental burden of holding in your thoughts and feelings, as well as gives the other party a deeper understanding of how you perceive their treatment.  

3. Find Common Ground

Although we all experience life in our own unique way, we are all capable of sharing similar experiences, thoughts, and traits, amongst other things. You and them may have more in common than you initially realize. Sometimes we think we have someone all figured out, but there’s more to people than what we see on the surface. 

With the previously mentioned act of open communication can also come finding common ground with one another.  It may bring a lighter and more personal dimension to the relationship between you and the difficult people in your life, possibly strengthening the bond you have together.  

4. See Things From Their Perspective 

It’s important to see things from the difficult person’s perspective just as much as it is that they see things from yours. Oftentimes a difficult person could be fighting battles they keep hidden within themselves. When a person is troubled and struggling inside, it is bound to come to the surface and affect those around them.  

Someone you may perceive as a “difficult person” could be a person in distress and using their unsavory behavior as a cry for help. Talk with them and try to see things from their side and you might be surprised by what you learn. 

5. Ignore Them 

In the end, if a difficult person becomes more than just a “thorn in your side”, it may be time to cut times without them altogether, or until they clean up their act. Your own mental, emotional, and physical health are more important than your relationship with a person who brings you down and doesn’t contribute anything worthwhile to your life.  

It almost never comes with ease and can be one of the most heartbreaking things you’ll have to endure, but your overall quality of life will have the opportunity to improve once the pain subsides and you’re able to heal.