The Psychology Of Mean People And How To Deal With Them
Theo Harrison
How to Deal with the mean people in your life? Mean people are a dime a dozen. The world has a lot of toxic people who are hellbent on spreading negativity and bring out the worst in us. They have no qualms about hating you, insulting you, do bad things to you, or at least wish ill for you.
Personally, I have encountered more mean people in my life than I would like to remember and most of the time they tick me off. I respond either by acting mean with them or I simply move away. But it’s not always as simple as that. These toxic individuals can be very persistent, cruel, malicious and hateful and they can very well ruin our daily life.
The negative attitude of difficult people can be very contagious and it can easily affect our mental and emotional well being without us even realizing it. Trying to reason with them is a futile attempt as they deliberately act mean which can be very maddening, frustrating and even terrifying at times. The fact is you can never reason or talk rationally with an unreasonably toxic person. Why are people mean?
Mean people are haters, bullies and highly negative. But why are they like this? Why do they deliberately impact our mindset more than they need to with their meanness? Most difficult and mean people are excessively consumed by jealousy, hatred, and bitterness and it often leaks out in their interactions with others. They often feel happy when something bad happens to others and will usually find faults when you manage to achieve something they haven’t. So why are they like this? Well, some people are just born like that. But there is another more understandable reason. Although it may sound strange, most people act mean because they are hurt. They have experienced excessive emotional pain and mental trauma at some point in their lives which crushed their spirit.
It could be their parents, or other people they trusted who hurt them when their guard was down. Now they are scared that they will never stop feeling this numbing pain inside or that it may happen again if they allow someone into their lives or act nice with others. And all that pain has given birth to a lot of anger that cannot be contained inside any longer. So toxic people mainly react out of their impulse of anger which makes them aggressive and means.
As I said earlier, anyone can act mean given the right circumstances, however, most of us choose to behave decently and ethically as long as we are not provoked. Mean and toxic people are constantly in the “right circumstances” zone as they are unable to experience sound mental and emotional health which motivates them to be mean to others.
Now that you have some idea about what may drive a mean person to be negative and toxic, hopefully, you realize that it’s not about you. It’s never your fault and their meanness is mostly a reflection of their own corrupted thinking or flaw. Mean people will always find some reason, no matter how minor, to react and release their pain, anger, and negativity. So it is crucial that you don’t take it personally. Understand that you do not deserve such treatment or behavior and it’s not your fault. This will help you to protect your emotional and mental well being and give you the strength to deal with the toxic person. The best thing you can do to deal with them is not engaged or get involved. You can always choose to walk away and not react to their negativity. They are already suffering internally and they will face further consequences for their behavior sooner or later. You don’t need to take revenge or fight fire with fire.
