The Pattern I’ve Seen
As a coach, I cross paths with many people who suffer from various mental health issues. And one of the most unfortunate symptoms of these issues is a lack of awareness as to how it’s affecting you socially.
More specifically, I often see people who believe they are the victim of others, when in reality the person is contributing equally if not more so to the conflicts they find themselves in.
Numerous times, I’ve had some poor soul come to me for support, only to later have them turn on me in a way that surprises and baffles me. The first few times this happened, I thought maybe it was something I was doing. I can be a bit offensive and even harsh sometimes with my radical honesty, so of course it’s inevitable that I will accidentally cross the line.
But there were a few times where even when I brought in an objective third party, they were equally confused about how outraged someone I was helping had become. The other person’s reaction just didn’t make sense.
Slowly, I started to realise the pattern I was seeing. It goes something like this:
The Story
Someone who clearly has mental health issues comes to me seeking support with confidence building and communication. They tell me a story about how they are bullied and mistreated by others, a story many of my clients share. I give them the benefit of the doubt and believe their version of events as I have no reason to suspect they are lying.
Their story always sounds like they are surrounded by a narcissistic family, or nasty friends, or unreasonable work colleagues. Their partners are abusers, and their family members are teaming up against them, and so on.
They describe other “bullying” as well. They are ostracized from online groups, isolated during hobbies, or their friends team up against them.
It always sounds like they are victims who are targeted by nearly everyone.
And then I would see evidence from the other side of the story…
The Counter-Evidence
Sometimes I meet with their partner. Sometimes I see them post a comment online. Sometimes they turn against me and email me aggressively.
That’s when their “victim” story starts to show some inconsistencies.
It’s not that they are consciously lying to me; I think they believe they genuinely are the victims, and they believe their own communication is fair and reasonable.
But they are wrong.
I discover that their partners were actually trying their best to deal with someone who’s unpredictable, nasty and indirect. I see the way they argue online with strangers, and it’s obvious as to why they get banned from groups or blocked by friends. Their communication is reactive, aggressive, judgmental, mean, and sometimes completely unhinged.
I’ve had guys who I’ve been helping for free suddenly misinterpret something neutral that I’ve said and turn 180 on me, suddenly becoming my enemy. They react as if I’ve attacked them personally. It makes no sense at all, even to others who I ask if I’d missed something.
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You might be one of these people
If you often find yourself in similar conflicts, and it’s with a wide range of people over a long period of time, in a range of different circumstances and occurring in multiple situations, YOU might be the problem.
And you might not be able to see it.
If nothing else, you must recognise you’re the common denominator. It takes two to tango, and it seems that a lot of different people find you easy to get into conflict with.
What you’re experiencing is not the norm. Most people go through life enduring very few conflicts. It’s rare for most people to find themselves repeatedly being bullied, mocked, attacked and ostracized. I don’t say this to shame you or make you feel like a weirdo, but to emphasize that this is not random. Something you’re doing is making conflict more likely.
Look at your general social life. Is there a pattern of being isolated, or losing friends consistently? This could be the symptom of you being someone who unwittingly provokes a lot of conflict and is difficult to get along with for a lengthy period of time.
I think it’s a common trauma response. When you’ve been bullied for being different, or treated badly by family, or betrayed by loved ones etc., it’s only natural to develop a defense mechanism. Some become people pleasers. Some hide away. Some change their whole personality.
And certain people become reactive.
The paranoia and lack of experience with loving interactions can lead one to become prickly, to struggle with healthy communication, and to lack self-awareness during conflict escalation.
Added to that, if you’ve developed a victim-identity, your cognitive biases will constantly reframe the evidence you see to support the idea that you’re trying to be good and other people are evil.
It might be massively uncomfortable to challenge this misanthropic belief. You might look through your messages or reflect on the arguments you’ve had and still feel like you’ve been reasonable, or at least you weren’t the one to start the conflict. And that possibly is the case, however…
There are a few things you must admit
Firstly, any conversation that continued into a conflict was only able to continue because you kept interacting. That was your choice. You could have walked away or stopped responding. So even if they started it, you kept it going.
Secondly, if this happens with a range of different people, you can’t claim this is random. You’re getting a cross-section of people and yet somehow arriving at the same result of conflict. This evidence points to you as being provocative.
Thirdly, even if it’s subconscious you choose who you engage with and are attracted to in any way. You’re consistently bringing “bad” people into your life, or at least finding yourself drawn into interactions with people who seem to struggle to communicate with you. So even if it were true that they were “bad” people, there’s clearly a pattern happening that is more about who you choose to interact with. Believe it or not, most people are conflict-averse. You have to hunt for people who want a fight.
If you want to resolve this, you must take responsibility for the conflict. Sure, other people are playing their part, but their self-development is none of your business.
Conflict is a Reflection of Your Development
I can tell you with full certainty: the more I developed my confidence, the less I found myself having to deal with difficult people (unless it was a choice as part of my work). I was less attractive or attracted to damaged people who are highly likely to engage in conflict. It became clear that my own self worth and mental health was the main determining factor in how I was treated by others.
I also learned that my own communication was far from perfect. Sometimes even asking what felt was an innocent question came across as judgmental and provocative. What I felt were neutral or fair statements were actually objectively insulting, offensive, or at the very least incredibly easy to misinterpret as something negative.
One thing that breaks my heart in my line of work is I will help someone build their confidence to be more assertive with setting boundaries etc., but unbeknownst to me they become even more cruel, mean, and unreasonable. It turns out that assertiveness is not really their problem. It’s their poor communication skills and judgmental outlook that’s causing their social struggles.
Many of these people have a disorder or mental illness that interferes with empathy; the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes – an important element of compassion. When you have an undiagnosed and untreated Personality Disorder, or you’re on the autism spectrum and don’t realise you have major social blindspots, it can be incredibly difficult to see how unintentionally nasty you can be.
You might tell yourself a story that you’re “blunt” or “just being honest” or “calling it like you see it” or “just standing up for yourself”, or something along those lines, but you might be much further over the line of respect than you realise. You might stray so far into being hurtful and judgmental that you’re anything but truthful or accurate.
Symptoms
Here are some warning signs that you might suffer from lack of self awareness in this area:
People constantly seem to “misunderstand” you, and you feel that they aren’t trying to see your point of view, or are deliberately misinterpreting you.
You think nearly everyone is being “passive aggressive” when they say things you feel angry about.
The people you have conflict with don’t also have the same degree of conflict with others – you seem to be the only one they consistently struggle with.
If you’re being honest with yourself, you’ll admit some of the things you say or write have clear insults or contain derogatory remarks. Regardless of whatever excuse you give yourself, you clearly say mean things to people.
More than once you’ve been given official warnings, had conflicts escalated to HR, or been kicked out of groups that seem to be reasonably healthy or contain reasonably decent people.
You think nearly all the people who have mistreated you are “narcissists”, as if you have incredibly bad luck to constantly find yourself getting stuck with a personality type that is actually rare (less than 3% of the population have Narcissistic Personality Disorder).
You feel reluctant to get objective third party feedback about your side of conflicts (e.g. don’t want to show your coach a screenshot of your message-based conflict), or you only share stories about your conflicts that paint you as the victim and fail to acknowledge your 50% of the escalation.
Things seem to “suddenly” go bad with people whom you were originally getting along well with, and this is a repeated pattern.
You don’t have an amicable friendship with your ex-partners; you’re now enemies or unable to communicate.
You feel generally misanthropic, i.e. you have a basic underlying dislike or hatred of humans as a general group. You’re pessimistic about people in general, and view them as weak, or cruel, or stupid as a species.
You’ve more than once had people directly say/message things like, “I don’t want any more contact with you” or “Please don’t message me any more” and other variations where they seem to politely but firmly end the connection with you… AND you have disrespected their wishes with further attempts at communication.
If you can say Yes to two or more of the things on this list, then you are having more conflict than the average person, and clearly having some baseline struggles with creating a harmony with other people.
What to Do About It
This doesn’t have to be a life sentence, though it might feel like one so far.
You can completely turn this around if you’re willing to accept two crucial pieces of truth:
Firstly, you must take responsibility for this problem. From choosing to connect with the wrong people through to having consistent communication flaws, you must accept that you both cause and continue conflicts with others, and it’s on you to change if you want a better social experience.
And secondly, you must accept the possibility that there are good, kind, decent and friendly people out there, and some of them will want to be your friend or more, provided you get your communication skills and conflict-related beliefs sorted out.
If you can’t accept either of these things, then I’m afraid you’re beyond help for now.
In general, there are four areas you may need to work on:
- improving your communication skills during feelings of disagreement;
- choosing healthier people to connect and interact with;
- developing enhanced empathy and compassion for others;
- managing your anger and other conflict-provoking emotions.
Depending on who you are, you might not need to work on all of these, and you certainly can’t do them all at once. So think carefully about the conflict in your life, and try to identify which of these would have the most leverage for you – which should you tackle first?
For communication skills, I recommend my Powerful Honesty course. For choosing healthy people and developing empathy, I recommend my Building Rapport course. And for managing emotions I have a course specific to emotional control. These are all located in the Classroom of my Brojo Skool.
Another thing you can do is go back to people you’ve had conflict with – if they’ll still speak with you – and humbly admit that you are working on this and want to improve. Ask if they can give you feedback as to what they think you did during the conflict to either provoke it or make it worse.
Choose carefully: someone nasty who bullies you etc. won’t be a good source of feedback here. Rather, look for someone who seemed to be patient and tried their best to keep things civil; someone who doesn’t seem to have beef with others like they did with you.
How you can make massive progress in just a few months!
You can do all this on your own.
Through trial and error, books, courses and online content, you can figure it out slowly piece by piece over time if you dedicate yourself to it and are willing to fail often and get uncomfortable in order to achieve social mastery and build strong self confidence.
Or…
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It took me about 7-10 years to figure this stuff out on my own. It takes my average coaching client only about 3-6 months to achieve a level of mastery that leaves them able to continue coaching themselves to further success while feeling absolutely certain that they’re on the right path (proven by the results they get).
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Thanks for reading
Hope to speak to you soon
Dan Munro