Jan­ice Lear­mond-Criqui

There are few things more drain­ing than hav­ing to deal reg­u­lar­ly with some­one who shouts at you, speaks ag­gres­sive­ly, or re­sponds to you with con­stant “ste­ups­ing,” dis­mis­sive sounds, eye-rolling or oth­er ges­tures of con­tempt.

It may seem like a small thing to an out­sider, but when it hap­pens re­peat­ed­ly, it can af­fect your peace of mind. You may find your­self be­com­ing tense be­fore the per­son even speaks, re­play­ing con­ver­sa­tions af­ter­wards, or feel­ing tempt­ed to re­spond with the same lev­el of hos­til­i­ty. The chal­lenge is learn­ing how to pro­tect your peace with­out al­low­ing an­oth­er per­son’s be­hav­iour to dic­tate your own.

The first thing to re­mem­ber is that you do not have to match some­one else’s vol­ume. When a per­son rais­es their voice, our nat­ur­al in­stinct may be to raise ours as well. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this usu­al­ly turns a dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tion in­to an ar­gu­ment. In­stead, de­lib­er­ate­ly low­er your voice. Speak slow­ly and clear­ly. A calm re­sponse does not mean that you are weak or in­tim­i­dat­ed. It means you are con­trol­ling your­self rather than al­low­ing the oth­er per­son to con­trol the at­mos­phere.

You can al­so es­tab­lish a sim­ple bound­ary. You might say, “I am will­ing to dis­cuss this with you, but I am not go­ing to have the con­ver­sa­tion while you are shout­ing.” Then stop talk­ing.

Bound­aries lose their ef­fec­tive­ness when we keep ex­plain­ing them. You do not need a ten-minute speech about why shout­ing is in­ap­pro­pri­ate. State the bound­ary and act ac­cord­ing­ly.

Con­stant ste­ups­ing, mut­ter­ing, sar­casm and dis­mis­sive ges­tures can be equal­ly ir­ri­tat­ing be­cause they are of­ten de­signed to com­mu­ni­cate dis­re­spect with­out the per­son hav­ing to say very much. Again, re­sist the temp­ta­tion to chal­lenge every sound or fa­cial ex­pres­sion.

Not every­thing de­serves a re­sponse.

One of the most use­ful ques­tions you can ask your­self is: “Does this re­quire my at­ten­tion, or is this per­son sim­ply try­ing to pro­voke a re­ac­tion?” Those are two very dif­fer­ent things.

If there is an ac­tu­al is­sue to ad­dress, ad­dress it. If the be­hav­iour is mere­ly in­tend­ed to ir­ri­tate you, re­fus­ing to par­tic­i­pate may be the strongest re­sponse avail­able. This does not mean pre­tend­ing that dis­re­spect­ful be­hav­iour is ac­cept­able. It means choos­ing when and how you re­spond.

When nec­es­sary, name the be­hav­iour calm­ly. For ex­am­ple: “When you speak to me in that tone, it be­comes dif­fi­cult to have a pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tion.” No­tice that the state­ment de­scribes the be­hav­iour rather than at­tack­ing the per­son. Say­ing, “You are rude and im­pos­si­ble,” al­most guar­an­tees an ar­gu­ment. Say­ing, “I would pre­fer that we speak re­spect­ful­ly to each oth­er,” keeps the fo­cus on the stan­dard of com­mu­ni­ca­tion you ex­pect.

It is al­so im­por­tant to recog­nise when a con­ver­sa­tion is go­ing nowhere. You are al­lowed to end an un­pro­duc­tive ex­change. You can say, “We can con­tin­ue this con­ver­sa­tion when we are both able to speak calm­ly,” and re­move your­self if cir­cum­stances al­low. Walk­ing away from un­nec­es­sary con­flict is not los­ing an ar­gu­ment. Some­times it is sim­ply re­fus­ing to waste emo­tion­al en­er­gy.

Af­ter­wards, be care­ful about car­ry­ing the en­counter around with you for the rest of the day.

Peo­ple some­times stop shout­ing at us long be­fore we stop hear­ing them in our heads. We re­play the con­ver­sa­tion in the show­er, while dri­ving, and some­times at two o’clock in the morn­ing. Mean­while, the per­son who up­set us may be sleep­ing quite peace­ful­ly.

At some point, we have to men­tal­ly put the con­ver­sa­tion down. Take a walk. Lis­ten to mu­sic. Write down what hap­pened if you need to clear your thoughts. Then re­turn your at­ten­tion to your own life.

Where shout­ing, in­tim­i­da­tion or dis­re­spect be­comes per­sis­tent, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a work­place or shared en­vi­ron­ment, use tech­nol­o­gy to keep an ac­cu­rate record of in­ci­dents. Dates, times, wit­ness­es and what was ac­tu­al­ly said can be use­ful if the mat­ter lat­er needs to be ad­dressed for­mal­ly.

You can­not al­ways stop some­one from shout­ing, ste­ups­ing, mut­ter­ing or be­hav­ing bad­ly. But you can de­cide what hap­pens next. You can refuse to shout back. You can set a bound­ary. You can walk away from point­less con­flict. And you can make the very de­lib­er­ate de­ci­sion that some­body else’s be­hav­iour will not be al­lowed to steal an en­tire day of your peace.