How to Deal With Unreasonable People
A few years ago, we had a "guys weekend." A few of my friends and their boys decided to go up north to a cottage. I was driving up with my son, one of my friends and his two boys. We were barely 30 minutes from our house (of a three-hour journey), and I was already, internally, losing my shit. The three boys were in the back, and they were rambunctious and unruly. After a few warnings, I finally said to my son, "Get your boys under control back there!"
He responded, "But Dad, what do you always tell me?"
I nervously shifted in my seat, wondering which of the many lines he would quote.
He said, "You always tell me you can't control anyone else's behaviour, only your own."
Cheeky little guy, isn't he?
He's not wrong, though. How often do we mutter the words, "They made me do it!" Or, "What choice did I have?" We're all guilty of this. We shift the blame; we avoid the real issue, we never contribute to the actual problem. The other person's actions are always unreasonable, and it's because of them (and their comments) that we reacted the way that we did. It's not our fault; they are being unreasonable.
When I was doing my conflict management training, a teacher of mine frequently said, "there's a reasonable reason for unreasonable behaviour." My gut reaction to that was visceral. Of course, they are unreasonable, and I'm willing to bet there's a reasonable reason that they're an asshole.
Over the last decade of doing this work, I've realized just how true this saying is. We think what they are doing/saying is unreasonable because that's the perspective we are coming from. They, believe it or not, likely believe you're unreasonable as well.
It's a Reaction Cycle
When we deal with people that, we feel, are being unreasonable, we'll commonly fall into the reaction cycle. We'll say a comment; they'll react to that comment; we'll react to their reaction, and so on. We're no longer listening to what they have to say. They're formulating a response in their mind while we're talking. We'll start discounting their perspectives because...they're wrong! That is the process for us both becoming unreasonable.
And yes, they might be wrong. Their perspective may be flawed. They may not have all the facts. And, their perspective may have a nugget of truth in it as well.
It Starts With You
It seems unreasonable to say that it starts with you, but that's the truth. Only you can control your behaviour, including how you react, perceive, and respond to the comments in front of you. We can quickly and easily move to blaming others, and that is part of the problem. Brene Brown defines blame as "the simple discharging of pain and discomfort." It's something that we project on others, something we needed to 'get off our chest,' something that doesn't help us when we're dealing with people.
When dealing with unreasonable people, it's easy to blame them because they spark something within us that leads to a full-fledged house fire. That's when we come from a place of judgement, and it doesn't help us navigate the conversation in front of us.
Instead of casting blame, what if we took responsibility for our own behaviour? Owned what was ours to own and laid down what was not? What would it look like for us to invite the other person to take responsibility for what was theirs? What would happen if we shifted our mindset of judgement into a spirit of curiosity? What if we started exploring the reasonable reasons behind that person's unreasonable behaviour?
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