How to Make Someone Feel Badly In Your Presence
Photo by Abigail Keenan on Unsplash
I spent last week in a government mandated hotel quarantine waiting to be admitted to my final destination, Ubud Bali.
8 days just me, my thoughts, and all the time in the world to psycho-analyze all my interactions (more than normally).
It made me wonder how we ever got through the earliest months of the pandemic.
The inspiration for this article is a long over-due follow-up to my wildly popular piece published last summer and named one of 2020’s favorite publication picks, How to Make Someone Feel Good in Your Presence.
The response was overwhelmingly positive. The comments section, heartwarming.
It really illuminated how much we do care about others and how they feel in our presence.
Here’s a spin, a new take, and an updated perspective — how to make someone feel badly in your presence.
Be Impatient
I was at a workshop in the first part of the week aimed at helping introverts to feel more confident in social situations. As you might expect, there were a lot of people who struggled with feeling socially ‘awkward’ and who lacked skill freely expressing themselves. Having been one of those people in my past, I have a lot of compassion for spaces like this and for anyone who is trying to break out of their shell.
One of the participants bravely spoke up and asked a completely relevant question for the speaker about workplace dynamics. Struggling to articulate what she needed help with, she had 2 more follow-up questions.
Her questions were a little bit clunky, pieced together, and it was clear this was an edge for her being seen vulnerably in such a large group full of strangers.
I was impressed and celebrated this woman’s courage.
Another participant however, had the opposite experience and after the third back-and-forth exchange between the introverted woman and the speaker, the impatient participant took herself off mute and interrupted both of them to insert her thoughts.
The result: the vulnerable exchange was bulldozed by the impatient woman’s desire to give a quicker solution and just move on.
I was in shock.
It was so off-the-rails and hugely inappropriate.
The impatient participant trying to “top” the speaker and chime in with her unsolicited advice.
That, is how you make others feel badly in your presence.
Being so impatient you can’t give someone the dignity of expressing themselves and running someone over with your “more important” idea needing to dominate a space.
Takeaway: some people open and express themselves at a completely different pace than you might which is, slowly.
It’s vulnerable to be a human with complex feelings, experiences, and desires.
It’s even more vulnerable to allow others to see us in our discovery and share what’s not working in our lives. If someone has trusted you enough to open up, or claim space in a learning environment, honor that. Even if it’s going on too long and you’re dying inside, just be a polite, considerate human and wait until the person’s done speaking and gracefully excuse yourself.
Giving someone the gift of your time, presence, and attention makes you someone others want to be around.
Being impatient, does not.
Constantly Be Seeking Out Approval
I can see this pattern so clearly in others because I used to be stuck in this way of being.
Needing others to validate me, to tell me I was a good person, and needing constant reassurance that I was liked or belonged.
It did not feel good to wake up to the realization that a lot of the people I kept around simply as placeholders. People who stroked my ego and people who told me what I wanted to hear.
When I was confused why my relationships lacked depth or meaning and started to explore why I felt resentful towards the people in my life I realized, I didn’t even like their company. I just kept them around to feel better about myself.
It was an ugly realization and not something I’m proud of but I’ve worked hard to be a much more honest version of myself today— someone who is able to take care of my own needs instead of offload the responsibility of my sense of worth onto others.
There’s someone in my life stuck in this trap and it’s painful to witness and be around. I can literally feel them in every interaction pulling for my approval. Pulling for me to acknowledge something they’ve done, tell them they did a good job, and reassure them they’re on the right path and doing the right thing.
It’s quite honestly, exhausting.
This person has never slowed down to check in on how I’m doing. Spends the majority of our interactions oversharing, taking up all the space, and just emotionally dumping.
They have no attention on anyone except themselves and are in a self-centered state of fear or insecurity nearly every time we cross paths.
This, is the fastest way to make someone feel badly in your presence.
It’s not the responsibility of others to make you feel good about yourself and it’s unfair to expect the people in your life to constantly be reassuring you of your inherent value as a human.
Certainly, there are times and places we all need some encouragement but if your default setting is constant insecurity that leaves others on the hook to hold and manage just watch as they slowly start to pull away.
We gravitate towards people who respect themselves and who aren’t hiring the people in their life to prove their worthiness.
Takeaway: don’t outsource your sense of self worth. Look at how you’re using your relationships. Are you always taking and consuming from the people in your life, or do you have a genuine interest in others and how you can help them?
Take a minute to check-in. If your relationships lack depth or if you struggle to keep quality people in your life. There’s a good chance it’s you, not them.
Be Ungrounded/Unconscious of Your Energy
Listen, we’ve all had rough days or rough periods of our lives.
When things don’t go according to plan, when our relationships are in flux, or when our sense of security or certainty has been threatened.
I’ve been there.
I’ve had chaotic moments.
I’ve had unexpected plot twists.
I’ve had full existential breakdowns questioning everything.
But if we’re the friend who always has a problem, always feels scattered and all over the place, it doesn’t feel good to be around.
I’m personally very sensitive and can feel when someone is ungrounded and unconsciously dumping their chaos onto me.
It’s a ride I’m no longer available for in my relationships 1) because it’s so disruptive and 2) because there are so many tools you can integrate into your life to center yourself before throwing that energy onto others.
I didn’t used to have these tools.
I didn’t used to have the ability to pause and check-in before reaching out to things or people outside of me for relief.
I didn’t used to be able to self-regulate and I didn’t even have the awareness when I was in that type of chaotic energy. It was all unconscious and the people in my life were victims to it.
It had an impact.
Friends stopped responding to my communications as frequently.
My family lost their patience.
And it seemed like the only other people in my life had disorganized lives too.
Because, well, like attracts like.
When everything came to a climax, my most serious relationship ended, I had a major panic attack, and managed to alienate some dear friends — I finally got the message.
I was the problem and something needed to change. My energy did not feel good to be connected to and I was taking people on a ride of dysfunction.
Waking up to this was painful. I had a lot of guilt and shame. I so deeply wanted healthy relationships but they felt really out of reach. It was a painful and lonely realization.
So, I did a few very drastic things.
I deleted all my social media for a year to recenter and reconnect with myself. To learn who I was without all the outside influences and comparison traps.
I hired an amazing therapist and showed up twice a month, sometimes weekly to EMDR sessions. We uncovered massive amounts of PTSD I had unknowingly been living with. Of course I wasn’t able to self regulate. I had tons of unexamined trauma that those in my life were interacting with instead of my true self.
I committed to a consistent yoga and movement practice and showed up 4–5 times a week. I learned how to connect my mind, body, and breath and learned how to slow down. To quiet my thoughts and move through life more intentionally and patiently. To be with discomfort.
I worked a 12 step program and got a sponsor. I looked at how I wasn’t being honest with myself which caused a massive amount of dissonance in my body and my life. I wasn’t in alignment, I said yes when I meant no. I stayed in relationships that weren’t healthy for me. I minimized my needs or wasn’t in touch with them at all. All these ways of being had me feel unsettled, ungrounded, uncomfortable, and constantly looking for ways to get my needs met in usually, unhealthy ways. I had tons of destructive coping mechanisms, one of which was using other people as a life raft when my life was a mess.
Now, I have morning practices and routines. I have a box of tools I can reach into when I’m not feeling like myself or don’t feel centered. It’s empowering and I relate to my entire life with a whole new sense of personal responsibility.
As a result, people constantly tell me that “I’m so Zen” which is…hilarious.
I have quality relationships with people who are healthy and grounded themselves and I have the ability to be with uncomfortable feelings and experiences and know I’m going to be ok.
Takeaway: learn how to self-regulate yourself. Invest in healing your nervous system. Set up daily mindfulness practices and be disciplined with your time and routines. Don’t rely on others to soothe your problems or make you feel better when you’re spinning out. Run through your own practices first and then reach out for intentional guidance or support when you’ve done the work first to see what’s really going on.
After almost 2 years of global pandamodonium we simply have less space and less tolerance for bulls*t in our relationships and our connections.
It’s 2021, there are a wealth of resources available to improve and better yourself.
Be someone that’s patient and grounded. Be someone that’s self-aware and that has a deep sense of internal trust and confidence. Be someone that leaves others better than they found them. Be someone that others feel good in the presence of.
Want to know what’s really keeping you from finding love? In my 60 min masterclass How to Find Your Partner in Crime, I’ll walk you through the pitfalls that keep women just like you from experiencing lasting love. AND I’ll show you how to shift your perspective so you can stop repeating sabotaging patterns. Claim your spot HERE to join me live.