Making aggravators respect your boundaries

[Vaom]

I noticed that my post is not up anymore for some reason and I can’t find this type of information anywhere on the internet so I just thought I would repost.

I know that a common thing that people say is that you need to learn where your boundaries are and communicate to people where they are so that they don’t overstep them. However, I have a lot of difficulty when it comes to enforcing my boundaries with people because I can never tell if the person is going to be cool with what I tell them or whether they are going to take that information and antagonize me with it.

I’ve encountered people in my life that just seem to get a rise out of aggravating people (i.e., trolls), and I know the worst thing you can do with these people is tell them what bothers you because they feed off of this information and will deliberately start engaging in the behaviour that they know bothers you. When I get the sense that someone is this type of person I end up being really guarded and can’t stop myself from lying and pretending that something doesn’t bother me so that they can’t use this information against me.

Does anyone have any solutions with dealing with these people that doesn’t require endless lying, because I can’t think of anything. Is the solution to just get to a point where those things don’t bother you anymore so that you don’t have to lie to trolls? Or is the only solution to try and avoid these people at all costs and just lie to them when I can’t avoid them?

Topic

[Anonymous]

I’d say you’re somewhat upset because you’ve posted in the forum, so faking until you make it is not the answer, you’ll have lost self respect which is essential to your growth and development. Furthermore, you don’t want to make this a habit. It will hurt all your relationships. No woman wants a doormat.

You’re worried about the outcome. You’ll feel stronger if you confront the person.

• I’ve done this on the job with an annoying woman who kept going after I asked her to stop. She even announced to others she was getting under my skin. I  gave her the silent treatment: checkmate. Then she complained that I talked to everyone but her.

Always respect yourself first and foremost. Indifference must come naturally to be effective.

[Leigh]

If you stopped caring about the things they’re attacking you on, would you still need to lie? Would it matter what they said?

[Vaom]

I’d say you’re somewhat upset because you’ve posted in the forum, so faking until you make it is not the answer, you’ll have lost self respect which is essential to your growth and development. Furthermore, you don’t want to make this a habit. It will hurt all your relationships. No woman wants a doormat.

You’re worried about the outcome. You’ll feel stronger if you confront the person.

• I’ve done this on the job with an annoying woman who kept going after I asked her to stop. She even announced to others she was getting under my skin. I  gave her the silent treatment: checkmate. Then she complained that I talked to everyone but her.

Hey man. I appreciate you trying to give me advice to help me out but you’ve kind of highlighted in this example exactly what I’m talking about. You said that this person was doing something that irritated you, and when you asked her to stop, she knew at that point that it irritated you and so kept trying to do it to aggravate you. At that point you had no recourse because once you ignored her she went around complaining to everyone about you. If all the other people sympathize more with her than they do with you then it can make your life a complete nightmare. This is exactly why I feel inclined to lie in situations like this because it seems like being honest just makes the situation a million times worse.

[Vaom]

If you stopped caring about the things they’re attacking you on, would you still need to lie? Would it matter what they said?

Yes, I thought this was going to be what you were going to say and what the likely best response was. So I just need to get to the point where these things don’t irritate me. Thanks for the advice.

[Leigh]

Haha. Great to hear. That means that the message is getting through.

So, what’s your plan? What are the things you care about and what’s your plan for overcoming them? Are you going to try and let them go or are you going to try and fix them?

[Vaom]

When I first posted I was thinking the things that bothers me most was people ordering me around, but I realized that there is something that bothers me even more that has been happening with a few people recently. What will happen is that someone (usually women, but a guy was doing this as well) will start to talk with me as though they are happy to have a conversation,  and out of nowhere they will start to give one-word responses, ignore what I am saying, or stare into space for a few seconds after I finish talking before saying nothing and turning around and going and doing something else when literally seconds before they seemed like they were engaged. A lot of the time they will keep repeatedly doing this within a half-hour period or something where they keep repeatedly initiating conversations and then cutting them off after going back and forth once or a few times.

I presume they are doing this to aggravate me. I can’t really think of any other explanation and why this keeps happening because we were just having a normal conversation and I know I didn’t say anything strange, cringey, etc. At first I thought it was because I was boring them but then they go off and have a boring conversation with someone else, so I don’t think that’s the reason. I don’t care if people don’t want to talk to me but I don’t understand this behaviour where people keep repeatedly baiting you into a conversation just to cut it off.

I think it grates on me for a few reasons. The main one is that I can’t understand why it’s happening and why they do it only to me and not other people. The other reason why it bothers me is because I get irritated at giving them the satisfaction of baiting me into a conversation and then making it look like I have been the one that has been rejected when they ignore what I said.

I think the only way to deal with it is just to give one-word responses and not engage with the person at all when they try to start an interaction because it’s not like the conversation is going to go anywhere anyway. And also the better way to deal with it is to get to a place where I don’t care when someone is deliberately trying to piss me off and never wanted to talk to me in the first place, and to just find people who I genuinely enjoy the company of who don’t behave in this way anyway. I don’t think it matters if I just leave it because none of the people who do this are usually people I enjoy the company of that much anyway, and they are usually people who seem very unstable.

So, what’s your plan? What are the things you care about and what’s your plan for overcoming them? Are you going to try and let them go or are you going to try and fix them?

If the main way of dealing with things that bother me is to get to a place where they don’t bother me anymore, wouldn’t that mean that the way of fixing them is to let them go?

Sorry if this was boring to read.

[Anonymous]

How does one  get to a place where they’re bulletproof?

• The owner of a gym I worked at snatched a paper out of my hand after he heard I told a member that management needed to make some changes. The gym lost points when an auditor came because the manager forgot to assign a major task to someone besides me. I got blamed.

 

Lehigh, if someone spat in your face would you be bothered? Maybe that’s extreme.

I remember this thread being a topic in the video that came in the end game package. You talked about how someone would be unfazed by bad situations  after they had great sex. Is this a case of needing the world to be as we need because one is still getting rather than doing.

Sometimes it has worked others times not so much.

[Leigh]

I presume they are doing this to aggravate me. I can’t really think of any other explanation and why this keeps happening because we were just having a normal conversation and I know I didn’t say anything strange, cringey, etc.

Why would they do this? Why are you so significant in their life that they would go out of their way to get in a conversation with you just to aggravate you?

At the moment, you’re going through an experience, making a bunch of assumptions based on events in that experience, creating a story based on those assumptions, and then trying to solve the problem in the story based on those assumptions as well as getting angry at people based on your assumptions.

There’s nothing in here based on fact. You don’t know why people are walking away from you. They could be bored. I’m guessing, they’re bored. You say that it isn’t boredom because they’re going off and having equally boring conversations elsewhere, but just because you find those conversations boring, it doesn’t mean they’re boring to them. They’re just boring to you.

But then again, it might be something else. You’re making up a whole story that paints you as the victim of a great plot to aggravate you without any proof to back it up.

Go and find out. Ask the question and keep asking it till you get an answer. If one person won’t give it to you, find another and ask them. And then ask someone else till you get an answer. At this point in time, you’re just making things up.

Also, read this: https://lifeoperatingsystem.com/ownership/

You need this.

[Vaom]

Why would they do this? Why are you so significant in their life that they would go out of their way to get in a conversation with you just to aggravate you?

I think it could be because they’re doing it to gauge how I respond, or because they’re angry with me about something. I don’t really understand what is so perplexing about the latter because there are plenty of people who go out of their way to make other people angry. I’ve known people (including people who I’ve worked with) who are stupid enough to admit to me that they do this to other people. What I don’t understand is what it is I’m doing that is causing people to behave in this particular way to me out of nowhere when sometimes literally the day before we may have had a perfectly good conversation. What I also don’t understand is why they don’t seem to do this to anyone else. They’ll do this to me and then turn around and have a perfectly good conversation with some person two minutes later who is equally as shitty and unstable as they are.

At the moment, you’re going through an experience, making a bunch of assumptions based on events in that experience, creating a story based on those assumptions, and then trying to solve the problem in the story based on those assumptions as well as getting angry at people based on your assumptions.

There’s nothing in here based on fact. You don’t know why people are walking away from you.

Yes, I agree that there is little based on fact here. I’m just going off instinct and incomplete information because I don’t think there’s any other way in which you can figure out what’s wrong. However, it seems to me that when dealing interpersonally with other people that a lot of the time when something about someone feels wrong then usually something is, and I’m getting really tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt because usually when I do that it doesn’t seem to end well. I’m not saying that I should always have a cynical attitude towards other people, but I’m saying when something feels off I’m more inclined to just go with what I’m feeling because it seems like going with that instinct usually gets me to a better place.

Go and find out. Ask the question and keep asking it till you get an answer. If one person won’t give it to you, find another and ask them. And then ask someone else till you get an answer.

I don’t bother doing this anymore (at least to unstable people, who are the only people who do the type of thing I’m talking about here) because these people are absolutely incapable of giving you an honest answer and will just endlessly gaslight and act like nothing is going on. They literally leave you no other option but to try and figure things out for yourself. Furthermore, if someone is trying to piss you off all you’re doing by asking them this is giving them what they want because as soon as you ask them that question they’ll know that they’ve successfully pissed you off, meaning that they will be even more likely to do that thing again in the future. (This is going back to the thing I said I was concerned about in the original post as it seems like confronting trolls about their behaviour that is bothering you is likely to lead them to do that thing to you again).

Also, read this: https://lifeoperatingsystem.com/ownership/

You need this.

I’m confused about this. Isn’t “taking ownership” what I’ve been doing in regards to this? I’m trying to figure out what is causing this problem and what to do about it when the situation arises (e.g., just get to a place where it doesn’t affect me; try to figure out why it’s happening to make it easier to do something about it; lie to them and act like it’s not bothering me; stop talking to them at all and only talk to people whose company I enjoy, etc.).

 

[Leigh]

I’m confused about this. Isn’t “taking ownership” what I’ve been doing in regards to this? I’m trying to figure out what is causing this problem and what to do about it when the situation arises (e.g., just get to a place where it doesn’t affect me; try to figure out why it’s happening to make it easier to do something about it; lie to them and act like it’s not bothering me; stop talking to them at all and only talk to people whose company I enjoy, etc.).

No, at the moment, you’re trying to control and change their response. You’re trying to find tools to manipulate their response to your actions. This is not ownership. Reread the article.

[Author]

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