How to Deal With Difficult People

(and not be one yourself)
It’s one of life’s biggest challenges. Seven teachers offer Buddhist wisdom and techniques to help you handle it.

Look in the Empty Mirror
Contemplative psychologist KAREN KISSEL WEGELA teaches a practice to help us see difficult people-and ourselves-more clearly.

WE HAVE ALL HAD THE EXPERIENCE of dealing with people we find difficult, and none of us wants to be a difficult person ourselves. “Through the Empty Mirror” is a contemplation that can help us bring compassion toward those we have a hard time with. It can also soften us so that we are less difficult for others.

Many traditions encourage us to walk in another’s shoes or to treat others as we would like to be treated. The “Empty Mirror” gives us a way to practice doing that. In dramatic or subtle ways, the contemplation may touch and open your heart where it has become fixed or frozen. Sometimes it is life changing for people, as it was for one man who had broken off communication with his twin brother. After doing this contemplation, he contacted his brother and the two reconnected deeply after more than a decade.

Begin by finding a quiet place and sitting down. It’s helpful to follow your breath for a few minutes as a way to calm the mind a bit. Then, think of the person you find difficult. Think of what you know about this person: their appearance, how they spend their time, what they care about, what is difficult about them for you. Then, imagine that they are sitting opposite you at eye level. Place them at whatever distance feels right. Don’t worry about getting a clear image. It’s enough to just have a sense they are there.

Notice whatever arises in you as you imagine the difficult person opposite you. What sensations, emotions, and thoughts come up? Allow whatever comes to be there. Take some time with this.

Next, in your imagination, change places with them; become the difficult person. Take your time settling into this new body. What’s it like to be this person? What do you notice in your body? In your emotions? In your thoughts? Again, take your time.

Now, as you look at the person sitting opposite you (i.e., the original you), notice what you feel toward that person. What history do you have? Notice any sensations, emotions, and thoughts that arise. Now, specifically think about what· you, now the difficult person, want from the original you.

If it’s okay with you and not harmful, imagine that, as the difficult person, you receive what you want. Notice how it feels to receive it. This step of the contemplation is optional.

Though people think they are fighting about this or that, usually they are fighting over identity-over each one’s right to be who they are. — Norman Fischer

Now, trade places again, and go back to being your original self. Once again, look at or sense the person opposite you. What arises for you now as you imagine them? If you gave them what they wanted, how would that feel for you now? When you feel ready, let the whole contemplation go and rest once again with your breathing for a few minutes. Having done the contemplation, just notice what you are experiencing, especially when you think of the other person. Notice what, if anythihas shifted. Many peopl&find that what the person wanted was.,something they could readily offer. Others find that it is out of the question.

This contemplation can help us let go of our fixed ideas about the other person. It can enable us to see them in a more rounded way and let go of any labels or stereotypes we have been holding about them. This may allow us be more open-hearted and less difficult ourselves.

The author of Contemplative Psychotherapy Essentials, KAREN KISSEL WEGELA, PhD, is a psychologist and faculty member at Naropa University.

Ego Is the Real Culprit
No matter what the conflict appears to be about, says Zen teacher NORMAN FISCHER, it always come down to defending our shaky sense of self.

“Self” lies at the heart of the human problem. We take ourselves completely for granted. I am I: of course, who else would I be? But what is this “self” who I am? The Buddha saw that the experience we think of as “self;’ is inherently shaky. If I am I, and not you or she, there’s always a built-in vulnerability. Because the essence of”I” or “v-.rc” is that it’s not another. This means that to be itself my “I” must assert itself against another who is asserting itself against me. So self naturally assumes an aggressive or defensive crouch, with little room for ease. Self is an inherently painful illusion. So the Buddha taught.

This explains why people are often difficult. !f you are in constant need of safety, and must scan the world for threats and slights, you are going to find yourself in conflict a lot of the time. Conflict isn’t abnormal, it’s not a failure: it’s the rule.

And it’s almost always the case that though people in conflict think they are fighting about this or that, actually they are fighting over identity, over each one’s right to be who they are, and the need to justify that right, against the claims of another. So-called difficult people are bothered nearly all the time with some hurt, some wound, that tells them it’s not okay to be as and who they are. And yet they are as they are. Rather than trying to cope with their own suffering (which feels too overwhelming to approach) they lash out, which makes dealing with them nearly impossible. Whatever you do will be wrong. If you accommodate, they take advantage. If you resist, it only fuels their attack. It’s a trap to think that some- how, despite their recriminations, it’s your fault. It’s also a trap to think the fault is theirs: in fact, they have not really chosen to be that way. The biggest trap of all is to think you can do something to change them.

There’s only one option: to understand and appreciate why they are as they are. And when you can do that you can love them anyway. And then they will be less difficult, or, at least will appear less difficult to you.

This is not as impossible to accomplish as it might seem, because you are also a difficult person! All of us are at times defensive or aggressive when we feel threatened. The feeling we have at those times is unpleasant and does not bring out the best in us. So, we have incentive to deal with it. If, with the aid of meditation practice, some good teaching, and intentional training, we study ourselves closely, we will come to understand others too.

When we humbly appreciate why we are as we are, we will appreciate why the difficult person is as they are. Like us, they’re subject to their conditioning. When they manifest difficult behavior, they are not happy people. Knowing this helps us forgive them, at least a little. Then we can appreciate Shantideva’s great teaching that difficult people are precious treasures, rare individuals who force us to develop the wisdom and compassion we need to find some peace and stability in this troubled world.

ZOKETSU NORMAN FISCHER is a writer, poet, and founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation.

How to Hold Your Seat
PEMA CHODRON shares four practical methods for keeping your cool when difficult people are
at their worst.

The practice of “holding your seat” is one of the most important ways to work with difficult people and circumstances. Holding your seat means maintaining your stability, equanimity, and sense of self in the face of provocation, without giving in to reactivity or unskillful anger.

If you try to practice this, you will find very quickly that it is not so easy. Often, before you know it, someone has provoked you and either directly or indirectly, you’ve let them have it.

Therefore, when our intention is sincere but the going gets rough, most of us could use some help. These four methods for holding your seat, which come to us from the Kadampa masters of eleventh-century Tibet, provide just such support for developing the patience to stay open to what’s happening, instead of acting on automatic pilot.

1. Don’t Set Up the Target for the Arrow If you have not set up the target it cannot be hit by an arrow . This is to say that each time you retaliate with words and actions that hurt, you are strengthening the habit of anger.

Then, without doubt, plenty of arrows will always be coming your way. The choice is yours: Each time you sit still with the restlessness and heat of anger–neither acting it out nor repressing it–you are tamed and strengthened. Each time you act on the anger or suppress it, you are weakened; you become more and more like a walking target. So this is the first method: remember that you set the target up yourself, and only you can take it down. Understand that if you hold your seat even for 1.5 seconds longer than ever before, you are starting to dissolve a pattern of reactivity that, if you let it, will continue to hurt you and others forever.

2. Connect with Your Heart In times of anger, you can contact the kindness and compassion that you already have. When someone harms you, you can understand that they are sowing seeds of their own misery, their own. confusion, their own dissatisfaction. The life of one who is always angry is painful and generally very lonely.

So this is the second method: remember that the one who harms you does not need to be provoked further, and neither do you. Sit still with the restlessness and pain of the anger, neither acting it out nor repressing it, and let it tame you and strengthen you and make you kinder.

3. See Obstacles as Teachers If there is no teacher around to give you direct personal guidance, never fear! Life itself will provide the opportunities for learning how to hold your seat. The troublemaker, for instance, who so disturbs you-without this person how could you ever get the chance to practice patience? How could you ever get the chance to know the energy of anger so intimately that it loses its power?

Right at the point when you are about to blow your top, member this: you are a disciple being taught how to sit still with the edginess and discomfort of the energy. You are a disciple being challenged by the teacher to hold your seat and open to the situation with as much courage and as much kindness as you possibly can.

4. Regard All that Occurs as a Dream

It is helpful to contemplate that the one who is difficult, the difficulty itself, and the recipient of that difficulty are all happening as if in a dream. You can reflect on the essencelessness of your current situation rather than putting such big importance on everything. This big-deal struggle, this big-deal problematic (or self-righteous) me, and this big-deal person who opposes you, could all be lightened up considerably.

When you awaken from sleep you know that the enemies in your dreams are an illusion. In the same way, instead of acting out of impulse, you could slow down and ask yourself, “Who is this monolithic me that has been so offended? And who is this other person that they can trigger me like this?” Contemplate that these outer things, as well as these emotions, as well as this huge sense of me, are passing and essenceless, like a memory, like a movie, like a dream.

Recalling this instruction, you just might find it helps you to loosen your grip and open your mind.

ANI PEMA CHODRON is a Buddhist nun, leading American Buddhist teacher, and author of such classics as When Things Fall Apart, and Start Where you Are.

The Undefended Heart
The way to helpful communication in difficult situations, says RAY BUCKNER, is by pausing, creating space, and listening to your body and mind.

I WAS SITTING IN BED waiting for her. I’d just finished an hour’s worth of panic attacks when my body finally became still. It was in that stillness-marked by a soothing solitude and a quiet mind-that I noticed exactly what was arising, how I was hurting, and what I wanted to say.

When she first arrived, I tried to speak but couldn’t-too afraid of dismissal, rejection, and shame, qualities that characterized our recent conversations. I finally worked up the courage to share my difficult truth: “I just feel like I don’t really matter.”

She rolled her eyes. I was devastated.

In an instant, my awareness was obliterated. Distress filled my body, and I couldn’t breathe.

This is often how it goes when interacting with difficult people. We yearn for understanding, but when we touch a harsh and unaccepting presence, we close down. And when we’re the difficult person, we become reactive and cause others to freeze and keep silent.

Whether the situation is deeply volatile and anxiety provoking, or subtle in its creation of anguish, anger, or fear, the bottomline is this: working with difficult people and dealing with difficult situations doesn’t have to be so painful.

No matter if we are the difficult person or the difficult person is another, we can employ the simple technique of pausing, taking space, and asking ourselves some fundamental questions about our suffering. In this way, our difficulty can transform into helpful awareness. In effect, working with difficulty begins with us.

Being in contact with a difficult person can cause us to contract and lose connection with our bodies. In these states of distress, slight or extreme, we need to take the time to return to ourselves. When we listen to our body and mind with a loving ear, we begin to understand our pain, honor our experience, and hold ourselves with much needed compassion.

It’s helpful to find time to be alone, so that with ample space we may ask ourselves: Where in my body is the hurt located? When I reflect on this difficult person, what arises for me? How does this difficult person’s behavior cause me pain?

Difficult people suffer deeply and lack the understanding and skills to act differently. Our responsibility as practitioners is to help them transform the roots of their suffering. –Mitchell Ratner

It’s from this soft, inquisitive place that we begin to feel calm and safe in our bodies, creating conditions for aware ness to arise. With awareness, we may then ask ourselves. Compassionately how we’d like to approach our difficult situation or person.

The invitation is similar when we’re trying to refrain from becoming difficult ourselves. When we’re difficult, we’re usually afraid of something, often of becoming hurt by another. Instead of listening to our fears, we tense up and act out.

In the very moment we notice ourselves preparing to attack, we can stop and create space by asking ourselves some heartfelt questions. In addition to those above, we may ask: What about this situation is setting me off? As my body tenses, can I breathe and stay with that feeling? Would it be possible to soften my heart, even just a little? As I ask these questions, what sensations arise?

When we create space, we begin both to understand our own reactions and to consider another’s perspective and pain. We have greater presence, compassion, and care.

Ultimately, by creating space in the midst of hardship and compassionately contemplating our suffering, we transform difficulty into awareness. It’s from this awareness, embodied by a tender, undefended heart, that helpful communication, both within us and between each other, will emanate.

RAY BUCKNER practices in the Shambhala Buddhist community and has worked for organizations devoted to racial, religious, and sexual justice.

10 Vows Not to Make Things Difficult
Who’s really making things difficult? asks Zen teacher KAREN MAEZEN MILLER. Here are ten ways to take care of your end.

NOT LONG AGO my husband and I hiked a steep mountain trail near our home. It was difficult for me, so I hated it. It was easy for him, and so he enjoyed it. Beneath it all, the trail was just the trail. We walked the very same ground. What was different was how we judged it.

Life is full of difficulties, which the Buddha called dukkha: things that are hard for us to handle. Sometimes those things are difficult people, and sometimes those things are difficult circumstances, but what we have to see is where the difficulty comes from. At long as we think the problem lies outside of us, nothing change. We can rail against a person or situation with our angec or blame, but then, who’s being difficult?

Buddhism gives us a straightforward answer in the ten grave precepts. Not to be confused with commandments, laws, rules, or ethical boundaries, the precepts simply show us how we make things difficult, and how we can make things less difficult by letting go of our egocentric views.

The precepts have been reinterpreted in different ways with the intention to make them more understandable or relevant to modern times. In my Buddhist tradition, we still use the language that came from the first Chinese translations of the earliest Buddhist texts. That’s where we find a not-so-subtle clue about how to discipline our behavior and transform difficulty into ease.

I vow to refrain from killing.
I vow to refrain from stealing.
I vow to refrain from unchaste behavior.
I vow to refrain from telling lies.
I vow to refrain from being ignorant.
I vow to refrain from talking about others’ faults or errors.
I vow to refrain from elevating myself and blaming others.
I vow to refrain from being stingy.
I vow to refrain from being angry.
I vow to refrain from speaking ill
of the three treasures.

At first glance, we may not see the clue. After all, we tell 0urselves, “We don’t kill, steal, or lie! We’re nice, not mean. We give money and old clothes to charity. And more than that, we’re right about most of the things that other people are wrong about.

But the clue is in none of those things. The clue is the word “refrain.” What we are vowing to refrain from is letting ourselves be controlled by the ego-driven “I” that wants to impose itself on others in self-centered ways. The practice of refraining is multidimensional and profound. It requires self-awareness, self-admission, and self-control before taking action. And it makes a big difference. In the words of Dogen Zenji in The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, “Refraining is not something that worldly people are apt to think of before concocting what they are going to do.” Pain and suffering result from actions not taken by people who do not refrain.

On the trail, it was pretty obvious why my husband had an easier time of it: he’d been practicing.

Similarly, Dogen tells us that if you “rouse your heart and mind to do the training and practice, you will have already realized eight- or nine-tenths of the way. Before you know it, you will have ‘refraining’ always in the back of your mind.”

The way sounds like something difficult, but it’s not.

KAREN MAEZEN MILLER ‘s books include Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden. She has a century-old Japanese garden in her backyard.

Meeting Heart-to-Heart
The key, says KOSH IN PALEY ELLISON, is two people willing to let go of being right.

I am responsible. You are responsible. –Taizan Maezumi Roshi

A year ago, a rather unfavorable review appeared regarding me and my husband as the teachers and cofounders the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. My first reaction was feeling vulnerable and hurt. I’d never met this person
and, to my knowledge, he’d never been to our center.

I was curious about someone who was driven to write such things about us, personally and as teachers, without having ever met us. After reflecting on what he’d written to see if there was some underlying truth to the words, I felt confident that his thoughts and ideas were founded in something other than one truth.

I decided to write to the man, but just as I was about to do )d soJ..received a message from him. He was inquiring about his concerns. How courageous, I thought. How rare it is that we manifest our practice through direct communication. It’s
so easy to gossip and talk about others anonymously.

I thought about what my beloved teacher, Sensei Dorothy Dai-En Friedman, often says. “In order to practice fully, we have to be willing to surrender everything, and we have to realize there is no arrival and it is all an unfolding process. Easy to say, and takes everything to do.”

This instruction is what I return to throughout my days, and it was particularly pertinent with this new seemingly difficult situation and person. I myself have chosen to turn away from discomfort.

I felt tender toward this man for his willingness to engage in what could be a very difficult conversation. What is it that brings us to create and encourage gossip?

On the day we were to meet, I took some time beforehand to sit zazen and offer the merits of our meeting to all people who are harmed by rumors. When he arrived at the center, my feeling on seeing him was one of warmth and friendship. He was smiling; we shook hands and went into a private room to talk.

Immediately, he offered an apology for disparaging us and talking about things he had not himself experienced. I offered my appreciation for his willingness to even begin this face-to-face conversation.

I invited him to share his concerns with me. We spoke at length about how rare it is to actually engage in difficulty, whether it presents itself as a challenging conversation, or lies solely in our own thoughts. We are filled with ideas, preferences, and opinions and very often they’re not based on direct experience.

Together we explored his difficulties, and I shared mine. What unfolded was the hurt he had experienced himself with two past teachers who had grossly crossed boundaries. He shared his feelings of not being heard by them. This was what had activated him.

In this conversation, what I could see happening was that together, we were cocreating the intimacy of courage. Of course, there are circumstances when this is possible, and others when it is not. This was what made this encounter so moving. It took both of us surrendering our old stories and hurts, and meeting each other in the moment.

This is what I call true courage: two people practicing the total willingness to let go of being right and meeting each other in the receptive ground of the dharma.

KOSH IN PALEY ELLI SON is the co-editor of Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End of Life Care.

Difficult People Are Suffering
Understanding that, says MITCHELL RATNER, is the key to responding with compassion and skilleven to that guy in the White House.

A TEACHING I HEARD Thich Nhat Hanh offer many times is that people who are difficult, people who say and do mean and offensive things, are not evil. They act that way because they suffer deeply and lack the understanding and skills to act differently. So rather than responding to them in anger, our responsibility as practitioners is to understand why they suffer, nourish our capacity to respond with compassion, and help them learn to transform the roots of their suffering.

I came to understand Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching more deeply one day when I realized that the difficult people around me-those who were critical, judgmental, easily irritated, short tempered, and so on-were like that not just to me and others, but also to themselves. If they were being hard on me, they were making themselves suffer even more. I could separate myself, mentally and physically, from their meanness; they could not. It became easier not to take the mea things people said or did personally, and my compassion grew.

Some years ago, my wife and I walked a thousand miles of the Camino de Santiago from eastern France to western Spain. Along the way, in a rain shelter, we met a Swiss man who unexpectedly lashed into us for fifteen minutes, blaming us for all the evils he saw the U.S. perpetrating in the world. We said little, the rain stopped, and we went our separate ways.

However, we were all heading west on the Camino and repeatedly encountered each other on the trail. My wife and I consciously decided to befriend him. After a few exchanges he opened up and shared his sorrows, especially his struggles with his ex-wife and teenage daughter, for whom he cared greatly. On the day before his return to Switzerland, he apologized to us for what he’d said in the rain shelter.

I try to use Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching also with Donald Trump, who has said and done so many things that seem to me to be cruel and offensive. Our sangha has started a weekly metta meditation in Lafayette Square, across from the White House. After centering myself, I bring to mind the mental suffering President Trump may have experienced as a child and still may experience. I feel compassion arise in me, and I send the energy of loving-kindness to the White House. My wish is that everyone in the White House might feel safe, loved, and accepted, and that the seeds of peace, joy, and true love within them will grow.

In my metta meditation, I also send loving-kindness to those who have loved and supported me, and to all people around me, those whose names I know and those whose names I don’t know. In bringing these people to mind and sending them my loving-kindness, they become more real to me and I feel more connected to them. I truly want these people to be well, safe, and happy.

And, finally, I send metta to myself, wishing that I may be safe, loved, and accepted, and that my stability and inner peace may grow. My aspiration is that as my loving-kindness and compassion deepen, the childhood suffering I carry will lessen, and I’ll act less often in ways that others experience as mean, offensive, or difficult.

Sending metta to the White House isn’t the only action I want to take as a mindful citizen. However, the cultivation of open-heartedness and inclusiveness feels like a powerful antidote to the demonization of others that’s plaguing American life. Endeavoring to practice the teaching that “no person is evil” allows me to hold the suffering and unskillfulness of those around me, as well as to transform my own suffering and unskillfulness. It reminds me that we’re not separate, no matter how separate we may feel at times.

MITCHELL RATNER was ordained as a dharma teacher by Thich Nhat Hanh and is founder of the Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center in Maryland.