What to Do When Someone Offends You
Let's say you're sitting around the swimming pool and someone tells a joke about a group everyone knows you belong to. Or let's say someone doesn't know something about (like that you alphabetize the soup cans in your pantry at home) and makes a joke about people who alphabetize the soup cans in their pantry. In the one case, you can pretty well assume they meant to offend you, personally, while in the other, it was unintentional.
Let's talk about this sort of offending occurrence - not a direct attack about you in particular, or some sort of feedback, construed to be "positive," where a quick reply is in order, but the sort of passive affront that sometimes occurs.
What do you do when someone says something offensive?
If it occurred in the workplace, and could be construed as harassment, you might have certain legal rights, but they certainly don't extend to a public recreational area. Laws define what a society considers unacceptable but they never stop them, otherwise there would be no murders. Furthermore, you'd be surprised at what the law considers "harassment." So, let's move this to the individual and emotional level.
It's a sad fact of life that you don't have a global right not to be offended, but the corollary is, no one can offend you unless you agree to it.
You're more likely to be offended, the more truth there is to what they say, in reference to you, and it can be a clue to look into your issues. I live in Texas, where for some people the Civil War is still being fought, and it used to bother me when someone would make a reference to Northerners being "cold" and "unfriendly." The more I've learned to express my warmth and friendliness in ways recognizable to Texans and more importantly, to be comfortable in my own skin, the less those comments bother me. Now I can just smile and think, "not me," while before I had to wonder how I was coming across.
As the philosopher Epictetus wrote many years ago, "It is not he who gives abuse that affronts, but the view that we take of it as insulting; so that when one provokes you it is your own opinion which is provoking."
You can learn not to take offense. One of the people I learned this through was the Jewish physician sitting at an Ecumenical conference I attended where someone stood up and talked about Christmas, then caught himself, and turned to the physician and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I hope I didn't offend you."
The doctor smiled and replied, very, very gently, "Me? You can't offend me."
That rather puts the shoe on the other foot.
I will occasionally defend myself as part of the group under attack, like the time my neighbor - and I don't know what he was thinking - started in about the apartment complex to be built in the vacant acreage behind our houses. "It will be full of single parents with out-of-control kids, who don't take care of their property," he ranted.
"I'm a single parent," I said. "And my kids aren't out-of-control and I take care of my property." One might just as well reply, "I'm XXX and I don't beat my wife," or "I have a good friend who's from XXX, and he's very friendly." You can always point out one example you know that's different. No generalization applies to anything and everything, and people who think that way need to have their thinking correcting. If only at the intellectual level.
The crux of the matter is not to buy into it emotionally, not to take the bait. When we get emotional, we lose our ability to think, and then things get said. It also leaves us angry, upset, and harboring resentment. There are few ways to reply back to an offense that don't leave you in a worse emotional state. That includes going back over it in your own mind if you DON'T speak up and berating yourself because you didn't. It's a perfectly viable alternative to decline comment and disengage.
When you're "offended," you're angry, and we know that anger kills. People who intentionally aim to offend, are angry people, and they're trying to pass it on. They don't like themselves, so it makes them feel good to not like you. Don't take the hook. Make note they're like that, and limit your contact with them, of course; but when you can't, manage the emotions around it. Your emotional reaction can do you harm. The words themselves cannot.
You can also monitor your self-talk, lest it go on forever. If you find yourself thinking, "He insulted me," or "He said that to get back at me," or "He said that to make me angry," try telling yourself something different, like, "That doesn't include me, of course," or "I'm going to let that comment just move on through me and take the emotions along with it because I want peace and good health." Or simply recite the alphabet. War stories have the same physiological effect on you as the initial incident, sometimes months and years later. Why would you want to do that to yourself.
You don't have a constitutional right not to be offended, but you always have the option of turning down the volume, pushing the "off" or "delete" button, walking away, staying away, and not letting anger fester within you and cause you real harm.
You can also learn something from it, about yourself. Our emotions give us information. Ask yourself if you're angry because people shouldn't talk or be that way. If you can't be happy until the world and the people in it are perfect, you're going to have a long wait, a miserable life, and possibly a coronary.
Check in on what issues were triggered. If they said all Xs are X, and you are that way, and it's not a nice way to be, you may want to look at that. As Russell Lynes puts it, "The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved." Laughter is always a good physiological antidote to anger; you can't be relaxed and tense at the same time.
If they attacked an institution with which you're affiliated, are you sure you want to be a martyr for a cause that big? It's unlikely you'll change their opinion, and very likely you'll raise your blood pressure, accelerate your heart rate, bring on a migraine, or prime yourself for a stroke. Over time, of course, but a habit's a habit. Pick battles large enough to matter, but small enough to win.
If you're the kind who feels every emotion must be acted upon, take that energy and put it to good use. There are bigger things to work on than one person's attitude. Teach others a better way. Be a Big Sister, teach Sunday school, sponsor a foreign exchange student, give seminars, write an article for the "rant and rave" section of , or send a letter to an editor. But do it from a loving place, otherwise the negative energy is still there.
The bottom line is protecting yourself, not from someone else's words, but from your own reactions. The bottom line is, no one can offend you unless you agree to it. Don't agree to it. Move on!
Posted by Aneka Tips
on 10.55. Filed under