Difficult people aren’t as complicated as they often appear. It took time and making progress in my own mental health journey to understand that the way people act is largely a reflection of themselves. Because I realized that when I was an angry and severely depressed man, I often acted unkindly or aggressively toward other people.
Did they deserve that? No. Was it right of me? No. But that was my internal state, and I had no problem projecting it onto other people at that time. And with that in mind, projection is a great place to start when it comes to the psychological concepts that will explain pretty much every difficult person you will ever meet.
1. They often project their emotions and beliefs onto other people.
It’s almost funny how often people project without even realizing it. I recall years ago, I was dating a woman who, all of a sudden, for absolutely no reason, started accusing me of cheating on her. I was not cheating on her, but she was convinced that I was. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind that I was somehow being unfaithful to her.
Guess who was cheating? Yeah. It was her. That was almost 20 years ago. Once it happened to me, I started noticing how often it would happen to other people. “For some reason, my husband just started thinking I was cheating on him! Why would he do that?” Well, it’s because a lot of times when guilty people are doing something wrong, they project their guilt onto other people.
They assume that other people are doing what they’re doing.
You might also see projection in a difficult coworker who accuses others of slacking or being incompetent when they are the one who is struggling or overwhelmed, or a critical parent who projects their own feelings of failure and deep regret about unfulfilled potential onto their adult child.
2. They are often emotionally immature and can’t self-regulate.
Emotional immaturity manifests in different ways. Generally, when life becomes uncomfortable, that person does things like having a meltdown or making impulsive decisions. Personally, I used to have some pretty significant anger problems because I was emotionally immature and struggled with emotional regulation.
I also incorrectly interpreted “your emotions are valid” as meaning all manifestations of our emotions are valid. Some manifestations are not valid, actually. Sometimes, the way our emotions manifest themselves is a distortion, an unreasonable response to the situation at hand. It requires emotional maturity and learning to regulate your emotions to determine that a reaction is disproportionate to the problem and respond with control. Or, alternatively, to withdraw from the situation altogether rather than making it worse.
People struggle with emotional regulation for a variety of reasons, from neurodivergence to trauma to never having it modelled, and everything in between. But still, it’s essentially a skill, and it’s well worth working on if it’s something that doesn’t come naturally.
Other signs of emotional immaturity include always needing to be right, having difficulty apologizing or admitting when they’re wrong, or needing to have the last word in an argument. It is damned near impossible for an emotionally immature person to realize when they’re wrong AND own it.
Boundaries are also difficult because an emotionally immature person will typically view a boundary as a rejection. They will often have poor boundaries for themselves and not respect others’ boundaries as they should.
3. They often have a high external locus of control.
A “locus of control” is a psychological concept that refers to how much a person believes that they have control over the events in their life. A person with a high internal locus of control feels like their actions and their effort will determine their outcomes. They tend to believe that luck, random chance, and other people have very little to do with it.
On the other hand, a person with a high external locus of control tends to believe that they have little to no control over what happens to them. Unfortunately, it’s an unhealthy perspective because it removes any sense of personal responsibility. It often comes with a number of unreasonable excuses that make the individual difficult to deal with, like:
“I didn’t get that promotion because my boss has it out for me.”
“I’m just unlucky. Nothing ever works out for me.”
“It’s not my fault that I didn’t do the work! They gave me too much to do!”
People with this mindset are often emotionally stunted because personal growth requires personal accountability, which requires an internal locus of control, at least to some degree. The person needs to believe that they have some power to effect change for themselves.
Like most things in life, a healthy view about locus of control is usually neither one extreme nor the other, but somewhere in the middle.
4. They have an insecure attachment style.
Early relationships can have a dramatic effect on how people attach to others. A person who grew up emotionally neglected or abused as a child may bring that into adulthood through an insecure attachment style. We learn how to attach and have good connections with people early on as part of our social programming. To be denied that is a hard thing to address and overcome.
People with an insecure attachment style often have an extreme fear of abandonment or feel like they can’t trust anyone. They were taught that trusting people is a vulnerability, and they could be hurt by that person pulling away. That’s absolutely true, but learning how to deal with that hurt is just part of life.
On the flip side of the coin, this person may also interpret minor problems as big threats to their relationship. They can be overbearing and controlling, because they need to “make sure their partner is safe.” In truth, they are overcompensating for their own feelings of vulnerability, trying to self-soothe through controlling.
5. They react with defensiveness when confronted with shame.
Deep shame rarely looks like shame on the surface. Instead, it manifests as perfectionism, contempt, or arrogance, which are all pretty difficult to deal with.
Anger is a common and effective way that a person deals with and deflects uncomfortable feelings of shame. Why? Well, as a formerly angry person, I can tell you that anger is a great way to keep people from getting too close. There are few people who want to be around an asshole, so it’s an excellent maladaptive coping skill.
Perfectionism and arrogance work similarly. Perfectionists often view their perfectionism as an asset and look down on those who fall short of their perceived standards. After all, shouldn’t you want something to be perfect? Well, no, because there is no objective perfection. There’s only subjective perfection.
It may be perfect in the perfectionist’s eyes, but what about other people? If they have a different opinion or they work to different standards, then they are often met with defensive anger, disgust, or condescension.
6. They are using survival mode strategies where they no longer apply.
Every struggle we go through in life will bring with it some scars. They often come in the form of maladaptive coping mechanisms that helped us at the time, or that were short-term solutions. Sometimes, we don’t even realize that we’re carrying these old wounds or unhealthy survival strategies until they really start to negatively affect us.
But an important truth to understand is this: the coping skills that a person uses to survive an unhealthy situation can destroy healthy situations.
Take the example of Clara. Clara comes out of an abusive relationship. She’s with a new girlfriend, and the two get into a disagreement. Clara starts yelling at her girlfriend, because that’s how she fought with her previous partner. They would both yell and scream at each other, break things, and otherwise project their rage onto one another. Clara’s new partner, however, is in a much healthier place. She prefers to sit down and talk about it.
Clara can’t bring that old energy to her new relationship, otherwise her partner is going to leave. It helped her survive her previous relationship, but it will destroy this one.
Closing thoughts…
The way people treat you is often a reflection of themselves. A person who thinks everyone else is dishonest and up to something is probably up to something. A person who thinks everyone cheats in relationships is likely someone who is not faithful. Perfectionism often masks problems like anxiety and self-esteem issues.
Every difficult person has something going on with them, otherwise they wouldn’t be difficult. If they didn’t have something going on, they would likely realize how much their difficulty harms them either directly or indirectly, and they would change, or at least try to. It doesn’t make their behavior okay, but it does it make it easier not to take it personally when it happens
