Ep 123: Holding Your Head High When Other People Say Mean Things About You

In this episode, I'm diving into holding your head high and taking the high road when you know someone is saying mean things about you.

It's painful and hurtful, and yet, it's really all about them, not you. Our brains want to make it about us because we want to belong and fit in, and we have control over what we do to attempt to "fix" the situation but we do NOT have control over the other person or people. Brains don't like not being able to control things.

So we're left feeling crappy when people say mean things about us.  Tune in to this episode to learn how to deal with this in a way that you can be proud of.

Transcript

One thing that I work with a lot of clients on is comparing themselves to others and worrying about what other people think. This is kind of related to believing they’re not enough or others are better than them. 

That’s one thing we worry about, and another is when you know someone has actually said things about you that are absolutely not true. Today on the podcast, I’m going to talk about this. It was inspired by an experience of my own and I learned (and am still learning) a lot about how to be classy, hold your head high and take the high road when others are content slinging mud. 

My ex-boyfriend and I recently broke up and I discovered that he had been having an affair right under my nose for 2 years. Well, actually, he was having multiple affairs and they had been going on for most of the 7 years we were together.   I discovered text messages between him and the “main woman” and the two of them said a lot of really terrible things about me. He told her so many lies about how crazy and unstable I am, that he and I were just roommates and he wouldn’t move out because I was so unstable and couldn’t accept the fact that our relationship was over and he was afraid I’d go insane on him. 

She’s a therapist and she ripped on me for being a life coach, and  for the content I shared on social media. They both completely ripped apart this podcast.  He shared sensitive and confidential things that I trusted him with  with her and other people (embarrassing to know other people know these deep things about me, only spun in a really negative light).. After we broke up, there was an incident where he physically assaulted me and destroyed property in my home. His story to others was that I came unhinged and it was all self-defense. I painted the picture of me being insane to everyone he could. I learned he did this to his last three exes as well … 

He and his friend talked about how I turned my ex-husband gay. They talked about he was trading in the old “clunker” for a hotter, younger, skinnier model. His friend said that I was bamboozling clients because I was crazy yet how could I be a coach helping other people?

So, as you can imagine, it’s really hard to sit back and know that these things are being said about you without lashing out and defending yourself when you know none of what is being said is true. It’s downright hurtful and hard to just let it happen.  

I have a protective order against him so there really isn’t any communicating being done anyway, but there are still times I want to scream at him. Write him letters or send him emails reading him the riot act on what a huge piece of crap he is. 

But what would that do for me?

It might momentarily make me feel better. But he’s a narcissistic personality so he wouldn’t care. If I reacted, he’d just use that to fuel his argument of how crazy I am. 

So I want to share two main things about this with you today. 

First of all, we’ve talked about thoughts-feelings-actions or think-feel-do here before. So, we have a thought about a neutral circumstance, the thought triggers an emotion and the emotion can fuel what we do. Here the neutral circumstance is “human says I’m crazy” for example. We know this is neutral because I happen to care a lot about what people think about me (working on it!), and someone else might just laugh and move on. Both reactions are to the SAME thing but they’re very different. 

My thought about this might be, “I’m not crazy, I hate him”. That thought might create anger or rage. Since anger can be what we call an iceberg emotion, there might be others underneath it like feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, rejection. 

Here’s where we have a choice when we pause to get intentional. If I weren’t mindful and didn’t pause, I might lash out in anger. I might send him a nasty email or talk negatively about him (something I have done, by the way, and I wish I hadn’t… I didn’t take the pause).  When I can take the pause though, I can do two things: first, I can learn to sit with the emotion, to actually feel it. Second, I can  ask my self who I want to be in this situation. What’s the bigger picture? What’s truly important to me? 

I want to be the person who has the utmost class. I want to take the high road. I want to know in my bones that that kind of behavior is childish, immature and super manipulative and just walk away from it with that being good enough for me. Not my monkeys, not my circus kind of thing. Good riddance, kind of laugh it off. 

And what does that require? It requires an unshakeable connection to my self.  It requires an unshakeable relationship with myself, one built on unconditional love and self-compassion. It requires that I have confidence that who I am is enough. More than enough. Worthy of love and belonging. It requires that I love and accept myself for all that I am (and am not). 

So really, when you notice that you have this reaction to what others say about you, it’s a good sign to turn inward and ask yourself why it bothers you. There is a wounded part of you that gets triggered when you hear negative things about yourself. 

Here’s the thing -

We all create this “protective self”, and our protective self is always going to work really hard to prove that we aren’t what we think our flaws are. For example, if you feel a deep sense of inadequacy or being unwanted, your protective self is going to try to prove the opposite - it’s going to push you to do things that prove that. So, in my case, this relationship was emotionally abusive and based on control and manipulation, to the point where I started to believe I was crazy. So, it makes sense that if someone says I’m crazy (especially him), Im going to want to prove I’m not as my default. 

Also, the protective self needs to feed itself with external things. The problem is that the external things only hit the protective self. They don’t make it through to our  true self, so no matter how much validation I try to get to prove I’m not crazy, my protective self will always need more of that validation. So it’s never ending.

So you have to build the relationship with your true self and look within for validation, love, belonging, by loving and accepting yourself fully. Unconditional love. 

This is what is going to help you take that pause that will enable you to respond like a class act and take the high road. Pausing and giving yourself that unconditional love and self-validation that you ARE indeed an amazing human being, and just because someone else wants to say mean things about you, that’s more about them than you. Stay strong in your integrity and know that they don’t really have any. That’s not about you.

The second thing I have learned from this is that not everyone is going to like you. Not everyone is “your person” and that’s totally ok. The people who are your people will hear the “talk” and they’ll know it’s not true. And that’s really all that matters.

My friend Cathi always says -  if I don’t respect you, then why would I respect your opinion? I don;t respect my ex and I certainly don’t respect his girlfriend for a number of reasons. I don’t respect his friends either. So why would I care what they say or think? The people who know me well (who are also people I respect) don’t think those things about me, and those are the people who matter to me. Not the people I don’t respect. 

You have to stay strong in your authenticity and integrity, lean into your values. Again, who do you want to be here? For me, my values in this case might be authenticity and integrity, self-respect, peace or calm and maybe  in control. Since emotions can fuel actions, I can focus on what actions might be created from feeling those feelings and take those actions. Make a point of showing up as the person I want to be even though it might be hard. And the self-compassion, love and acceptance comes in for the part of you that got triggered. The part of you that believes the crappy stuff you’re hearing. Lots of self-compassion for that part of you. 

So to recap, when someone says something mean about you, it hurts. And you can honor that hurt for yourself by taking time to feel the feelings that it brings up. And you can also ask yourself about the bigger picture - is lashing out or defending worth it? Who do you want to be here? What actions do you need to take to be that person? 

Taking the high road is so much classier. It can be tough, especially when you’re dealing with someone who wants to trigger you to get a reaction, but with practice you can get to the point where you can practice mindfulness and self-awareness in the moment, take a pause and make those values-aligned choices.

I hope that was helpful, my friends. As always, I love to hear your suggestions or requests for topics, so send ‘em my way. Annnd, please friends, if you are enjoying this show or finding it helpful, please share it with a friend. You never know who it might help.

Have a great day my friends and I’ll see you next time.