Cultural, generational, and gender biases, and current events influencing mood, attitude, and actions, also contribute to disrespectful behavior. Practitioner impairment, including substance abuse, mental illness, or personality disorder, is often at the root of highly disruptive behavior.
There can be many root causes for rudeness, such as insecurity or fear. People are often rude after being on the receiving end of rudeness. Researchers have found that “just like the common cold, common negative behaviors can spread easily and have significant consequences.” In other words… Rude is contagious!
Rudeness, particularly with respect to speech, is necessarily confrontational at its core. Forms of rudeness include acting inconsiderate, insensitive, deliberately offensive, impolite, obscenity, profanity and violating taboos such as deviancy.
Psychologists reveal why nice people sometimes get punished with meanness for their good behaviour. People who are generous and cooperative can get punished by others for being 'too good', research finds. Humans in all cultures can be suspicious of those who appear nicer or better than the rest.
Key points. Research shows that being insulted makes people more likely to demean others. Freud argued that people cope with negative views of themselves by perceiving other people as having those same traits. Researchers have discovered that threatened self-esteem drives a lot of aggression.
Take a moment to practice deep breathing, or repeat a positive quote or mantra to yourself. Allow yourself as much time as you need to healthfully work through tears or feelings of anger. Avoid exploding emotionally, and instead give yourself time enough to calm your immediate feelings.
Accept the insult and move on.
Make your response short and quick so that they understand that you will not engage. Simply say “Okay” or “Thank you for that” in response to them. If you do feel like there's any truth in the insult, make the decision to only take the information that's helpful to your growth.
Anger is usually the reason why people say hurtful things. Before you dissect those verbal attacks, or analyze the 'whys' and 'wherefores' of the negative behavior, it is best to understand where those words are coming from. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they are the manifestations of an intense emotion – anger.
If people are being mean to you--or you think "Why is everyone mean to me?"--remember these three things: They could be dealing with something major in their own life. You could be seeing something that's not really there. They could be legitimately being mean to you because you have something they want.
An excessively nice person might never be really known on a deep level or taken seriously. Their preferences might be over-ridden, and they could be neglected. It can even impact your job. Being too accommodating can make you a bit invisible, because you never stand for anything.
When someone is mean to you for no reason, they are probably coping with issues and challenges. If you can, try to focus on yourself, rather than what this person has said or done.
Diffuse The Situation And React With Kindness
Emotionally intelligent people respond to rudeness with humor and kindness, because it's often what people need the most in order to calm down and get their own emotions in check.
People change their feelings of pain into anger because it feels better to be angry than it does to be in pain. This changing of pain into anger may be done consciously or unconsciously. Being angry rather than simply in pain has a number of advantages, primarily among them distraction.
Call the person out on his or her behavior.
Another tactic to stop the spiral of rudeness is to simply call them out on their behavior and ask them to stop. If someone you can't get away from is consistently rude to you, you need to address the issue directly. There is no need for you to take ongoing abuse from anyone.