In today’s topic, we are going to be talking about how to deal with arrogant people. Let’s get started!
Do you find yourself feeling annoyed by the shameless arrogance of many people around you? If you do, you are perfectly justified to be annoyed. Arrogance is a trait that is often present in narcissistic and other kinds of difficult people in our lives. They are obnoxious, difficult to tolerate, and unpleasant to be around. If you were wondering what could be the possible ways to deal with them, then this is the article for you.
Arrogance often refers to a person’s tendency to have excessive pride in themselves. An arrogant person is prone to overvaluation of their own importance in a manner that may be difficult or overbearing to other people. It is important to understand where this arrogance comes from. Like most overcompensating behaviors, its source is a person’s insecurity and self-doubt.
Arrogant behavior is most often displayed through downplaying other people’s achievements or ideas in order to appear better than them. This characteristic makes communication with arrogant people difficult and unproductive, since they are not focused on the issue at hand as much as they are on proving their self-perceived superiority to other people engaged in a given discussion.
This overbearing tendency to coerce and/or force people to their opinion, with little regard for others, is something many people struggle with. This is exactly why we compiled this list of ways to deal with arrogant people that will hopefully help you to resist the urge to give in to their whims.
They Following Are The Top 9 Ways to Deal with Arrogant People
1. Radical acceptance.
Arrogant people are the way they are, and your actions, words, or kind gestures are highly unlikely to correct that. You should be aware that this is their problem, probably stemming from their childhood or early adulthood experiences, but that is not your problem. A method called radical acceptance could be useful here. It refers to your ability to accept that a specific person or a situation is such that there isn’t anything you can do to change them. You can also just refuse to play in their game of one-upmanship and resist the urge to prove that their attitude is wrong and inappropriate.
2. Be compassionate, but don’t try to fix the arrogant person you are dealing with.
An arrogant person’s need for domination and feeling of superiority can be traced back to multiple causes: low self-esteem masked by the facade of confidence, unquenchable thirst for praise, and lack of empathy for those whom the arrogant person perceives as less accomplished. Whatever the cause of their arrogant behavior may be, they are certainly not happy or fulfilled. This is why your empathy and understanding, to a degree, can be helpful to yourself when you are trying to accept the reality of the arrogant person’s problematic attitudes and behaviors.
3. Be direct in your communication with the arrogant person.
Directness in communication with arrogant people may help you circumvent the unnecessary arguments and fights that are highly unlikely to result in a satisfying solution or conclusion. Avoid suppressing your thoughts and invalidating your own beliefs, since this strategy is likely to result in you succumbing to less-than-optimal solutions to any given problem. Direct communication can also aid you in airing your frustration with the arrogant person’s belief in their own truths that are far from absolutes.
4. If your attempts to communicate directly with the arrogant person fail, seek support from other people.
An arrogant person may be able to overpower one person with their shameless overconfidence, which is less likely to happen when a group of people is involved. These other people may serve as mediators who might be able to defuse the situation and convince the arrogant person that their behavior is unacceptable or that their attitudes, opinions, or beliefs may be founded upon faulty premises. In other words, these people may stand as your allies against a particularly harmful, toxic, and arrogant person.
5. Be assertive and don’t let the arrogant person bully you into submission.
Assertiveness should be your preferred tool when you are dealing with difficult, arrogant people. Their primary goal is to exert their power over other people and bully them into submission, and they often try to achieve that goal by exploiting other people’s lack of willingness to stand up to them and tell them no. Assertiveness can help you to voice that “no” clearly to the arrogant person and save yourself and other people a lot of trouble down the line.
6. Make sure to minimize the harm by sticking to your firmly established limits and boundaries.
Make sure to minimize the harm by sticking to your firmly established limits and boundaries. Although it is not always possible to choose the people that you are going to be surrounded by and with whom you are going to be forced to interact with regularly, the second best you can do is to set boundaries and limits of what you find acceptable and what you don’t. This means that the best course of action would be to plan in advance how much time you’re going to have to spend with the arrogant person and what will or will not be the subject of your discussion. This way, you will be able to avoid any hooks that would prolong the allotted time or cover more territory than necessary.
7. Don’t take the arrogant person’s behavior personally.
It can be easy to get caught up in thinking that a particularly arrogant person’s words and behaviors may be aimed directly at you. But keep in mind that arrogance is a generalized trait, meaning that an arrogant person is going to be arrogant to most people in most situations. Their difficult and dysfunctional communication styles have almost nothing to do with you. So, you should be aware of the fact that their communication with you is a reflection of their personality, not yours.
A Book: Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men.
8. Make sure to disagree politely.
Always be aware of the fact that you are nobody’s punching bag and that your perspective, opinions, ideas, and values deserve to be heard and respected, even if some or most people disagree with them. You can express them in polite and slightly detached ways when you are trying to communicate them to a particularly disagreeable and arrogant person. This will allow two things:
One, you will not be giving the arrogant person any excuse to provoke further arguments with you, and two, you will be able to keep calm and not let yourself be enraged by the inability to properly communicate with this person. You can use phrases like “I see your point there, but I tend to disagree because of X” or “I understand your perspective, but in my experience, things are more like X.” If the arrogant person continues to treat you with disrespect, let them know that you will be discontinuing any further discussion until they are prepared to communicate with honesty and dignity.
9. Always be honest with an arrogant person.
Everyone appreciates honesty and can see the power of telling the truth, so you shouldn’t hold back when you are talking to an arrogant person. They may be startled by your honesty at first, but they will definitely respect your ability to speak your mind and your intolerance for their disrespect of others. Keep in mind that most arrogant people are, by default, engaging in falsehoods or half-truths as distortions of reality so that they could impose their opinions and thoughts onto others, just in order to drive up their preconceived notions of their own superiority.
By telling them the truth in any given setting, be it personal or professional, you may be able to even wake them up to reality to a certain extent. It is probably unlikely that you will be able to inspire them to change their ways by telling them the truth, but at a minimum, you will be able to bypass their attempts to distort the truth so that it fits their agenda. The truth might not be a solution for arrogance in people who are already set in their ways, but it will certainly resonate with the right people who will be able to stand up to their arrogance.
Read More: 10 Critical Facts To Know About Covert Narcissists.
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