How to Deal with Ratbags!

My friend and hypnotherapist Lyndall Briggs pointed out this article recently to subscribers of her e-newsletter. The title grabbed me because I have on occasion come across "difficult people" or "ratbags" as we like to call them here in Australia. I'm sure people in customer service roles encounter more of them than isolated comics creators who labour in their home offices, but nevertheless, it's good to be forewarned on what to look for and fore-armed in terms of strategies on how to deal with them. 


The article in question is "Coping with Difficult People" by Keith Levick. By difficult he means "hostile and manipulative". He tells us that:

Difficult people have learned to be this way because it is effective for them. Their hostile and negative behaviour serves them well. Their arsenal of aggressive behaviour catches their prey off guard and then renders them helpless. Consequently, after a confrontation with these people, it’s not unusual to feel mentally abused and frustrated.

Sound familiar? The article then explains the psychology and dynamics in place, and also provides some coping strategies.

These behavioural patterns are deeply ingrained in the personality of the difficult person. The overly-aggressive difficult person (one who bullies, explodes, screams, etc.) uses their aggressive posture as a defence mechanism. Because of their weak and fragile ego, they need to protect themselves. Their best defence is a strong offense-aggression. Therefore, they feel in control of themselves only in a situation that allows them to feel powerful. But it doesn’t stop there. Like all weak people, their insatiable need to feel secure makes it necessary for them to win – and to win at any cost.

We all have different ways of dealing with difficult people. I just remove myself from their vicinity. I will be polite but I will leave. I have no desire whatsoever to soak up their negative vibes or to get into a full-on argument where the point for them is not to find common ground but to anihilate you psychologically and to declare themselves the winner. I have no wish to participate... life is too short!

You may find this article useful if you've encountered your own regular or one-off ratbags. CLICK HERE to read the entire article.

Self Help for Comics Creators Series – Understanding Your Defense Mechanisms

One of the keys to self awareness is to understand what defense mechanisms (also spelled as defence mechanism) you use when dealing with uncomfortable situations and emotional conflict. Creative people often feel particularly nervous, vulnerable and exposed when looking for a publisher or a producer, as well as when they finally release their labour of love to the outside world. They often have to endure many rejections and deal with various threshold guardians through every stage of that publishing or producing process. Consequently it may be useful for you to know which defense mechanisms you use in professional and personal situations in order to facilitate communication, be open and authentic, and to create strategies if they are an impediment to reaching your goals. A knowledge of defense mechanisms can also help you in writing – specifically, characterisation.

Defense mechanisms, also known as “coping styles”, are automatic compensatory behaviours, impulses, reactions and responses utilised when you want to avoid confronting a truth about yourself (or others) that could potentially damage the way you perceive yourself (or them).

Defense mechanisms serve a protective function for the psyche. They distort uncomfortable realities into acceptable ones by blocking conscious awareness from experiencing painful thoughts, feelings or desires. Some defense mechanisms such as “affiliation”, “self-observation” and “self-assertion” are considered to be healthy functioning aspects of human behaviour. Others such as “denial”, “passive-aggression” or “repression”, however, if used to excess to avoid confronting unpalatable situations or realisations, can keep you from expressing your true thoughts and feelings. This translates into keeping you perpetually anchored in a seemingly safe but in reality a false psychological space that will ultimately impede your personal growth and development and, in a worse case scenario, even place you in danger. For example, a woman who is the victim of ongoing domestic violence and who is in denial about her partner’s actions could end up dead from one too many physical assaults.

Here is a list of the more common defense mechanisms and how they manifest in response to dealing with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors. 

Affiliation – Turning to other people for help and support when dealing with problems, but at the same time taking responsibility for these problems. 

Altruism – Over-dedication to doing good deeds and meeting the needs and wants of others in order to receive positive recognition.

Anticipation – Experiencing emotional reactions ahead of an upcoming event or situation by considering the consequences that may unfold, and in the process coming up with realistic responses or solutions.

Autistic Fantasy – Day-dreaming excessively to compensate for a lack of human relationships or effective action or problem solving.

Denial – Refusal to acknowledge and to act upon an uncomfortable aspect of an event, thought or feeling that could be obvious to other people.

Devaluation – Attributing exaggerated negative qualities to yourself or others, which are often characterised by distortions in self-image or body-image.

Displacement – Redirecting a feeling about or a response (often sexual or aggressive) towards a perceived threatening object to a safer substitute object or outlet.

Dissociation – A breakdown in consciousness, memory, perception of self or the environment, or sensory/motor behaviour.

Idealisation – Attributing exaggerated positive qualities to others.

Omnipotence – Feeling or acting superior to others in the belief that you possess special powers or abilities.

Passive aggression – Expressing underlying aggression, hostility, resentment and/or resistance toward others in a roundabout way while maintaining a façade of friendliness and compliance.

Reaction formation – A conversion (and repression) into the opposite of unacceptable subconscious desires, impulses or behaviours that are threatening to the psyche.

Self-observation – Reflecting on thoughts, feelings, motivation and behaviour in order to respond appropriately.

Sublimation – Re-channeling impulses and feelings from perceived negative expression to more socially accepted outlets or behaviours.

Suppression – The conscious process of pushing away uncomfortable thoughts or impulses to avoid re-experiencing them.

Undoing – Words or behaviour intended to symbolically make amends for unacceptable thoughts, feelings or actions towards another person.

Humour – Emphasising the comic or ironic aspects of an emotional conflict or stressor so as to relieve tension.

Intellectualisation – Over analysing the intellectual components of a situation in order to establish control or to minimise uncomfortable feelings.

Isolation of affect (feeling) – A disconnection between a situation or idea which remains in cognitive awareness from the original feelings associated with them.

Projection – Falsely attributing one’s own unacceptable emotions, impulses or thoughts onto another person.

Rationalisation – The process of justifying a thought, action or emotion by inventing and substituting an elaborate self-reassuring but incorrect explanation.

Repression – The subconscious process of preventing painful or disturbing impulses, thoughts or experiences from entering into conscious awareness. The feelings may remain on the surface detached from the associated memory or idea.

Self-assertion – Expressing thoughts or feelings in a direct way so as not to manipulate or coerce others.

Many people are completely unaware of the existence of defense mechanisms, let alone that they use them and how they use them. Other more informed individuals, however, are able to recognise the ones they subconsciously favour, as well as their pattern of use.

If you have not yet come to this place, there is a way to do this for yourself and here is the irony – the most effective way to become consciously aware of the defense mechanisms you use is to actually employ a variant of two of them – self-observation and intellectualisation. Defense mechanisms are used to deal with emotional conflict and inner world or outer world stressors. In this scenario – and here is the subtle difference – you will be utilising them for the purposes of self-transparency in order to educate yourself on yourself and how you operate from the inside out. By doing this you will be able to rein them in if they are an inappropriate expression of your true self or if you are living in the private world of avoidance.

 © Julie Ditrich, 2009

Self Help for Comics Creators Series – Overcoming Emotional Resistance

Unlike procrastination, which can be defined as “the act or habit of putting things off till later” and “repeated delay or postponement”, resistance is a slightly different phenomenon. I actually define it as a “feeling-based internal response that acts as a block to action or change, or opposes something”. Therefore, procrastination is the “act of not acting” whereas emotional resistance is more like an “internal force that prevents motion”.

For me, emotional resistance manifests as a heavy sludgy feeling around the chest area as if I am about to plough through thick mud. I usually experience emotional resistance as I am about to start a new project or am confronted with something that will take me out of my comfort zone. I've found that the best solution is to acknowledge resistance front on. I do not try and hide from it, I do not turn my back on it, I do not try to get around it and I do not fight it. I actually name it.

What does this mean? Well, there are differences in the feeling energy depending on where the emotional resistance originates from in the mind body spirit. I endow each variation of resistance with its rightful name. For example, it can be "laziness", "tiredness", “mind space switch" [from one project to another]; or the fear-based "self doubt". Once named, that variant of resistance loses much of its potency and that is when I take action and start working on the very thing I was resisting. What I discover then is that instead of struggling through it, the mud metaphorically drops from chest height to maybe knee height and I can wade through it until I eventually walk out free.

I also allow for it. Every time I start a new project I will invariably go through one to five working days of resistance (average three days) before I shed it and move fully into the action and find my momentum. Being aware of this idiosyncrasy about me, I factor in a three-day resistance time frame into my creative work schedule. It's not good or bad; it just is and I accept it now as part of my personality.

If you're experiencing similar dynamics of resistance and you're contemplating moving away from a challenge rather than into it, the question you need to ask yourself is: “Will I grow and improve as a person if I complete this task/perform this deed/take this action/break this pattern/confront this situation?”

If the answer is “yes” then the keys in the right sequence are:

1. Close your eyes and experience that internal resistance inside you;

2. Give it a visual, audio or feeling value;

3. Name that resistance (sounds like a TV gameshow!), eg. “insecurity”;

4. Assign a time frame to it to move through it: and

5. Take action (small or larger steps it doesn’t matter).

There is another variation on resistance, and that is the intuition based response, which I call “intuitive resistance”. As already established, your true self as encompassed by mind body spirit, may communicate to you through a feeling of resistance to say that you are not on the right track or that there is an energy leak of some sort. Provided that there is no internal sabotage, it may be a feeling-based message to say you are straying off the inner pathway that reflects your true nature and calling.

For example, a few years ago after I made the decision to give up my hypnotherapy/PSH practice in the city to work full time as a comics writer and editor, but then I thought I could somehow juggle both careers at the same time because I loved them both. I began to set up a new home office in a new location that would be conducive to both writing and seeing clients. However, when it came time for me to do all the marketing and to write the promotional material for the therapy side of things, I encountered that heavy sludgy feeling in my chest. This time the internal resistance was so strong I ended up procrastinating for weeks. In the end I accepted what my intuition was attempting to communicate to me through this particular form of resistance – I was to say goodbye to therapy altogether and to concentrate wholly and solely on my writing. I needed full focus and commitment to do one or the other, and the timing was now right and my true self was now ready to take a huge leap of faith and embrace professional writing full time. As soon as I came to that realisation, the feeling of resistance evaporated inside of me to be replaced by a feeling of relief, excitement of new prospects and contentment of being on track.

As mentioned previously, it is those deep feelings that signal and provide us with direction in life.

An airplane can overcome the resistance of the air and go in the desired direction, but an ordinary balloon just drifts haphazardly. You need to decide whether you are the airplane or the balloon!

© Julie Ditrich, 2009