In this life, we encounter all types of people. Some of them are lovely and bring all kinds of value and benefit to our lives. Others, however, can be a bit more challenging to deal with. Negative and insensitive people can make our emotional lives extremely difficult. Their bites and barbs wound us and can erode our self-esteem if we don’t take care to protect ourselves and our personal wellbeing.
Who are the insensitive people in your life? How does their behavior affect or derail the way in which you go about your day (and your happiness)? It’s time, to be honest with yourself, and in that honesty discover better ways to protect yourself and set better boundaries. Insensitive people are everywhere. While we can never escape them fully, we can learn how to build the right walls and establish an undeniable self-confidence that can’t be denied or disrupted.
Insensitivity comes naturally to some.
Most of us have a basic handle on our compassion and our empathy. We understand how it connects us to others, and we understand how it deepens the emotions we share with them. The same can not be said for everyone, however. Some people are too involved in their own narratives to have concern for the fears, emotions, or perspectives of others. There are people in this world who are so broken, hurting, and lost that they’ve disconnected from their ability to care for others.
An insensitive person is someone who shows little care, concern, or respect for the feelings and needs of others. Often, they live in a world of their own and are completely absorbed by their own thoughts, needs, and desires. They can lack affection, come off as haughty, and will also engage in humiliating or bullying behavior.
All of this comes down to their inability to understand the feelings of other people. Much like a narcissist, someone with insensitive behavior will have a hard time conceptualizing the fact that other people go through the same emotional experiences as them. In order to protect yourself from the cruel outbursts and behaviors of the insensitive people in your life, you need to figure out how to set boundaries for yourself and figure out how to build the right walls around your emotional wellbeing.
Common signs of insensitive people.
Are you dealing with an insensitive person? Or someone who goes out of their way to be rude or negative to you and others? While some of their techniques are subtle, others can be quite overt. Either way, protecting yourself against insensitivity requires first recognizing it in every facet of your life.
Think about someone you consider to be insensitive. How did they react when they were confronted with someone sad, upset, or grieving? Generally, insensitive people aren’t empathetic or compassionate when the people they love need it most. They perhaps don’t show a lot of affection, even if it’s part of their partner’s love language. And they certainly don’t put themselves out to make others feel more comfortable.
Demeaning comments are one of the most common ways in which insensitive people might try to undermine us. These snide remarks are meant to erode self-confidence and take away that personal sense of pride and power. It can be a quite subtle form of passive rudeness, with small comments that dismiss your feelings or otherwise devalue your points. On the other end, they can be outright mean and pointed; created to wound or harm you.
Insensitive people don’t have a great grasp of their own emotions, and for that reason, they can’t really understand those same emotions in other people. For this reason, they can engage in negative behaviors that provide them with a great deal of entertainment while hurting or harming others. They push jokes too far and poke fun at sensitive topics that are emotionally off-bounds for us or our loved ones. Is taunting or bullying becoming the norm? You may be dealing with an insensitive person.
Because insensitive people only really have a handle on their own boundaries, they often show little respect for the boundaries of others. Maybe they cross the line again-and-again. Maybe they push past the point of comfort or drive you to act out on behaviors that you consider to be outside of your character. Insensitive people don’t really care about others, so they commonly disrespect boundaries.
Humiliation is a tactic commonly employed by negative or insecure people. They feel horrible and low about themselves so, in an effort to level the playing field, they bring down others around them by embarrassing them. Perhaps they go out of their way to make other people look bad. They can bring up sensitive themes, or off-color topics you don’t want to be discussed in front of certain people. All of these tactics add up to one aim: bring you down.
Emotions are complex and difficult to quantify. That’s why when we interact with others, we use a variety of communication styles to best communicate and understand their perspective.