Everyday Triggers: What Sets Us Off and How to Beat It

Why Rudeness Hurts

Encountering rudeness can be agonizing, but it doesn’t have to overthrow your rationality.

By Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D.

When was the last time someone was unnecessarily rude to you? Perhaps you were minding your own business at the supermarket, but when reaching for an item on a high shelf, unaware of the woman standing behind you, you happened to take a step back and bump into her foot. It was an innocent mistake, so you couldn’t understand why she then aggressively tapped you on the shoulder and yelled at you for being clumsy and inconsiderate. You’re sure that if you’d been in her place, you wouldn’t have reacted with such venom. Unsettled by the whole episode, you found that you couldn’t concentrate on what else you were supposed to pick up at the store. When you got home, you realized that you’d forgotten several items.

What Rudeness Does to Us

Research published in 2022 by Binyamin Cooper of Carnegie Mellon University and colleagues found that rudeness is a “low-intensity negative behavior that violates norms of civility” and disrupts its target’s ability to get things done. In the extreme, rudeness could have life-or-death consequences; earlier research showed that medical personnel exposed to rudeness performed at suboptimal levels and could make poor decisions with lethal outcomes.

What accounts for the effects of rudeness on our mental capacity? When you’re the target of an unprovoked attack like the one at the supermarket just described, you might feel that you simply cannot think straight. The researchers suggest that rudeness is so problematic for a target in part because it leads to “anchoring”—the fixation on one idea to the exclusion of other possibilities. As they report, by triggering anchoring, rudeness “appears to pose a significant risk to the quality of individual judgment.”

Rudeness affects the ability to think because it engenders negative arousal: Think sadness or anger. This pathway is further influenced by a diminished ability to engage in perspective-taking, or thinking about a situation from someone else’s point of view. Faced with rudeness, we can become unable to lay out a set of possible solutions to the problems that face us. It’s as if we zero in on one idea, fixate on it, and become unable to see any alternatives.

To test their theoretical model, the researchers exposed people to rudeness and then evaluated how their thought processes changed as a result. Across a series of three studies, participants imagined themselves in simulated situations that involved someone speaking to them in a highly inappropriate manner.

For example, some participants were asked to imagine themselves as bookstore employees faced with a customer complaining about the price of a book: “What kind of bookstore is this? Are you all a bunch of idiots? There’s a sign there saying all the books in that area are SEVEN DOLLARS. It’s not that complicated: You put the price on a book, and that’s what it costs. It doesn’t take a genius to do that, but maybe that’s asking too much of someone who works at a bookstore. Forget it; I don’t want it.”

To assess the impact of rudeness on anchoring, the researchers assigned participants various tasks in which they could be led to settle on an incorrect answer without considering others. For example, some were asked whether Mount Everest’s height was greater or less than 45,000 feet and then, in the second question, what they thought the mountain’s height was. Anchoring would be shown by the extent to which the freely given second answer was closer to the anchor (45,000 feet) than the actual height (29,029).

Overall, the findings of the study were consistent with the team’s predictions: Exposure to rudeness did engender negative emotions like anger, hostility, and disgust, but the effect of this negative arousal on anchoring could be offset by some simple interventions. These “rays of hope,” as the researchers call them, could provide an antidote to the effect of rudeness on an individual’s ability to think rationally.

Offsetting Everyday Rudeness

The raw emotions that become triggered by rudeness can narrow your focus and make it difficult to think of anything other than the horribleness of the situation. But now we know that you don’t have to remain trapped in those negative emotions. In the heat of the moment, you may not feel like perspective-taking—thinking nice things about the person who wronged you—but you can take advantage of what’s known as information elaboration by forcing yourself to stick to the task at hand and figure out various ways to tackle it.

In other words, as you roam the supermarket, fuming at the person who was so rude to you, you can pull out the list you came in with or stop and think about all the items you might need by looking up and down each aisle.

You can also use encounters with rudeness to reinforce your desire to show civility toward others rather than stooping to their level. In some ways, it can be good to be exposed to a rude person just to remind yourself of why it’s so important to take a beat before lashing out at anyone. Situations in which we’re faced with rudeness, then, could help inoculate us against becoming an antagonist ourselves.

But if you’re able to manage it, some perspective-taking can be beneficial as well. Who knows what was going on with the person who treated you so harshly? They may have been having a terrible day and took it out on you without really intending to be mean. Who knows what a smile could have done to help improve their mood—or your own? And if you got nothing in response but an angry glare, so what? You did your best to be positive.

Taking these steps to cleanse yourself of the bitter aftertaste of rude encounters can cleanse your thinking. It’s important to remember, though, that people aren’t just rude to strangers; they’re also often rude to people they know very well, and the chronic toll of a rude person in your life can cloud your thinking in ways that interfere with achieving your goals. Developing the ability to stay positive and focused will help you get to a happier and more productive place.

Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D., is a professor emerita of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her latest book is The Search for Fulfillment.

The Secret to Becoming Unflappable

It’s important to know what triggers you, but equally essential to learn how to remain calm when faced with it.

By Kevin Bennett

It could be any one of a million things: Maybe the car next to you swerved into your lane or your irritating coworker failed to mute during a Zoom meeting once again, and it just set you off. Many of us know through experience exactly which behaviors will provoke us, but becoming less reactive to them depends on developing a set of calming skills.

A practice of positive self-talk can be an important approach to managing reactivity. When someone pushes your buttons, it can help to keep your internal self-talk focused on positive outcomes down the road: After this lunch, you’re unlikely to encounter this person again for a few weeks. In a few hours, you’ll be home enjoying an evening with your family. Next month, you’ll be on vacation at the beach or in the mountains.

Positive affirmations and personal mantras can also be powerful tools to help shift your mindset during triggering moments so that you can replace negative ideas or beliefs with positive ones. But they require advance preparation. Start by creating a list of encouraging statements about yourself that really resonate with you and that you can call to mind when you feel overwhelmed. Such affirmations, like “I am worthy”or “I can handle this,” can help you maintain healthy self-esteem and a positive outlook. Mantras are words or phrases that, when repeated, can help you block out external thoughts and distractions so you can relax or concentrate and generally get on with your day: “I breathe out stress and breathe in peace” or “This feeling is only temporary.” Through these practices, you can build a foundation for emotional resilience no matter what irritations you encounter.

A Little Mindfulness Goes a Long Way

When triggered, negative thoughts and emotions can hijack the brain’s decision-making systems, making it hard to think clearly. Mindfulness practices combat this dynamic by helping you focus on the present moment without judgment. You can then redirect attention to the current experience, observing and acknowledging thoughts without becoming overwhelmed by them.

Yoga, meditation, and grounding yourself in nature are proven methods to help break cycles of negative rumination. When a trigger activates you, you can shift your focus to your breathing. Deep, slow breaths engage the body’s relaxation response, calming the nervous system. Try the 4-7-8 technique: Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7, then exhale for 8.

You can also try changing your environment—or your perceived environment—to match your desired mood. If you know that tonight you are going to be in a social situation with people who aggravate you, or that tomorrow morning you have to take on tasks that frustrate you, a bit of proactive defense may be helpful. We can establish a more tranquil baseline for ourselves and limit the potential for emotional reactivity by changing up our personal surroundings. Adding soothing sounds and lights to your workspace could limit how much you can be bothered by unwelcome chores; seascape sounds, green plants, and natural light are generally more conducive to calm than silent, fluorescent-lit rooms. Pictures of friends and loved ones on your desk, wall, or phone screen can remind you of what is truly important when your cubicle mate yet again puts his feet up on his desk.

Mindfulness is all about self-insight—being conscious of one’s thoughts and feelings, strengths and weaknesses. If you cannot put yourself in a tranquil physical environment, practice imagining a more peaceful place, like a quiet cabin or a cozy chair. This type of visualization can reduce stress and create a restorative niche during stressful times.

Maintaining calm doesn’t mean denying your emotions or avoiding all potentially triggering situations. It means accepting what you can’t change, acknowledging your feelings, and focusing on constructive action. Unchecked, our minds can catastrophize when we’re pushed, but when we know what can happen, we can prepare ourselves to counteract this instinct. Faced with a trigger, question your negative thoughts about how bad it is: Are they based on facts or assumptions? Can you replace them with more realistic perspectives? People high in self-awareness tend to do a better job of identifying their emotions, understanding why they feel a certain way, and recognizing the impact of their reactivity on their behavior. By doing that, they enhance their emotional resilience, enabling them to endure annoyance in the moment and more swiftly move on to address the things and people that really matter.

Kevin Bennett, Ph.D., is a teaching professor of social-personality psychology at Penn State University Beaver Campus and the host of the podcast Kevin Bennett Is Snarling.

Why It’s Important to Know How Much a Partner Can Annoy You

Their aggravating traits are probably here to stay; here’s how to live with them.

By Tyler Jamison, Ph.D.

We get a lot of advice about what traits to look for in a partner: honesty, intelligence, chemistry, similarity, conflict-management skills. However, too often we fail to flip the script and consider which unwelcome traits we’re willing to accept and accommodate.

A few years ago, I read a piece about the wisdom of evaluating what types of pain or struggle you endure well. The author highlighted that even the best things in life—travel, falling in love, parenthood—come with challenges. He argued that maybe we should focus a little less on what we want out of life and start asking, “What am I willing to struggle for?” When it comes to long-term romantic relationships, this advice is spot on.

While we tend to focus on seeking positive qualities in romantic partners, considering their faults as well can be wise and productive. Even the most lovable partners have annoying traits, and they may only intensify over time. Maybe your partner is fun but a little unreliable. Maybe they shut down emotionally when they are angry or sad. Maybe they load the dishwasher in a way that makes you want to scream. Every potential partner has such irritating traits—and so do we.

The cumulative impact of living with these annoyances may be small and acceptable, or large and intolerable, depending on your personality and individual pet peeves. For some people, being with someone who flour-bombs the kitchen because they like making bread is a nightmare. For others, a homemade loaf is more than worth the mess. For some, being emotionally shut out for even a short time triggers panic and distress, while others can patiently do their own thing while a partner works through their feelings.

Choose Your Battles

Relationship researcher John Gottman has estimated that 69 percent of the conflicts we will have with our partners are fundamentally unsolvable because they are based on differences in lifestyle, personality, or opinion that are unlikely to change. Devoting too much time to the project of “fixing” a partner by changing those things that trigger us is rarely a useful investment of time. Instead, we can recognize that those traits are aggravating—they might always chew louder than we would prefer—but that we can be satisfied that they will not make us feel constantly exhausted or on edge.

Two strategies can help make life with another person a little bit smoother. First, you can channel your energy toward addressing your “solvable” problems. These arise in the moment because of a specific situation and do not represent deeper personality or lifestyle differences between the two of you. With positive dialogue, you can collect some wins by solving some of the things that bother you when they pop up in the moment, leaving more energy in reserve for taking a deep breath and letting the rest go.

Second, keep in mind that one of the most powerful tools we have in our relationships is our response to our partners. We may not be able to control what they do or say, but we have a great deal of control over how we react to them. When a partner does something we find irritating, we can ignore it, move to another space, or simply acknowledge that this trait is just one part of the whole person we’ve chosen to love.

In working to understand which triggers we can most likely endure—and which will always be unacceptable—we can build relationships that sustain us rather than drain us.

Tyler Jamison, Ph.D., is an associate professor of human development and family studies at the University of New Hampshire.

8 Ways Parents’ Words Can Trigger Adult Children

Comments based in love can still sabotage a connection.

By Sarah Epstein, LMFT

Parents may hesitate to respond to an adult child who comes to them with a difficult issue or inadvertently drive them away with hasty answers. Knowing how these conversations go wrong, starting with these eight ways parents can trigger anger or resentment, can go a long way toward improving a connection.

1. Unsolicited advice. When an adult child approaches a parent with a problem, the parent may immediately jump into solution mode. And while some adult children may find this helpful, others consider it premature; they want to feel understood and validated before, or instead of, being given advice. Adult children often tell me they wish their parents would meet them where they are, with empathy. They want to hear, “That sounds like a hard day” or “I have total confidence that you can handle this.” I often remind them that it’s okay to tell parents, “I’m just venting right now” or “I’m just looking for reassurance, not advice.” Parents could also avoid triggering by asking their child what they’re looking for at that moment.

2. Reminders to be grateful. When presented with an adult child’s issue, parents may try to help them see the bright side and find gratitude even in adversity. This typically backfires. Why? Gratitude can be an excellent tool when a person finds it for themselves, but it can feel dismissive when it’s mandated by someone else. It can seem as if the parent is telling them not to feel how they feel or that their problems don’t justify negative feelings. It sends the message that the parent isn’t comfortable with their child’s negative feelings and would prefer them to skip straight to feeling better. Instead, parents could simply listen actively to what their child is relating, without interruption, even if it doesn’t feel proactive.

3. Jealous comments. Some parents envy children who may have achieved greater financial success than they have or who had fewer struggles growing up. In that dynamic, a parent may tell their child that “it must be nice” to have such cushy problems. This sends the message that the child is not entitled to their pain when we know, or should know, that anyone can suffer at any time. Parents can avoid this alienating response by noticing their own feelings before they speak so their child never has to say, “You make it really hard to share things with you.”

4. Making it all about the parent. It’s a common dynamic: An adult child raises an issue, and instead of engaging with it, the parent makes the conversation about themselves. They talk about a similar experience they had or ignore the child’s issue to focus on their own concerns. Some parents do this inadvertently. Some may not know any other way to relate to their child. But others are self-centered and struggle to engage about anyone other than themselves. Instead of responding with anger, an adult child can try to help the parent notice this tendency and remind them, “I need to keep this about me right now, please.”

5. Jokes. In an effort to lighten the mood, some parents turn to humor during uncomfortable conversations. Maybe difficult emotions make them uneasy, or they know no other way to respond to what their child is saying. Humor works wonders in many situations, but in this scenario, it’s likely to backfire. To an adult child, jokes can feel dismissive and suggest that a parent cannot or will not engage with their pain. A parent should refrain from using humor until a situation feels thoroughly processed and the child may be ready to laugh about it.

6. Labeling. Sometimes, an adult child will bring a problem to a parent and be met with an old childhood label to explain what is happening: “You’ve always been a procrastinator” or “You’ve always been so quick to anger.” Such labels reduce the child to a caricature and put them in a box that can feel difficult to escape. Instead of addressing the specifics of the problem, the parent has reflexively blamed the child for it, resurfacing a label the child may have been trying to escape for years and adding to their stress.

7. Awkwardness. Some parents respond to their children with gestures like sitting quietly, turning away, changing the subject, or shutting down. This can reflect their lack of tools for meeting their child’s needs; they may mean well, but they don’t know how to help. Or maybe this is how they learned to address difficulties in their own life—or how their own parents responded to them. In these situations, instead of criticizing parents, the adult child can guide them by telling them the kinds of things they need to hear.

8. Shifting attention to the parents’ anxiety about the issue. Some parents respond to their child’s issues by becoming so overwhelmed with worry that the child has to stop to support and reassure them. While it seems kind to express that they love their child and hate to see them suffer, such a response hijacks the conversation and communicates that they aren’t able to help.

Sarah Epstein, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist, writer, and consultant.

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