Dealing with a harsh, sometimes cruel and
nearly always verbally aggressive person

ADVANCE REVIEW: “This piece is the most comprehensive “look” at this subject I have ever encountered…extremely insightful…right on the money, so to speak…very poignant, very sincere. I suspect Neale has had another ‘Conversation with God’…thank you!”

— from the Comment Section beneath this column

I had this interesting insight this morning: We’re all walking around trying to keep each other happy. I mean, on this planet. That’s all we’re trying to do is keep each other happy, so that we can keep each other in our lives. It’s about trying as hard as we can to avoid rejection. We don’t ever want to be alone again. We never want to be rejected again, because we think that’s going to lead to our being alone again.

We were rejected once—at least, that’s what we were told has happened, when God kicked us out of the Garden of Eden—and we have felt the sting of that ever since, the loneliness of that, the utter desolation of that. I call it the “Desolation of Isolation,” and we struggle mightily to never experience that again, because there is nothing worse than feeling rejected, pushed out, left to our own devices.

This is a repeat of the birth experience, and that is an experience we have never forgotten. We remember it at a cellular level. We remember being pushed out, left there, on our own. We’ve never forgotten that, and we never want to experience it again.

So we spend or lives trying to please each other, trying not to get rejected, even in the smallest ways. Now, if it happens that in our life we have been rejected, or have been “pushed out” of someone’s life—of the life of someone we’ve dearly and deeply loved—no matter how hard we’ve tried to please them…there’s almost no repair for that. We can eventually get past it, but we can never get over it.

This is the answer to the question, “What hurts you so bad that you feel you have to hurt me in order to heal it?” It may not even be us who did the original rejecting of another. They may feel so hurt by the original rejection wherever it came from that they have become bitter and angry with life at every level.

They think, So this is what happens when you allow yourself to love somebody!, and that are determined never to become that vulnerable again.

And so they armor themselves. And in some cases they do more than armor themselves. They embody the notion of preemptive strike. They lash out at anyone who shows them kindness, admiration, or affection—and especially if anyone tries to show them love.

When I was a child there was a song I heard a lot on the radio, sung by a group named the Mills Brothers. I remember the lyrics to this day.

“You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all. You always take the sweetest rose and crush it ‘til the pedals fall. You always break the kindest heart with a hasty word you can’t recall. So if I broke your heart last night it’s because I love you most of all.”

And it’s not always only about armor. With some people—people who have been severely or repeatedly damaged—it’s also at some level about revenge. It’s about getting back at the world for how the world has treated them. And this kind of “pay back” is indiscriminate. Everybody is in the line of fire.

Harsh remarks are made. Cruel judgments are made. Cutting comments are made. “Corrections” are offered in the most searing, blistering, belittling ways. Tones of voice and facial expressions are mocked, often right in front of the other person. And if the “target” of such verbal aggression offers the tiniest protest, or displays the smallest sign of being hurt, the aggressor says, “Oh, come on, can’t you even take a joke?”

If someone else other than the “target” calls the verbal aggressor out, asking why they would say such a thing, the aggressor inevitably responds, “Hey, I call ‘em as I see ‘em.”  And if some other person says, “But you don’t have to do that. If you have judgments about others, fine. We all do. But you can keep them to yourself. You don’t have to announce it in public,” the verbal aggressor will respond, “I’m just telling the truth that no one else will say. Someone has to.”

In this, they see themselves as the Hall Monitor. They’ve been assigned the task of keeping everyone obeying the rules—and they won’t give anyone a “pass.”  If they catch you in the slightest infraction, they’ll call you on it. And if you say, “Wow, you don’t let anyone get away with anything, do you…? You know, you don’t have to notice and announce every single thing that you have a judgment about,” their defense and response is: “I hold in a lot more than I let out.”

And so we see a person who feels incredibly and unbelievably superior to the world around them, and just about everyone in it. Their kindest act is to “hold in” 90% of their comments and judgments. What you’re seeing in only the tip of the iceberg.

Ouch. They must be hurting really, really bad to have such an inner experience of everything they look at in life—even those they love.

Now not every person has experienced the hurt of birth’s trauma in this way. And not every person—even those who have, like most of us, experienced some rejection in their life by someone they loved—retreats to such a place of Arm & Attack. But when you meet someone who has retreated to that place, you will know it. You will be able to spot it a mile away, because they will be caustic and mocking and sometimes even directly and harshly critical of every fault and foible of others—and maybe even of you—right in front of you.

And the question then becomes: How to deal with such a person? How to respond?

You don’t want to just turn away and allow the behavior to continue (particularly if it is directed toward you), because this creates a wholly dysfunctional relationship with the other: An Aggressor/Surrender relationship that simply teaches the aggressor that unkind words and unkind behavior is going to continue to be accepted by you. And acceptance, of course, is all that the other person ultimately wants. It is rejection that they fear! So they will continue to accept in themselves the very behavior that they see others accepting in them.

That is the supreme irony.

And so, my own personal recommendation is that we lovingly and caringly, compassionately and patiently—but very honestly and directly—communicate with the verbally aggressive person exactly how they are being experienced by you, and then let them know that every time they foist their verbal aggression on you in the future, you are going to call them on it.

And if they continue to verbally attack you or those you love when they are around you, you will simply no longer have them around you. You will leave the room when they enter, and if you can’t easily and graciously leave, you will simply not interact with them in any important or meaningful way beyond common courtesy.

Then, you will do this: When they ask you (as they surely will), “Why are you always so cold and distant with me? If you’ve got something ‘going on,’ why don’t you just come out and say it?”, you will gently respond, “I have said it, dear one, I have said it. You have simply not taken it in. So I will say it again…

“You are not safe. You are too often unkind, too often harsh and cruel and mocking of others, and sometimes even of me, and I therefore find it more pleasant to not interact closely with you. We can be friends. We can always be friendly. But if you want us to be good friends, friends who want to spend time with each other, friends who have each other’s back, who can’t wait for the next interaction with each other, you will have to change those behaviors with me. I have a little slogan that I share with my friends: DON’T ATTACK. HAVE MY BACK.”

Then your opportunity is, at first, to forgive the other person, knowing and seeing the level of pain they are in that is causing their verbally attacking behavior, then moving even past Forgiveness, right straight to Understanding. Conversations with God says that when Understanding arrives, Forgiveness leaves. That is, the need to forgive another for anything leaves us the moment that we understand how it is possible that they could have done such a thing. And that understanding arrives the moment that we see the same behavior in ourselves.

Through the years I have learned that there is nothing another has done to me that I have not done to someone else, in some form or another. This is a second way of saying, “I possess every fault I find in you. I have committed every offense that I see you committing.”

This is True Understanding. And it is revealed when an even deeper comprehension arises: Every act is an act of love.

This is important to hear, this is vital to grasp, if you ever want to move into real Mastery.

There is no emotion other than Love. Conversations with God famously said, “Love is all there is,” and this is true. Every other emotion, or action arising from it, is an expression of love. Fear is an expression of love. Anger is an expression of love. Hatred is an expression of love. And yes, even violence is an expression of love. All of these are expressions of love—distorted expressions, for sure (remember I said that), but expressions nonetheless of love, and of nothing else.

Let’s test the theory.

If you did not love something, you would not be in fear of losing it, or not having it, or not ever getting it. The thief steals something he loves because he fears not ever having it otherwise. Thus, thievery is a distorted act of love. A person becomes angry as an outcry of love that says, “I don’t want this! I want what I love!” Hatred is likewise an even more distorted expression of love. Consider this: If you loved nothing, you would hate nothing. There would be no reason to. And, at its ultimate level of distortion, violence is an expression of love for something. It is our awareness of this very truth that allows us to justify violence, and even killing—as we do on this planet every day.

Knowing that every act is an act of love—for the Self or for another person, experience, or object—greatly increases our chance of understanding other people and their actions. The challenge then becomes how to stay in understanding—or at least its forerunner, forgiveness—without moving into dysfunction.

In the case of the person who is continually verbally attacking, dysfunction is when you allow that person to verbally aggress upon you and seem to be okay with it when you’re not—all so as not to “rile” the other any further; so as not to offend the one who is offending you.,

This is the height of dysfunction, and it appears in more marriages and more relationships than you might ever imagine. It shows up in such close interactions particularly because all of us are suffering the pain of Original Rejection, and the love of something we can’t have that we dearly want: ultimately, the end of Separation forever.

Yet when we tell a verbally attacking person how you feel about their constant verbal aggressions, it will serve us to not be verbally aggressive with them, but rather, to heed the words of one of my own life’s spiritual masters, Francis Treon, who taught: “Speak your truth, but soothe your words with peace.”

These things I have experienced being shared with me this morning, by the Source of Wisdom within. I share them with you in the spirit of togetherness, as we walk side-by-side along this road that we call Life. I hope you will Share with me your own insights, below.

Hugs and love…neale.

(The above is from the new book What God Said, due out in September from Penguin Putnam, and is part of a continuing series of commentaries by Neale Donald Walsch on the Conversations with God material.)