I've spent a lot of years working with people.

Hypnotherapy. Coaching. Relationships. Dating. Singles events.

Which means I've also spent a lot of years trying to explain what I do to people.

Most people are interested.

Some are fascinated.

Some clearly haven't got the foggiest idea what I'm talking about but smile politely anyway.

And then, occasionally, you meet someone who thinks the whole thing is...

rubbish.

I met one of those women at a networking event.

One woman was fascinated

There were a few of us sitting together talking about what we did.

One of the women seemed genuinely interested in my work.

She was asking questions.

We were having a really nice conversation about how people think, why we behave the way we do and some of the work I'd done helping people.

And then there was another woman sitting with us.

She wasn't quite so enthusiastic.

Every time I explained something, she'd make some dismissive comment.

It was rubbish.

She didn't believe in it.

She didn't agree with it.

Fine.

I'm quite used to people having different opinions.

You don't have to believe everything I believe.

You don't have to be interested in hypnotherapy.

You don't have to agree with everything I say.

Life would be incredibly boring if we all sat around nodding at one another.

But she just...

kept going.

Eventually, Dating Coach Jaq temporarily left the building

There comes a point where somebody isn't simply disagreeing with you anymore.

They're repeatedly interrupting a conversation to tell you that what you're talking about is nonsense.

And eventually my patience disappeared.

I can't remember my exact words now, but they were along the lines of:

“Will you stop? Because you're really starting to piss me off.”

Not perhaps the carefully crafted response you'd find in the Professional Networking Handbook.

But effective.

She stopped.

And we carried on with the conversation.

Afterwards, though, I thought about her

Because once I'd stopped being irritated, the therapist part of my brain wandered back in.

And I started wondering:

What was actually going on there?

I don't know.

I didn't know the woman well enough to know what was happening in her life.

Maybe she simply thought everything I did was complete rubbish.

That's entirely possible.

But I've worked with enough people over the years to know that sometimes a reaction isn't only about the conversation happening in front of us.

Sometimes we're reacting from wherever we happen to be emotionally at that moment.

Two people can hear exactly the same thing very differently

Think about the end of a relationship.

One person might hear:

“Perhaps it's time to start thinking about what you want next.”

and feel hopeful.

Someone else might hear exactly the same sentence and feel furious.

Not because either response is wrong.

But because those two people may be in completely different emotional places.

One might have had time to process what's happened.

The other might still be thinking:

I didn't want any of this.

Tell that person to “look on the bright side” and you may want to duck.

That's one of the reasons I recently wrote about the 5 Stages of Grief After a Relationship Ends.

Denial, anger, bargaining, sadness and acceptance aren't neat steps we all move through in order.

But they can help explain why our feelings - and sometimes our reactions -change while we're processing loss.

Read: The 5 Stages of Grief After a Relationship Ends

Was she angry about something?

Maybe.

But that's all it can ever be: maybe.

I couldn't diagnose what was happening in that woman's life from one conversation at a networking meeting.

And I think that's important.

Once we start learning about human behaviour, it's very tempting to start analysing everybody.

She's obviously angry because...

He's definitely avoidant because...

My ex is clearly a narcissist because...

Sometimes we simply don't have enough information to know.

I could recognise that her reaction seemed unusually strong.

I could wonder whether there was something underneath it.

But I couldn't possibly know what that something was.

And there's actually quite a lot of freedom in admitting that.

Understanding someone doesn't mean accepting everything they do

This is probably the biggest thing I've learned from years of working with people.

We can understand why somebody might behave in a certain way...

without deciding their behaviour is okay.

Somebody may be frightened.

Grieving.

Angry.

Overwhelmed.

Insecure.

Having the worst week of their life.

All of those things might help us understand a reaction.

But understanding isn't the same as saying:

Therefore, you can treat me however you like.

You can have empathy for someone and still have boundaries.

You can think:

I wonder what's happened to make you feel like this?

while simultaneously thinking:

But you're still really starting to piss me off.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

And this matters in relationships too

When we care about someone, it's incredibly easy to explain away their behaviour.

They're stressed.

They're tired.

They've had a difficult childhood.

Their previous relationship hurt them.

They're frightened of getting close.

They're struggling at work.

And sometimes those things genuinely do explain why somebody behaves the way they do.

Compassion matters.

But so does noticing what repeatedly happens to you in that relationship.

Do you feel listened to?

Can you express an opinion without it becoming an argument?

Can you disagree?

Can you say no?

Can you be yourself?

Understanding someone's history doesn't mean you have to abandon your own boundaries to accommodate it.

That's something I wish more of us understood.

Sometimes it's not actually about you

There's another side to this too.

If somebody reacts badly to you, it's very easy to immediately turn inward.

What did I say?

Did I do something wrong?

Do they not like me?

Should I have explained myself differently?

Sometimes, yes, perhaps we could have handled something better.

I'm fairly sure “you're really starting to piss me off” wouldn't win me any awards for diplomacy.

But sometimes another person's reaction simply isn't ours to fix.

We can look at our own behaviour.

We can apologise when we've got something wrong.

We can listen.

We can learn.

But we don't have to take responsibility for every emotion another human being experiences in our presence.

I still don't know what was going on with her

Perhaps she was going through something.

Perhaps I'd touched a nerve without realising it.

Perhaps she was angry with the world.

Or perhaps she simply went home thinking:

That woman at networking talks absolute rubbish.

I'll never know.

But I do know the encounter reminded me of something useful.

People don't arrive in conversations as blank sheets of paper.

We bring our history.

Our experiences.

Our disappointments.

Our fears.

Our grief.

Our beliefs.

And whatever happened five minutes before we walked through the door.

Sometimes recognising that helps us take other people's reactions a little less personally.

And sometimes...

we still need to tell them to stop.

Jaq 💚