Responding To Behavior That Makes You Feel Uncomfortable

Sometimes, certain behaviors make you feel uncomfortable. It could be the way that person looks at you or the way they invade your space. It could just be the way they talk that sets off alarm bells!

We’ve all had that feeling at one time or another. We’ve felt the hairs stand up on the back of our necks and our spines tingle with unease.

Yet, we can’t always just walk away or distance ourselves from that person. Many times, the person who makes us feel this way is someone you have to deal with quite often, like a colleague or a family member.

The bottom line is that, sooner or later, you’re going to find yourself in an uncomfortable situation. Yet, it’s how you handle yourself during that time that makes all the difference.

So, the next time you’re feeling uncomfortable, use these strategies to help you manage your feelings and reactions.

1. Pause Before Reacting

The rule of thumb for anyone in an uncomfortable situation is to stop, think, then act. The worst thing you can do is give a knee-jerk reaction. Trust us, it always ends badly.

So, to avoid letting the pressure of that awkward situation get to you, try to stay calm. If you can remove yourself from the situation, then go get some coffee or take a quick walk. This way, when you return, you’ll be able to look at the situation from a fresh perspective.

Yet, if you can’t walk away, then the best thing to do is focus on your breathing to help regulate your nervous system. As a result, you become less anxious and better prepared to handle the situation at hand.

Here’s how to practice deep breathing in just a few seconds:

1. First, inhale slowly through your nose.
2. When you feel your abdomen has expanded, hold your breath for a second or two.
3. Next, exhale through your mouth.
4. Repeat 4–5 times.
2. Make a Joke

There’s a time and place for jokes, and, sometimes, they can be a great way to diffuse an uncomfortable situation.

This strategy works best when you trip as you’re heading into work, or you show up at work with your top inside out. When people see you laugh at your own snafus, they’ll most probably feel less tense and just quickly brush it off as an innocent blunder, then go on with their day.

Yet, it may not work as well in other more intense situations, like someone making an inappropriate comment at work about race or gender.

3. Diffuse the Situation

Using the same example as above, it might feel easier to just sweep the comment under the rug and hope everyone forgets about it.

But, let’s be honest, that will never happen. Ignoring a serious situation like that will just fester like an open wound and it’ll get worse with time.

The most effective way to deal with something like that is to acknowledge what was said. Just make sure you pick the right time to talk about it when you’re sure everyone involved won’t become emotional or storm out in fury.

Explain to the person who made the comment— in very plain terms—how this may come across as offensive or demeaning. Most likely, the person will probably apologize, not realizing they’ve put their foot in their mouth.

If not, then at least you’ll have voiced your concerns in a calm and mature way.

4. Enjoy the Silence

In our experience, most uncomfortable situations are accompanied by deadly silence. You know the kind when you can hear your blood pumping through your veins, that kind of silence.

According to a study done by the University of Groningen, people start to feel uncomfortable after only four seconds of silence. Add to that an already awkward situation and things get even more unnerving.

Yet, if all that quiet seems disturbing, trying to fill it can be even worse! You start to panic because you feel the pressure of all that silence.

The key to getting past the awkwardness is to simply allow yourself to revel in the silence for a bit. Let your mind wander about what just happened and run through a couple of scenarios of all the possible things you could say.

Avoid blurting out the first thing that comes to mind. Those comments are usually ill-thought-out and we regret them as soon as they’ve been said.

5. Act Confident

You know that saying ‘fake it till you make it?’ That certainly works here.
Most of us feel insecure about specific things about ourselves even when we’re crushing it at home and at work. Then, we slip up or someone makes us feel uncomfortable for some reason and all those insecurities get multiplied by a thousand!

It’s times like these when it pays to have a role model or someone you look up to. It could be one of your more self-assured friends, a manager at work, or even a fictional character from a TV series. Imagine how they’d react if they were in the same situation and take inspiration from their response.

This tactic is a great way to ease you out of an uncomfortable situation. Not only that, but it’ll also help you disconnect from your insecurities so you can see the situation from a more objective viewpoint.

Mental Toughness - The Ability to Self-Monitor

Self-monitoring is a valuable personality trait that helps people inform their behaviors and actions appropriately in any given environment. While this trait can help people “fit in” to the current surroundings more naturally, it can also be an excellent way to fortify your mental toughness.

What Is Mental Toughness?

According to Mental Toughness Inc., “Mental toughness is the ability to resist, manage and overcome doubts, worries, concerns and circumstances that prevent you from succeeding, or excelling at a task or towards an objective or a performance outcome that you set out to achieve."

Self-monitoring and then acting in a way that may go against your natural instincts is challenging and requires notable mental toughness to achieve.

What is self-monitoring?

According to the psychology experts at VeryWellMind, “self-monitoring is a personality trait that involves the ability to monitor and regulate self-presentations, emotions, and behaviors in response to social environments and situations.”

When you are self-monitoring, you are paying close attention to how you are behaving and responding to what is happening around you in a socially appropriate way.

Sometimes, self-monitoring can feel easy and natural. For example, when you are in a quiet, fine dining restaurant, you likely feel the urge to keep your voice calm and low. On the contrary, if you’re in an amusement park with friends, you probably feel the urge to laugh and talk loudly.

In each of these very different scenarios, you are gathering environmental information to inform your actions – and then using that information to make personal decisions about how you’re going to speak, act, and behave.

In other situations, self-monitoring can be difficult. If you are having an argument with a friend, you may feel tempted to immediately release your frustrations by yelling at them.

However, your self-monitoring skills may remind you that yelling isn’t going to solve the problem – in this case, it is better to take some deep breaths, remain calm, and keep your voice steady.

When you exercise self-monitoring in this way, it is a true sign of mental toughness. Going against your natural instincts can be challenging!

If you struggle with self-monitoring, what are some strategies you can use to get better at using it?

If self-monitoring doesn’t come easy for you, it is possible to improve these skills. Consider employing the following strategies to get started:

1. Practice using your observational skills.

Spend more time listening and observing during interactions and conversations with others rather than trying to respond.

You can learn a lot about your surroundings and the people around you this way. With this valuable information, you can begin self-monitoring your own behaviors and choices to match what is happening around you more closely.

2. Engage in stepping away from situations so you can process what is happening before reacting.

In many situations, particularly shocking or surprising ones, you may feel an immediate urge to react in a certain way. However, you can engage in some self-monitoring practice by choosing to step away from the situation momentarily. This gives you a few private moments to calm down, assess the situation, and then decide a plan of action.

3. Pay close attention to yourself, especially in different social situations.

Whenever you find yourself in varying social situations, such as out with friends, in a meeting at work, hanging out at the community park, and anywhere else you find yourself on a regular basis, pay close attention to how you act when you’re there.

Taking note of specific patterns in your own behavior can help you improve your own self-monitoring.

For example, you may notice that people seem surprised by the volume of your voice when you actually pay close attention – this can help you determine a course of action to modify this behavior in future situations.

How did you like this post? If you found this article helpful to you, you may want to share it with others by clicking the social networking buttons – Thank You!


Cheers, Helene Malmsio

Related Reading: Daily Motivation - Free Self Help Guide

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