Just For The Day
Just For The Day
#2 - August 13, 2025 - Responding to Difficult People
We explore how to deal with difficult people in our lives through support program tools and resources. Taking our own inventory first and seeking to understand rather than be understood can transform our most challenging relationships and lead to personal growth.
• Take your own inventory first - have you wronged this person?
• Seek to forgive rather than be forgiven, understand rather than be understood
• Pay attention to internal promptings
• Steps 4-7 builds empathy and understanding
• As we change ourselves through recovery, difficult people often become easier to interact with
• We cannot change others, but we can change our approach and responses
• The goal is to learn to love difficult people, not necessarily like them
Jay and Diane's Just For The Day podcast is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Just for Today, any 12-Step program, or any other recovery-based product or organization. They should not replace your regular group or sponsor meetings.
The views expressed are solely those of the hosts and guests. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Welcome back to another episode of Just for the Day. I'm Jay and I'm an addict.
Speaker 2:I'm Diane and I'm a codependent.
Speaker 1:And today is August 13th.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:The title of today is Difficult People and the quote at the top is by giving unconditional love we become more loving, and by sharing spiritual growth we become more spiritual.
Speaker 2:Most of us have one or two exceptionally difficult people in our lives. How do we deal with such a person in our recovery? First, we take our own inventory. Have we wronged this person? Has some action or attitude of ours served as an invitation for the kind of treatment they have given us? If so, we will want to clear the air, admit we have been wrong and ask our higher power to remove whatever defects may prevent us from being helpful and constructive.
Speaker 1:Next, as people seeking to live spiritually oriented lives, we approach the problem from the other person's point of view. They may be faced with any number of challenges. We either fail to consider or know nothing about challenges that cause them to be unpleasant. As it's said, we seek in recovery to forgive rather than be forgiven, to understand rather than be understood.
Speaker 2:Finally, if it is within our power, we seek ways to help others overcome their challenges without injuring their dignity. We pray for their well-being and spiritual growth and for the ability to offer them the unconditional love that has meant so much to us in our recovery.
Speaker 1:We cannot change the difficult people in our lives, nor can we please everyone. But by applying the spiritual principles we've learned in NA we can learn to love them.
Speaker 2:Just for today, higher power, help me serve other people, not demand that they serve me.
Speaker 1:It's a great reading.
Speaker 2:It is a great reading. I love when it starts. Most of us have one or two difficult people in our lives.
Speaker 1:Everybody will track with that right.
Speaker 2:Of course we do, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know there's a lot of common principles here that I found in a lot of books and religious practices. Some of the things I really love is, before you try to solve their problem, focus inward and take your own inventory right. Have we wronged the person? Has some action or attitude of others of ours served as an invitation for that kind of treatment?
Speaker 2:right.
Speaker 1:And then, following that that's the first step is taking our own inventory. Then we, instead of working to be forgiven, we work to forgive rather than be forgiven, or we seek to understand rather than to be understood. It reminds me of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People you know, where it's first seek to understand, not to be understood, and then, you know, know, praying for them.
Speaker 2:I think that this is a really good formula for really actually dealing with a lot of the resentment that we add to the relationship, which I think is really powerful yeah, there were multiple things that came up here, one of them being that at my al-anon meetings, one of the standard phrases that is used is that you will find that you will come to love all of us. You may not like us, but you will love us. Right, like, and I think that that's very true. When we go to meetings, there's often a person or two that maybe rubs us the wrong way, but we still. We have this camaraderie, we have this group support, this need. That's the same, and so we do still find that we love the people in the group, even when there's a couple of people that kind of drive us nuts. Right, that's right, and I like that. I also like that it starts with saying have we wronged this person? And when we read that, it reminded me of this book that I read a couple years back called Leadership Outside the Box. Do you remember that one? And it about, um, how we have promptings kind of in our life, right, although we have a compass of like what's right and what's wrong, and when we go against that compass or we don't listen to the promptings, what ends up happening is we almost are like denying ourself, like we are not being true to ourselves and then we kind of build a box around the people that that involves.
Speaker 2:So I'll give the example that when I was um, before we moved recently, and I was helping my mother painting some rooms in her house, at one point I was painting a room and I had the thought I should probably go feed the boys cause it's getting close to dinner time. But then I had the step follow up thought of I'm so close to the end of this tray, I just want to finish this tray. Within 10 minutes the kids come up and they are fighting and in my mind they became this, this hassle, this pain. They were difficult kids and when I traced it back I was like no, I had the prompting, I knew they were hungry and they needed to be fed and I denied that right.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of times when there's so what ends up happening is then I have to kind of justify I denied that prompting. Because I denied that prompting, it had consequences, and then the consequences were unpleasant for me. Right, and that often happens with people that we have issues with. Yeah, that if we think back, there was probably a time where we had some sort of prompting to reach out to them, to serve them, to do something for them or with them or whatever, and we didn't do that and over time there's been resentments kind of build up between us and that person.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah, which no one, by the way, typically is interacting with or being aware of. In those interactions with that exceptionally difficult person in your life, right, and so how? And this is the right way to deal with it is you can't. There's what's the phrase is you can't. You can't control the wind, but you can change your sails, right, and you can. You can adjust your approach and take control of what's in your process, and by doing that, you often find that the things that were at least I found in my own personal life that I find that the things I was often most frustrated about is usually just something internally I'm dealing with that has nothing to do with them.
Speaker 2:And as.
Speaker 1:I as I relieved that I actually enjoyed them more and they responded to me. And how often are they responding to me? Because I'm approaching them in a way that's cuing them to be mean to me.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah Well, and I think that there's a lot to do with when I do my middle steps right. I hit my four, five, six, seven. I have more tolerance, more understanding, uh, for myself and more awareness of the ways that I've wronged people and interacted with people, and those steps really help you to understand how to interact with difficult people, because you start to have more empathy, you start to have more understanding.
Speaker 2:You start to have a oh my gosh, this person is always critic, criticizing, right. And then there's well's, well, okay, why do they criticize? And it does you do go back into okay, well, what is the background behind that and why are they doing that? And and then you start to understand a little bit more and when you have the understanding, it's easier to love them, yeah, and then they become less difficult when you, when you start to like them and start to understand, they understand them Because they respond to your kindness.
Speaker 1:They respond to your difference of approach. Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:Well, which goes back again to when we come to Al-Anon. We're told we're not going to change the alcoholic. But what we find is that people who embrace our program and start working with it tend to find that the people in their lives become easier for them to manage not manage, but to interact with as well, that their life circumstances are bound to improve as they work the program. Yeah, and that's because as we change ourselves, we change our environment.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Any other thoughts?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Just for today, higher power, help us serve other people and not demand that they serve us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. Thanks for joining us guys.
Speaker 2:We'll talk with you.
