I want to be a nicer person

November 12, 2008 7:38 AM

I can't stop antagonizing people. How do I stop?

Lately, as a result of therapy sessions, I've discovered that I have a tendency to antagonize people.

Part of it is that I like to pull people's legs and tease them. Often, when I hang out with friends who have kids, I'll tease and make fun of the kids. I also do this with friends.

It's recently become a problem, because I think my tendency to tease is causing me to repel people. They often see my humor or teasing as being offensive or rude.

Problem is, I don't know how to stop it. It's an innate thing I find myself doing. I've tried to be more mindful, but often the first thing that pops to mind when interacting with someone is a teasing or antagonizing comment.

Any tips or resources I can consult to help me think before I speak and to change this behavior?

If you need follow-up, I've set up an email. It is likestotease at gmail dot com.

posted by anonymous to human relations (23 comments total)

I would ask a couple close friends call you on it when they notice you're doing it, both to them and to others. It would help you to be aware of when it happens and might be the kicker to help you stop. Also, maybe think about creating a rule for yourself that each time you start antagonizing someone you have to say something sincere and kind to that person (in a non creepy patronizing way) to try and offset it.
posted by gwenlister at 7:50 AM on November 12, 2008

There are sort of two issues here. You'd like to tease less because you think that your interactions with people are sending the wrong message, and then there's the teasing itself which can be its own problem. You can work on these together.

Hi, I hate being teased! I have some friends who are like you, who just tease as a normal part of interactions. I'm mostly sure they're not doing it to be malicious or hurtful. However once in a while I feel that they are teasing me instead of saying what's on their mind [i.e. when they're trying to be rude to me for some reason or when I've inadvertently hurt their feelings] and as a result, their subsequent teasing never quite seems to be the "all in good fun" interaction they claim it is.

So, to restate, the problem with teasing is that teasers often use it as a defense mechanism to hide real feelings of being uncomfortable or anxious or possibly even angry and as a result saying "oh I'm just kidding around" when someone objects to it doesn't ring true.

It's also extra hard when you're an adult teasing children because kids look to adults [sometimes] as authority figures and if an adult is giving you a hard time about something -- in my case it was (and sometimes still is) "smile, why don't you smile, you know your face is going to stick that way...." -- you don't have any real recourse besides running away or starting to cry. With adults they can at least say "hey knock it off" so I'd be extra careful around kids.

I think the best thing you can do is let the people who are being annoyed by this behavior know that you're trying to ease back on the teasing somewhat and let them let you know if they think you're doing it. Then, most importantly, when they point out "hey you're sort of doing that thing again" just accept it even if you don't agree with them say "oh, sorry about that" and move on. You don't have to go through some "OMG I'M SO SORRY" pity party, but at the same time you can make it clear that making people feel bad with your ribbing is not part of what you're trying to do.

I can also be a teaser, which is ridiculous because it's the sort of thing I can't stand in other people. So, I try to ask myself before speaking "Is this me trying to have a sincere interaction with this person?" and often teasing isn't getting at that. Of course, I have some good friends that a little back and forth jokesterism is how we interact and I think we're both okay with that, but the big deal is to make sure that you're reading signs okay, not riffing when someone else is clearly not on the same page, and you're working to make people confortable, not excluded and not ostracised for not "fitting in" in some way which is sort of how I think about teasing, it's exclusive not inclusive.

Best of luck.
posted by jessamyn at 7:51 AM on November 12, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

Refocus your teasing on yourself or at least make fun of yourself more than others.

Believe me, you're your own best target.
posted by paanta at 7:53 AM on November 12, 2008

Also, changing those knee-jerk habits like that is difficult but doable so have faith! I used to by default be incredibly self deprecating when someone gave me a compliment (as if it somehow made me seem humble, but really it made me seem incredibly insecure which wasn't the case) but I was able to change that. It won't be an overnight thing, but it will work out. Good luck!
posted by gwenlister at 7:53 AM on November 12, 2008

Move to the UK, nobody will even notice.

You need to work out why you do this in the first place. I'm sure there will be lots of suggestions forthcoming, but you're the only person who can work out why you do this.
posted by mandal at 7:58 AM on November 12, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I think it's oftentimes a personality thing. A lot of my close friends are teasers and enjoy being teased. Do you enjoy being teased? For me it's therapeutic to some degree. It's about your audience, I guess. Do some of the people you tease actually like it? You have friends, right? Maybe some of them hate it and someone really love it.

Recently I got this email from a friend
"When are you going to come back to town? I miss you being mean to me"

Just a thought.
posted by sully75 at 8:09 AM on November 12, 2008

It's not about teasing, it's about increasing the amount of time between thought and action, and including a step in there that evaluates the potential consequences of what you are about to say.

1. Seeing person
2. Thought about teasing
3. Take a breath and count to 10
4. Ask self how they might feel if thought is expressed
5. Default = don't express thought
6. Have a mental list of smalltalk questions about their lives at all times, and substitute for teasing thought. "How's school going? Did you see the football game last night? Have you seen [popular movie]?"
7. Just listen. A lot.

This will take practice because it goes against your default mode. It's like a new pair of shoes that feel stiff and weird until you wear them in.
posted by desjardins at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

desjardins is right - it takes practice. I'm working on this myself, but my issue is arguing. Part of my process is reminding myself that not everyone enjoys a spirited-back-and-forth the way that I do. So, I often work on just listening. Sometimes it's agony when three or four friends are going 'round and 'round, but the lesson I'm trying to teach myself is that I don't need to add my opinion to every single discussion. I used to be something of a jackass, and I'm working on rehabilitating myself.

You're getting great feedback in this thread already. You may find some success (and good introspection as well) from not speaking, I learned tons about myself.

Best of luck!
posted by DWRoelands at 8:37 AM on November 12, 2008

I have a sarcastic sense of humor and tend to tease people that I'm close with. Everyone still considers me to be a nice person though, so it's possible to be both. Some tips:

- Never, ever tease people about things they are self-concious about. For example, if someone is overweight, do not tease them about their weight.

- Don't tease people when they are upset about something, or when they clearly want you to stop.

- Don't make your teasing too negative, and focus on pointing out something that is genuinely funny.

- Make sure that you're genuinely positive and supportive with people you are teasing, in addition to any of your humor. If all of your interaction with someone involves making fun of them, it will color their perspective of you. If instead, you are always saying positive things to them and then throw in some teasing once in a while, they will be more likely to view it in the spirit that it was intended.
posted by burnmp3s at 9:13 AM on November 12, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

Ask people. I'd suggest only asking your closer friends to remind you gently when they catch you teasing in a way that seems "too much." Or at all, if that's your goal (but I'd like to guess that it's not).

I love bantering and being zinged and teasing people (and I'm an absolute sucker for a good practical joke, on both sides). But there is one kind of "teasing" that I really hate, and this goes back to something Jessamyn said. Sometimes people say something that is too pointed to sound like a joke at all, and I'm inclined to think they're trying to gutlessly tell me something unpleasant about how they feel about me. Unfortunately some people do this from a profound lack of social skill, and it's hard to tell the difference between malice and clumsiness.

This is why you can explain to close friends that you'd like them to help you break the habit, by saying gently, "Hey, this is one of those times or subjects when you shouldn't tease."
posted by tejolote at 9:48 AM on November 12, 2008

I'm with jessamyn and desjardins on their points. But also: c'mon, you're an adult. Take some responsibility for your behaviour and don't hide behind your supposed 'defaults'. Pay attention, STFU for a while, reflect regularly, and see how that goes.
posted by Mrs Hilksom at 9:49 AM on November 12, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Just start taking a breath before you speak. It might mean you don't get a word in once in a while, or that there's a long pause in the conversation because you breathe, recognize you've got nothing useful to say, and elect to not say anything. Both of these are actually features, not bugs.

So breathe.

and because I must: don't tease me, bro!
posted by davejay at 9:57 AM on November 12, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Teasing is one of those terms, like depressed or "spirited back and forth," that has a dangerously broad meaning.

If what you call "teasing" is causing a problem, you are actually picking on people, or children.

Can you tell how people are going to react when they are "teased" by others? That would be a good benchmark for how well you can tell how they'll react to your comments.

You probably need to calibrate - if you can't predict that someone is going to laugh or come back at you in the same spirit, it's probably not a good idea to tease. Why don't you spend some time watching until you feel like you are better than 80% on knowning how someone is going to react to teasing before you jump in. And by react, I mean at the moment and well after the fact. Some people will be a good sport in a public situation to keep the mood up, but that doesn't mean they welcomed the "teasing."
posted by Lesser Shrew at 10:37 AM on November 12, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

You've identified some negative things that you're doing that you think might be antagonizing people. You're probably right. Stop doing those things.

Now you need to identify some positive things you can do instead of the negative things, to make friends with people. Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is a book on this topic that has sold something like 60 million copies. Anyone who writes a question like yours needs to have read it.
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:18 AM on November 12, 2008

A few years ago I set out to stop interrupting people. I was really bad - and people were starting to walk away from conversations with me, which hurt. I've made great strides - mostly by slowing down in my discourse. Stop and think about what you are going to say - it only takes a fraction of a second (our minds are FAST) and it makes a huge difference. I learned to slow down by counting. Any time that I wanted to say something, I would count to 5 in my head. For me, this gave the other folks an opportunity to stop speaking before I dove in - but an unintended side effect was the ability to review and edit my thoughts before I spoke. I've been so much happier with what I say now, and have a lot fewer "ouch" moments when I recall conversations.

One thing I question though, is your statement that you "like to pull people's legs and tease them." There's a big difference between liking to do something and doing it. You're probably going to have to change a bit of your attitude about how you speak to people and realize that just because something is fun for you, it may not be for other people. Empathy, rather than censure should be your motivation, it will make it a lot easier. Oh, and I was teased by my Dad and his friends when I was a little girl - it took me a long, long time to get over it (some of it still hurts). Don't tease the kids, ok?
posted by The Light Fantastic at 11:43 AM on November 12, 2008

I'm a teaser myself, and there truly are many forms of it and unwritten rules to observe. The general rule is that it's not okay to have fun at someone else's expense. This means no insulting anyone and that you must stop teasing anyone immediately if you see that they don't like it. But here are some finer points.

Don't make jokes that belittle people. A member of my family thinks it's funny to joke about how I "can't get a man", how my serving him a cup of coffee is "practice for work" (he seems to think being an editor is being a glorified secretary). Not funny, and it's got to the point where I just ignore him when he's around, because I know if I try to talk to him he'll just say something really rude and hurtful.

Don't keep making the same joke until people are fed up and tired of hearing them. The same member of my family thinks it's really funny to keep telling the same few stories about how I did something stupid when I was five or six. He's literally retold these stories hundreds of times. More members of my family than me are sick of hearing about them.

Don't make passive aggressive jokes. If someone is doing something you don't like, don't make jokes about it to get them to stop. I had a roommate in college who regularly had loud sex with her boyfriend. We could hear her moaning all over the house. This kind of thing is funny when it happens once, but I didn't want to have to listen to it three or four times a week for months on end. I made a joke about it, saying our other roommates and I should act as a judging panel as in gymnastic competitions, and be sitting in the kitchen holding up score cards (i.e., 6, 75.5, 9) when she next left her room. I meant this as a way of letting her know we could hear her and hoped she'd then stop. This backfired, because she thought this was funny and it was all a big joke. She just went on making all the noise she wanted.

Don't make "jokes" that are really disguised criticisms, especially when it concerns things that are none of your business. And also watch the frequency of your teasing. Another roommate of mine in college made a constant stream of comments on me and everything I did. Everything I ate, everything I wore, every penny I spent, every item I bought, my diction, all my interactions and relationships with others, my grooming habits, the books I read, the music I listened to, my study habits and the quality of my schoolwork, the contents of my laundry basket, the people I dated, my manners, all was grist for her joke mill. She'd stand and watch me brush my teeth and mock me for the way I was doing it. She'd walk into my room and immediately make a joke about the way it supposedly smelled. If we hung out with other people she'd later ridicule the things I said to them. When we hung out with some co-workers of hers she raised the fact that she'd been mocking me to them over the fact of my frayed toothbrush. The frayed toothbrush in question actually belonged to another roommate of mine, but even so as you can imagine I was quite angry over the fact that she'd take it upon herself to mock me to other people over something that wasn't any of her business. She complained that people "didn't understand her sense of humour" and was upset over her inability to make and keep friends, but never seemed to clue in how rude and out of line her behaviour was. You probably won't be surprised to hear that we're not friends anymore. Don't be her.

Go slowly when you tease someone for the first time. You'll have more latitude with people you know well, and everyone has their own level of tolerance and hot button issues. Some people can really be amazingly easygoing. I had a friend who was going through terrible marital problems. One day as we were discussing her problems over lunch I said, "I notice you're not wearing your wedding ring. Did you take it off?" She replied that her ring had grown too small and so she hadn't worn it for a long time, but if things worked out she was going to have it resized. I blurted out, "Or you could have it made into a really sexy ankle bracelet," and immediately wanted to punch myself in the face. It was so tactless of me to say that, because at that point my friend was still hoping to work things out and probably didn't want to hear about it not working out. But bless her, she thought it was funny and just giggled and giggled for three minutes straight. She's a close friend and I know she never loses her sense of humour regardless of what she's enduring, so I have more leeway with her. Other people are not so open. Some people really don't like or don't understand any degree of teasing and you just have to be straight forward with them all the time.

If people just don't seem to find your jokes funny, stop making the jokes. You just may not be as funny as you think you are. And there's nothing so painful as listening to lame jokes.
posted by orange swan at 12:02 PM on November 12, 2008 [6 favorites has favorites]

Often, when I hang out with friends who have kids, I'll tease and make fun of the kids.

Do NOT do this. Parents tend to be very defensive about their children. As a rule, they don't have much of a sense of humor when it comes to their kids. There really isn't anything for you to gain socially by goofin' on someone's children.

Oftentimes, people who antagonize people without meaning to do so, who do it unconsciously, have problems with unexpressed anger. Humor is a good way to channel aggression but you need to have a good handle on your anger first. And you probably don't.

That's something you might want to think about on your own and discuss with your therapist.
posted by jason's_planet at 12:36 PM on November 12, 2008

I can't stop antagonizing people. If that's your starting premise, haven't you answered your own question?
posted by Neiltupper at 12:36 PM on November 12, 2008

I've had good results on the "have a friend bust you on it" plan. Except up the ante so I have to pay $5 every time they catch me.

But I like being teased, as do a lot of people up-thread. So "stopping" need not be your goal. Being more alert about appropriateness might be a better fit, since it seems to be an important part of your personality.

Can you take it as well as you dish it out? The hardcore teasers I know all can take it without getting defensive in the spirit of fun. They know when to back off, and they don't go into subjects that aren't game. And they don't tease at all until they know what those subjects are.

The ones that I know are really popular, have a large and loyal social circle. "Teasing" isn't the problem. Appropriateness is.
posted by Ookseer at 1:23 PM on November 12, 2008

Some people think that being constantly sarcastic, negative & teasing, is witty and interesting.
It tends to be less interesting than they think, the more they do it, the more it hints of their own insecurity, and eventually people start bitching about them behind their back.

Please do your bit to stop the horrid cycle... I don't enjoy any of it.
:(

If it's a semi-automatic* habit, then yeah - just work with CBT type stuff. Try sitting down and thinking 'I have this *thought* to say that teasing thing, how would that affect things, what is some other thing I could say instead?'. Figuring out other things to say might be a big part of it. And yeah, ask close friends to call you on it, and especially let you know afterwards if they think you've been a bit harsh on a third party (that might be quite hard on you at first).

Good luck?

* Ruthlessly destructive to your social interactions! Ooops, unintentional pun.
posted by Elysum at 1:26 PM on November 12, 2008

When I realized my first instinct is to make a negative comment, I began to work on my style of interaction. I forced myself to say ONE positive thing before unleashing the criticisms and it works. Eventually I began to say ONLY the positive thing and keep the negative one in my head.

Maybe you could force yourself to say something sincere first (even if it's in a joking tone) and tease later. It may feel a little strange at first but practise makes perfect.
posted by cranberrymonger at 2:44 PM on November 12, 2008

I'm a teaser, my whole family's teasers, and I totally get the angst. First, reread Orange Swan's advice—it's pretty good.

Second, y'know, I used to be a guy who was known for this. Pretty much just this, the fairly vicious, black assholery that can be funny sometimes and is just mean other times. I hated it and didn't know how to stop, really. So I did a couple things. First, I went out of my way to hold off for a while. Second, I worked hard on trying to make sure that above everything else, I was making fun of myself more often than anyone else. And the next target, after myself, is the vague cruel vagaries that everyone's subjected to. I make friends like that all the time now, by making fun of things that are out of our control (and generally ascribing them to a capricious conspiracy of disembodies evil). It's not about you having a scruffy toothbrush, to riff off of the example above, it's about damn, don't those toothbrush bastards screw us over? But my ineptitude, awkwardness and idiocy is always what I try to lead with. It doesn't always work, and I try to be a bit more careful with folks like Jessamyn (because she can ban me at any time and I have no recourse because she's CENSORSHIPS), but it's helped a lot.
posted by klangklangston at 4:14 PM on November 12, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Good advice in this thread about how to continue the quips while redirecting them away from others.

Are you interacting this way with other people out of nervousness of what to say? If so, you might need to practice other things you can say to people, and get used to smiling and waiting during uncomfortable silences as they arise, instead of inserting a comment.
posted by lacedback at 5:09 PM on November 12, 2008