Program: Difficult people and radical acceptance: answering your questions about tricky relationships

Sana Qadar: Hey, I'm Sana Qadar from ABC Radio National. This is All in the Mind, Mailbag Edition. So if you cast your mind back to November, if you're a regular listener, you'll know we ran an episode titled Narcissist or Just a Pain? How to deal with difficult people.

Rachel Samson: It is very common now to slap that narcissistic label on anyone who's got difficult behaviour. The prevalence rates are much lower.

Sana Qadar: That episode seemed to really touch a nerve because we had a huge response afterwards. A lot of you sent us follow up questions. You wanted to know things like what to do if you realise that you yourself are a difficult person, what to do when your adult children are difficult, and a whole lot more. So we've brought back clinical psychologist Rachel Sampson, who was in that first episode, to answer your questions.

Rachel Samson: Hello.

Sana Qadar: Hi, how are you?

Rachel Samson: I'm good, thank you.

Sana Qadar: And one of the topics we get into in this discussion is radical acceptance. What that really means and why it might just be the sanity saving measure you need to navigate your difficult relationships.

Rachel Samson: People are often stuck in, you know, how could someone think like this? I would never have that view. And often, you know, in the therapy room I'll say, but they do have that view.

Sana Qadar: So lots to discuss. Let's get into it.

Sana Qadar: So thanks for coming back on.

Rachel Samson: Thank you so much for having me.

Sana Qadar: We had a huge response to that episode that we had you on for. I'm wondering, did you have people reach out to you as well? Did you get much of a response?

Rachel Samson: We did, yeah. Yeah, it seemed like there was quite a lot of interest, which is to be expected, because as we've said, there is, you know, a difficult person in nearly everybody's life.

Sana Qadar: There are difficult people everywhere. Yes, we've got questions on difficult people in the workplace, in the family, a few parents asking about difficult children as well. But we've also had some introspection, people realizing that they might be the difficult person or, you know, they want to avoid becoming a difficult person. So let's start there. First question, Steph asks, how do you protect yourself in a world increasingly dominated by self-interest? I don't want to be a difficult person, but I don't want to be walked all over either. And in the heat of the moment, it can be hard to gauge what is reasonable. And I'll just tack on a very similar question from Grace, which is, how do I stop myself becoming a difficult person? How can I be less difficult but still advocate for myself?

Rachel Samson: I absolutely love this question. I think it's something that a lot of people grapple with, especially when you start thinking about boundaries and looking after yourself and then thinking, where's the line between protecting my self-interest and selfishness? But I think that reflecting on values is really important. And if we look at a lot of our most well-known famous activists and advocates, they weren't being easy when they were, you know, rallying and advocating for change. So I think it comes back to your values. And if there's an issue that is really important to you and you feel like you need to speak up about it, then the research shows that that supports well-being. It's when we start to behave in ways that aren't aligned with our values that our well-being is impacted and we can start to feel really confused.

Sana Qadar: It's interesting to me as well that these are two women asking this question, because I think it is also difficult for women to walk that line between advocating for yourself and being seen as difficult. Whereas, you know, a man self-advocating might perhaps be seen as self-actualized or confident or whatever else it is.

Rachel Samson: I could hear you say that all day. It's so true. And one of the things I love so much about my work when I am able to work with women is looking at gender socialization and what it means to be difficult. And is it difficult or is it just actually coming out of the box of our gender stereotypes and having a voice and saying no and not being meek and mild and pretty and quiet and agreeable?

Sana Qadar: Yeah. Okay, let's talk about family relationships. And this next question has to do with intergenerational trauma and brain changes. This person writes, I listened to the account about the abandoned grandmother and it mirrored my own life and my own grandmother. And I should say this listener is referring to the story of your co-author, Jesse Stern's grandmother, who was abandoned as a child. We covered that story in our previous episode on difficult people, but you'll also get a gist of that story in this question. So this person goes on to say, my grandmother was given away to be raised by her auntie, but her mother kept her sister. My grandmother was always nasty about other people, especially those in her own family. She had four children. She favored the eldest two and rejected the youngest two emotionally. My mother was one of the younger two who repeated this behavior towards me, rejecting me but favoring my brother. My question is, has anyone studied brain changes in this kind of thing and how it might affect us genetically? Does this kind of pattern come down through families?

Rachel Samson: So the intergenerational transmission of trauma is something that is the subject of a growing body of research. And there's a lot of interest in this. And there are multiple factors that contribute to exactly what you're describing. So this pattern of trauma and difficult behaviors that get passed from one generation to the other. What I think the listener is talking about here is attachment and relationship patterns and that being modeled and then replicated in the next generation and that pattern of relating getting passed down from one person to the other. We can also see intergenerational trauma where generation one experiences a trauma. So that could be being in a war zone, domestic violence, any number of traumas. And we see the effects of that in the second generation, even though that generation didn't directly experience that trauma. And so there, whilst there's no specific trauma gene that's been identified, there are genetic changes and changes to the stress response system that we think can be carried down from one generation to the next. So it's likely to be a combination of our biology being programmed and then passing that on genetically to the next generation and programming pregnancy. And then also the behaviors themselves getting carried down from one generation to the next. So we know that one of the biggest influences on how we will parent and how we will be in relationship is how we were parented. That's without awareness. If you've got awareness, then that doesn't apply. So yes, it can affect the brain. It can affect the brain through the way that the person is nurtured and possibly also through genetic and biological changes as well.

Sana Qadar: Yeah. Like what would that kind of neglect do? Like, does it affect a person's ability to regulate their own emotions? What does it do?

Rachel Samson: The development of emotion regulation is one of the biggest things that it can impact, but it can also impact stress reactivity, which is similar to emotion regulation, but it's actually how strongly our nervous system reacts to stress in the first place before we can implement any regulation strategies. So it can impact how stressed someone's likely to be in a situation relative to another person, their capacity for regulating that emotion. It can impact beliefs and your sense of identity, which means that you might be more prone to getting triggered, which means you might get more stressed, which means you may regulate your emotions more poorly. So it's kind of all linked together and impacts multiple parts of the brain and the nervous system.

Sana Qadar: And to break that cycle, both what you just explained, but also the generational cycle, what does that take?

Rachel Samson: So we know from research with humans and other primates, so rhesus macaque monkeys, for example, that high nurture and corrective emotional experiences can change the brain. So we know that the brain is plastic and can continue to change throughout life. And so when a person has their emotional needs met, so if we're talking about neglect, which you mentioned before, if a person can have those experience later in life through a secure, loving relationship, through therapy, through connecting with community, through spirituality, anything that kind of is nurturing and meets those needs, then the brain can change. So we really need to have the needs met that weren't met in childhood later in life to see those changes.

Sana Qadar: Flipping from talking about parents to children, we had a couple of people asking about what to do when the difficult person in their life is their child, which I found quite intriguing. As a parent of a five-year-old, who by nature I think are all difficult at times, lovely as well, but difficult. So with regards to adult children, this person asks, I know so many people who have the difficult child and the good child. Both have the same parents and similar upbringing, but one is just more combative. And ultimately, as the parent, you are responsible for their attachment style, so it's less easy to feel compassion. Do you have any suggestions for dealing with a difficult adult child?

Rachel Samson: We see this a lot in our clinic. We see the adult child who has the difficult relationship with the parent and the parent who has the difficult relationship with their adult child. And it is so complex. What I would say, just going back to the question, is that it's not necessarily attachment style. It may be, but the other part of it is inborn temperament. And so, yes, you may have children who grow up in similar environments. It's never the same environment for two siblings because of birth order and different dynamics between parents and kids and different friendships and experiences outside of the home. But even with things being quite similar, there is still the component of temperament, and each child can have a different temperament. So, some children will be more easygoing, more cooperative, more agreeable, while other children will be more resistant to influence, more combative, more difficult. It's very tricky, but it doesn't mean that you're responsible as the parent. It may be that you've contributed, but it also might be that this is in part, you know, an innate temperament difference.

Sana Qadar: That's nice to ease some of the guilt a little bit.

Rachel Samson: Yeah, it's really important because temperament has a huge influence on the interactions between parents and kids, but also our personality, even when someone has a secure attachment, for example. It's very hard to deal with that when it's an adult child. And I think you need to think about whether you can accept some parts of that once that child is an adult. That's very hard for people to hear, and often people don't want to hear that. But I think that that is one of the most important pieces of advice, is accepting someone as they are once they are an adult. That doesn't mean that you accept certain treatment or behaviors. And you as the parent of an adult child have to decide, what am I okay with and what am I not okay with? So let's say that you have an adult child who is fairly self-focused. They contact you when they want or need something, but, you know, it doesn't go beyond that.

Sana Qadar: Right.

Rachel Samson: Well, that's sad. You're probably going to need to grieve. You would wish it was different. If you have influence, you may be able to change it and let them know how you feel. But let's say that they're not willing or wanting to change, then you decide, okay, how much am I willing to give of myself? Am I willing to say yes every time I get asked for something? Do I need to protect myself and have some balance where there are times I'm going to say no? And that's going to feel a little fairer for me. It's really thinking about what can you do within yourself to respond to that behavior in a way that protects yourself and helps you maintain a connection with the child if that's what you want.

Sana Qadar: Right. So if you have a child with a combative temperament, you kind of just have to accept and see what you're willing, how you're willing to show up in that relationship.

Rachel Samson: Yeah. And if we're talking about an adult child, you know, my guess is that the parent has already tried everything within their power through childhood and into adulthood to shape that adult child's behavior. And yet they're at a place where the adult child is difficult. So unless you want to get advice on how you could try to do things a little more, you know, a little differently, likelihood is that they're not going to change if they haven't so far, unless they are invested in changing and they're really open to it, which probably they're not if they're combative and difficult.

Sana Qadar: This topic of temperament is really interesting to me because as we discussed in the previous episode, temperament is innate, inbuilt, biological, doesn't change, whereas personality can change. Its personality is built on top of temperament. And so I'm wondering, you know, if some temperaments are easy, others more difficult, is it just the case that there is a section of humanity that is difficult by nature?

Rachel Samson: So when we look at rhesus macaque monkeys, which we've learned a lot about temperament from observations of other primates, there is about 20, 25% of populations who are highly sensitive. The rest are less sensitive and less reactive from birth. And then there's about 5% who are really aggressive and really challenging. And, you know, I think about that in terms of the rates of disorders that have aggression as a component in adults. And I think, yeah, there's some trends there that seem to match what we experience in humans. So I think that there probably are some people that come into the world that are a little more difficult, more aggressive, more combative, less reciprocal, and there may be some evolutionary function for that, given that we see these patterns in other species as well. But most certainly we know from all of the research on temperament, that even from infancy, there are some babies that are more reactive, more tricky, more difficult to soothe. And there is just this diversity in temperament that seems to be there.

Sana Qadar: Yeah, I feel like you just have to find solace in the fact that there must be some evolutionary benefit to these people who are driving others crazy.

Rachel Samson: I think so. Exactly.

Sana Qadar: All right, sticking with difficult children, similar to the previous question, but a little bit different as well. As a family of people with highly sensitive temperament and neurodivergence in the mix as well, it's challenging to try to provide a secure attachment relationship for each child whose needs bump up against each other, whilst also managing your own responses. How do we respond if our child is not the person we expected them to be, when we're not getting a lot out of the relationship, or if it's just generally hard?

Rachel Samson: This is so hard, and in clinic, we support many families who are in this situation. It's not uncommon. One of the things that can make parenting easier is when the relationship is rewarding, when there is what Thomas and Chess refer to as a goodness of fit between parent and child. They were meaning from the child's perspective more than the parent's perspective, but you know, more broadly, yeah, it goes both ways. We have to acknowledge that that is a fact, that if you delight in a child, if you have compatible temperaments, if you have similar interests, that is easier than if you have a child that is very different to you. You know, there's less reciprocal interactions and the relationship doesn't feel as fulfilling. That's a reality that people don't want to acknowledge, but it's very true and it's hard. And so you are required then to draw on, again, values, what you know children need, and when you can, trying to respond to the child's needs as the parent, knowing that it's not as fulfilling for you and it may be harder to draw the nurture and support that you need to give that child because it doesn't feel as fulfilling for you than it may with other children in the family.

Sana Qadar: Yeah. Okay, final family question. It's a bit of a doozy, as the listener themselves wrote in their email. My friend, let's call her Sheila, has a brother, let's call him Guy. Guy has recently become a Nazi sympathizer. Guy isn't acting on his beliefs. He isn't going to marches, he isn't harassing people besides Sheila, who he likes to rile up. But this is a very difficult situation for Sheila to accept. However, she knows that if she speaks up, her family will consider her the problem for being too sensitive. They'll say Guy is just joking or he's just trying to get a reaction, so she shouldn't make a big deal out of it. A lot of the advice about sibling conflict or political disagreements tends to focus on learning to get along and eventual reconciliation. That's fine for disagreements about mash versus roast potatoes, but this is a really fundamental ethical chasm that has opened up. How can my friend gracefully manage this? She still loves her family.

Rachel Samson: So I don't agree with the advice that you just need to find a way to get along. I think that's so unrealistic. I would say that in my clinic with the families and individuals that I work with. I think, again, it comes back to radically accepting that you are not probably going to have the relationship that you would like to have with this sibling. And so it changes how you interact, how you show up at family events. And it may be that you can't speak up because the consequences will be detrimental for you. So if you're going to get criticised by the family and made the scapegoat and told that you're the problem, then it's probably not worth it. But within yourself, you can think, okay, I'm not going to have the relationship with, was it Guy?

Sana Qadar: Yes. Sheila and Guy.

Rachel Samson: Sheila and Guy. Sheila, you're not going to have the relationship with Guy that you would like. It's not going to be that fulfilling sibling relationship. And so you may show up to the family functions and you may hear these comments and it's going to hurt. You don't have to respond. You can just sit and say, yeah, this is why we're not going to have a close, good relationship, because I find that so intolerable and unacceptable. And it may be that then the dinners become more surface level and you're going through the motions because you want to stay connected to the family unit. But it's not perhaps a relationship that's going to ever meet your emotional needs or your relationship needs.

Sana Qadar: And when you say radical acceptance, can you define that a little bit? Like what is the radical part?

Rachel Samson: So radical acceptance is acknowledging reality exactly as it is. It's radical because it means completely accepting the situation as it is. So that does not mean that you like it, you agree with it, or you approve of it in any way, shape or form. It simply means this is what is happening in this situation.And you're not going to try and change it?Well, you still may try to change it down the track if you assess it as something that maybe it's possible to change. But the radical acceptance of it is different to, I cannot believe this. This cannot be that he has this view. You know, no, this is so wrong. How can someone think like that? And so radical acceptance is, but he does have this view. That is how he feels. That's a fact. And then you can assess whether you're going to be able to do anything to change the situation, whether you need to leave. There's a whole range of options. But the radical acceptance is that this is how it is.

Sana Qadar: And is that more so like for the preservation of your own sanity? Like, is that why you would reach a point of radical acceptance? When you describe it like that, it almost sounds, I can imagine someone hearing that thinking, hang on, to not be indignant about these beliefs is a tantamount to endorsement. Why would you radically accept this?

Rachel Samson: And so you're not accepting the situation. You are radically acknowledging that it is how it is in this moment. So it's like saying the chair over there is green, but it doesn't mean that you like it. You're accepting, as in seeing the truth of how this situation is.

Sana Qadar: Right. Does that make it easier for people then to move forward?

Rachel Samson: Much easier because people are often stuck in, you know, how could someone think like this? I would never have that view. And often, you know, in the therapy room, I'm saying, I'll say, but they do have that view. They are someone who cheats or, but they are someone who has sexist attitudes. And so that's the radical acceptance piece. It's starting off by acknowledging the truth. And then from that place, you are much more likely to come up with effective strategies because you're dealing with reality rather than a delusion or what you wish the situation was.

Sana Qadar: Okay, let's talk about difficult people in the workplace for a minute. A listener asks, I would like guidance dealing with a difficult co-worker. This co-worker is very needy, tries to take over my work, is offended when I don't need her help, and doesn't respect my personal space. She tries to hug me frequently and chastises me when I tell her I don't want to be hugged. She has been talked to about her inappropriate behavior multiple times and always reacts extremely negatively. This situation has been very difficult. I understand that a boundary is something I need to enforce for myself. However, by the end of the day, I am completely exhausted trying to be the bigger person and deflect her. Could you offer any suggestions on how to deal with this more effectively?

Rachel Samson: I don't think you can make the situation better. Again, that's not what people want to hear, but it's the truth because we can't control this person. It sounds like the listener has done so many things already to try to influence this situation. And if the person is not interested in changing, there's very little that you can do. And if it's a workplace that you want to remain in, a job that you want to keep, then there is very little I think that you can do beyond drawing on management for support and continuing to go down those pathways. But very often, we hear that even in those scenarios, unless it's crossing workplace policy, then there's very little sometimes that managers and senior staff can do also in that situation. That is just very challenging. I really, really feel for that person.

Sana Qadar: Okay, another question about the workplace. As a highly sensitive person, how do I work with someone who doesn't feel emotionally safe? I feel like I'm walking on eggshells. This person can be unpredictable and volatile. Technically, I'm their more senior colleague. Is there a way to work with them or even lead them when I feel so uncomfortable in their presence? Is there work I can do within myself or is it simply not possible to feel safe around someone who behaves in unsafe ways?

Rachel Samson: I think it is very rarely possible to feel safe when someone is unsafe. Our nervous system is constantly scanning for cues of safety and cues of threat. And some of this is outside our conscious awareness. So there is this concept of neuroception, which is where the nervous system is kind of getting information from our environment even before we've necessarily consciously thought of it. And so we're always reacting to other people and their cues. And you can't bypass your nervous system in that way. If someone is acting in aggressive, intrusive, critical, violent ways, your nervous system is going to feel that and it's human intelligence to feel unsafe and to register that as a threat.

Sana Qadar: One thing that occurs to me is that this episode is going to air right before we break for the holiday period. So there is going to be a lot of people traveling to see family that they might not see all that often. Lots of difficult relatives mixing. Do you have any general advice for people heading into the holiday period, which is emotionally heightened anyways, about how to manage the various relationships in their life that might piss them off?

Rachel Samson: I do. Christmas is not the time to address anything with family.

Sana Qadar: Good advice.

Rachel Samson: Do not do it. There's alcohol, there's multiple dynamics, there is the stress of getting where you need to be on time. There's kids. Do not, if you can, just contain whatever it is that's going on until after. And so I would say to people, if this is going to be so stressful, you need to really think carefully about how much you can tolerate. Is it half a day? Is it just dinner? Is it an hour but you're not staying for lunch? So work out what is realistically possible for you to cope with and commit to that. People might not like it. They're, you know, might be pushed back.

Sana Qadar: But that's your boundary.

Rachel Samson: Absolutely. And you stick to that. I also suggest that when you are triggered, if you are lucky enough to have good friends, have a plan. Okay, on Christmas Day, I'm going to be texting you if my brother says something horrible and I get triggered, I'm going to excuse myself and I'm going to text you and I'm going to vent about it. And that's one of the things I'm going to do to cope to get through the second half of the day or whatever it is. If you've got a supportive partner, then have a code word, have a look so that you can look across the table and be like, oh my God, she just said that thing. Can you believe it? But don't address it over Christmas. Just don't do it.

Sana Qadar: Do people generally follow that advice? Do you find after the Christmas break, do you have clients come back and be like, oh my God, this happened over Christmas. I was not going to bring it up, but I brought it up anyways.

Rachel Samson: They are pretty good actually. Yeah, at doing that when we talk through the rationale for it. But I actually find that even having a plan and having talked about it with a therapist or hearing this episode, it's like when it happens, it kind of in a way takes the sting out of it because you can just be like, wow, they're doing that thing. It's actually happening right now. This is exactly what I knew would happen. And so it's like being the observer and just saying, I'm not going to deal with it now. And if that feels really hard, you can say to yourself, I promised myself I will address this in January or after the Christmas festivities, because sometimes it feels impossible not to say something. But just don't do it at the time.

Sana Qadar: Because it never goes well or has it ever gone well?

Rachel Samson: It never, ever goes well. Never.

Sana Qadar: Good advice. Rachel, thank you so much.

Rachel Samson: Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Sana Qadar: That is Rachel Samson, clinical psychologist and co-author of Beyond Difficult, an attachment-based guide to dealing with challenging people. And that is it for All in the Mind for not just this week, but for 2025. This is our final show of the year. Thank you so much for listening this year. It's been really fun trying out this new mailbag format. We've done two of them now. We'll hopefully do a lot more next year. Thank you also for those of you who filled out our listener survey in the middle of the year. And I just have one final favor to ask. If you've enjoyed what you've heard this year, could you consider leaving us a review wherever you get your podcasts? It's always really lovely to see what you think. And reviews also really help new listeners find the podcast. So if you're up for it, we'd love for you to review us. And if you have any feedback about the show as well, we'd love to hear that too. You can always contact us on mind underscore rn at abc.net.au. We read every email that comes through that inbox. We don't always have time to respond because that would frankly be a full-time job on its own. But I promise we read every email. Thanks to producer Rose Kerr, senior producer James Bullen, and sound engineer Beth Stewart. I'm Sana Qadar. Thanks again for listening. I will catch you next week with our best of series. We're going to be replaying some of our most popular episodes from the year. But I will catch you for all new episodes in 2026.