Dealing with Disliked People Is More Effective Than Trying To Tolerate Them.

Tolerance costs the most and hurts the most, because it works at the very end of the emotional chain. With someone you dislike but can’t avoid, it’s far more effective to move the intervention earlier: reduce contact, rewrite the rules of engagement, and translate “I dislike this person” into “I don’t accept this behavior” — using concrete boundaries to confine them to the smallest possible space in your mind. How to deal with people you dislike may be one of the biggest reasons many people resist “socialization.”

After all, who doesn’t have a few people they have to deal with while holding their nose? It might be the boss you report to every day, the colleague you see day in and day out, or the relative you’re obliged to sit across from at every holiday dinner. Bound by morality, affection, or plain reality, you can’t just slam the door behind you, or simply block them with one click.

So we tell ourselves: just tolerate it; it’ll pass. But surface-level tolerance rarely makes anything actually pass.

Disliking someone is a fairly intense emotion. When we meet them, we try hard to restrain ourselves; after we part, all the things we didn’t say start replaying in our head over and over:

“Why didn’t I say that at the time?” “What right does he have to talk like that?” “I should have just fired back.”

Worse still, before the next encounter has even happened, you’re already tense in advance: Will he say something again today? How should I handle it? Should I prepare a few lines beforehand?

The emotions stirred up by people we dislike slowly encroach on our attention and our mental space. In order to be with them, we keep suppressing, digesting, and rehearsing.

So, faced with someone you dislike but can’t avoid — apart from putting up with them, what else can you do?

Why the more you dislike someone, the more they linger in your mind

I have a friend who often complains that a colleague keeps dumping work on her. Each time she reluctantly takes it on, she then agonizes afterwards: first blaming herself for being too petty, then regretting that she didn’t just refuse outright.

There’s an easily overlooked reason why disliking someone feels so intense: we don’t only have to endure the dislike itself; we also have to keep reminding ourselves — I shouldn’t dislike this person.

We seem to assume by default that maturity means tolerance and stability, ideally being able to get along peacefully with everyone. So when dislike appears, our first reaction is often to put ourselves on trial: “Am I being too sensitive?” “Am I being too petty?” “Just put up with it — isn’t that simply normal for an adult?”

But the harder you try to push a thought down, the more readily it surfaces.

Psychologist Daniel Wegner once asked participants not to think about a white bear for five minutes, and to ring a bell whenever it came to mind. The result: people found it very hard to drive the white bear out of their minds, and when they were later allowed to imagine it freely, the previously suppressed white bear appeared even more frequently. This is the famous “white bear effect” [1].

It reveals a paradox of thought suppression: to check whether you’re “thinking about it” or not, the brain has to keep searching for the forbidden thought.

So when we order ourselves to “not care about that person” or “stop thinking about this,” we seem to be redirecting our attention, but in fact we’re still repeatedly checking whether the thought has shown up. The white bear experiment can’t be directly equated with complex human relationships, but it at least explains why commanding yourself not to think about it won’t necessarily make a disliked person fade naturally from your attention.

Thought suppression deals with “not allowing yourself to think it”; expressive suppression is about “not letting others see it.” It refers to the effort to control your facial expressions, movements, and words after an emotion has arisen — what we commonly call: just bear with it.

For example: a colleague suddenly pushes work onto you; you’re clearly furious, yet you smile and say “it’s fine.” A relative’s probing questions make you feel offended, yet you still maintain the calm of the dinner table.

Research by James Gross and Oliver John found that people who habitually use expressive suppression appear to show less negative emotion on the outside, yet experience more of it on the inside; this tendency is also associated with lower well-being and poorer interpersonal functioning [2].

Another interactive experiment found that when a person is asked to hide their emotions, they tend to become more distracted and respond less, and their interaction partner is more likely to feel the rapport between them is lacking [3]. A meta-analysis pooling 43 studies also showed that expressive suppression is associated with poorer social support, relationship quality, and social satisfaction [4].

In other words, “I didn’t show it” and “this didn’t affect me” are two entirely different things.

That said, this doesn’t mean every act of endurance harms a relationship. In settings that are unsafe or unsuitable for expressing yourself on the spot, temporary restraint can keep conflict from escalating.

What really needs watching out for is making restraint your only way of coping. You say “it’s fine” again and again, and others may genuinely believe it is fine — while you still have to keep monitoring your expressions and words to sustain this “I’m okay” performance.

First, allow yourself to dislike them

For this drain to actually end, the first step is to stop fighting your own emotion.

A lot of internal friction comes from a second trial of the emotion itself. We dislike someone, and at the same time blame ourselves: “Why do I care so much?” So we’re not only angry — we also feel ashamed of the anger; not only wronged, but also blaming ourselves for being weak and oversensitive. What began as one uncomfortable person ends up pulling us into two conflicts: one involving the other person, and one that is the rejection of our own feelings.

A study combining experiments, diary records, and longitudinal follow-ups found that the more people can accept — rather than judge — their own negative emotions and thoughts, the less negative emotion they typically experience during stressful events, and the better their mental health [7].

The “acceptance” here doesn’t mean agreeing with the other person, nor telling yourself that what they did was right. It simply means honestly acknowledging: right now I really do dislike him; this really did make me angry; I don’t want to be close to this person.

One distinction matters: what we accept is our own feeling, not the uncomfortable reality. You can allow yourself to dislike someone, and still change the situation, create distance, and set boundaries.

How to keep them confined to the smallest mental space

Faced with someone you can’t stay away from for now, you may not be able to change them — but you can change the way the two of you interact.

1. Turn “I dislike this person” into “I don’t accept this behavior”

We can’t help complaining that “this person is just like that,” but a person’s traits are hard to change; “selfish, arrogant, lacking empathy” are only vague judgments. Whereas “he has handed his own work to me three times in a row,” “he asks me every time we meet when I’m getting married and having children,” “he interrupted me twice in the meeting” — these are concrete, observable behaviors.

Only when dislike is translated into observable behavior can we judge whether this is an individual difference to be tolerated or a boundary violation that needs stopping; whether what we need is less contact, an adjusted process, or a clear refusal.

2. Make your refusal specific

Assertiveness is neither submission nor aggression; it’s a capability that can be acquired through practice: expressing your needs and feelings clearly, while preserving your self-respect and the relationships you need [8].

Rather than saying “you’re so irresponsible,” try grounding the issue in specific tasks and responsibilities: “This isn’t within my scope of work. If you’re overwhelmed, you can ask our manager to reassign it.”

A boundary isn’t only about telling others “I’m uncomfortable”; it also includes stating what you will do to protect yourself if the behavior continues.

Setting a boundary doesn’t guarantee the other person will understand, admit fault, or change. Its point is to make you stop cooperating unconditionally, and to pull your attention back from “will he change?” to “what can I do?”

3. Build a psychological firewall

Gross’s model of emotion regulation points to a counterintuitive fact: by the time we start enduring, the emotion has actually already reached a late stage. More effective regulation tends to happen much earlier [9].

You may not be able to choose your colleagues, but you can choose how to work with them: if oral communication keeps getting distorted, switch to written confirmation; if he’s used to throwing tasks at you at the last minute, clarify timing and responsibility in advance; if one-on-one conversations easily get you steamrolled, ask relevant people to join; if the exchange keeps sliding into personal judgments, pull the topic back to concrete matters.

What truly exhausts people is a mode of interaction that is vague, boundary-crossing, and seemingly never-ending.

We can redraw the scope of a relationship: if you can’t quit, limit communication to work matters; if you can’t cut ties, reduce unnecessary personal exposure; stop expecting the other person to truly understand you, and stop needing to prove you’re right in every conflict.

Blocking someone isn’t the only solution. What you really need to decide is: which part of your life do you allow him to enter?

After all, your precious time and mental space should be reserved for the people who truly matter.

One last thing to note: if you are being subjected to ongoing humiliation, bullying, harassment, or violence, assertive expression should not be your only solution. Preserving evidence, seeking support from your organization or from professionals, and prioritizing your own safety matter far more than training yourself, alone, to “communicate better.”