12 Ways To Put Patronizing People In Their Place
Nobody likes to feel patronized, so it’s good to have some quick-fire responses in your back pocket for occasions when someone has the audacity to talk down to you. Use these 12 replies as general guidelines and tailor your responses to the individual, context, and situation you find yourself in.
1. Call attention to their patronization and ask them to explain themselves.
According to Forbes, when someone is patronizing towards you, call them out on it. Tell them that their tone is patronizing and unacceptable, and ask them why they feel that they can speak to you that way. Keep demanding that they explain themselves until they bluster a pathetic excuse and walk away in embarrassment.
2. Redirect the conversation to one of their insecurities.
One quick glance at a person can offer insight into their insecurities. Observe the person’s body language to see if they hunch because they feel overly tall, or if they hide their wonky teeth while smiling, and so on. That way, when they’re being patronising, you can silence them by shining a light on their sore spots.
3. Remind them of their own past mistakes and shortcomings.
This one only works if you have known the person who’s putting you down for some time. For example, if a colleague makes fun of you for screwing up something at work, do remind them of that time they CC’d the board of directors in on a spicy personal email.
4. Turn around what they’re attacking you with.
Some people might try to patronize you because of your age, not realizing that they’re vulnerable to this kind of behavior in turn. As such, if they patronize you by telling you that you’re too young to understand how life really works, you can tell them that they’re too old to recognize how much times have changed.
5. Target their vulnerability.
In contrast to unfounded insecurities, vulnerabilities are quite tangible, and patronizing people are often silenced when attention is brought to them. If a myopic person says that they see no value in your perspective, you can respond with: “I’m surprised you can see anything at all.”
6. Remind them of where they came from.
If someone is using their social status to put you down (for example, a title that they inherited), you can remind them that it was given to them by birth, rather than earned by them. And for added measure, feel free to ask them whether they think their esteemed ancestors would be proud of them.
7. Make sure they know how little their self-appointed status means to you.
Laughing at their patronizing behavior can cut them down a few pegs quite effectively since you’re letting them know in no uncertain terms that although they think highly of themselves, nobody else shares that perspective.
Try out: “You mean absolutely nothing to me, and by extension, neither does your opinion.”
8. Use evidence of their own hypocrisy against them.
A perfect example of this is if someone claims to have deep faith in their chosen religion, but behaves in a manner that’s completely contradictory to its tenets. You can point to the religious symbol they’re wearing and ask if their beloved religious leader would recognize them as a follower, considering their behavior.
9. Call out the individual’s insecurity when they try to belittle you with their knowledge base.
A person who feels threatened by you may try to beat you down with the one subject in which they feel capable, like interrupting to smugly ask you to describe what the Pythagorean theorem is. To this, you can respond with: “Are you so insecure that you need to reference 10th-grade math to feel superior?”
10. Turn their insult back around on them.
Let’s say someone tries to be patronizing towards you by implying it’s amazing that you understood something that’s completely elementary. You can turn it around on them by saying that just because they found that subject challenging, doesn’t mean that anyone else did.
11. Hit them in the scandal.
Many people try to put down others by belittling things that are important to the person they are insulting. Like asking how their “little project” is going when they’re working on coding a new game. If you have any, use the dirt you have on them and ask something like how their “little affair” is going on.
12. Ignore them completely.
According to psychologists, sometimes the best response is no response at all. Much like a joke that falls flat if nobody laughs, patronizing behavior loses its power if nobody responds to it. If someone says something patronizing towards you, simply behave as though they haven’t said anything at all, thus taking the bluster out of their sails. They can’t repeat it without proving themselves to be jerks.
