Your Reaction Is a Reflection

How The Most Annoying People in Your Life Are Doing You a Favor

We all have people in our lives who push our buttons. They posture, persecute, show off, manipulate, or live their life as a perpetual victim. Whatever it is, their behavior gets under our skin—and we think the solution is to avoid them, fix them, or put them in their place.

But here’s an uncomfortable truth I’ve learned: If someone’s behavior truly gets to you, it’s because something in you is resonating with it. They’re mirroring a part of you that you’d rather not see.

That thing that is driving you crazy? It’s you.

Not convinced? Try this:

Make a list of everything that drives you nuts about that person. Be honest. Be petty. Pull out your favorite word processing application and write it all out. Make sure you include why it’s so triggering and what it means to you.

Now, do a find-and-replace: change the “he,” “she,” or “they” words to “I.”

Then read it back.

You’ll resist it at first. You’ll say, “No way, I don’t act like that.” But if you sit with it long enough, really look at the meaning you’ve assigned to that behavior, you’ll start to see glimmers of truth. Maybe you don’t act exactly like them, but you might carry the same insecurity. The same need to be seen. The same fear of being overlooked. The same craving for control.

That person’s behavior triggers us because it hits close to home—closer than we’re comfortable admitting.

The Imposter Mirror

Years ago, I had a colleague who constantly positioned himself as the smartest person in the room, even on topics he knew nothing about. It infuriated me. It was like an itch in my brain, and the only way to scratch it was to eloquently and brutally expose his incompetence to the entire room. I wanted to weaponize my own intellect to take apart his charade. Sometimes I did.

I didn’t win many friends that way.

After a particularly uncomfortable instance, and a good measure of reflection, I realized my disdain wasn’t for him. Not really. I saw in him something I feared in myself: imposter syndrome.

I was comfortable enough in my subject matter expertise at work, but there were many aspects of my life where I was kind of a disaster. I was pretending to have it all figured out in areas of my life where I secretly felt lost—parenting, leadership, even self-discipline. My colleague’s arrogance bothered me because in his posturing, I recognized how I often tried to mask my own insecurities.

It wasn’t him I disliked. It was me. It made me think of the phase from the now-famous 1970 Pogo comic:

“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

That realization, while uncomfortable, was a turning point for me. Once I faced that the problem was me, the power dynamic shifted. I might be the problem, but that meant i could also be the solution. I didn’t need to outwit or demean that guy anymore. His behavior wasn’t a threat, but a signal—a mirror reflecting a part of myself that needed some correcting.

The Whisper Before the Shout

Life has a subtle way of pointing things out to us. At first, it’s a faint tug. A quiet discomfort about someone. A weird tension in a conversation that lingers longer than it should. A comment that sits wrong with you for reasons you can’t explain.

That’s the whisper. A minor annoyance, if anything.

But when we ignore it—when we brush off that feeling or push it down—it doesn’t go away. It gets louder. The situations become harder to avoid. The reactions stronger. The triggers, and then the emotional hangovers, last longer.

That’s life turning up the volume.

Here’s why: that thing bothering you doesn’t just want your attention. It wants resolution. The longer we resist looking inward—the longer we deny that what’s bothering us might be about us—the more often those situations come back. Louder. Closer. More personal.

It’s not punishment. It’s pattern.

We grow when we finally pay attention to the itch instead of blaming the thing that scratched us. The people, problems, and triggers that agitate us the most are often just messengers—pointing us to the places in ourselves that need a bit of polishing.

As a religious person, I like to call this a “God squeeze.” It’s that gentle (or not-so-gentle) nudge that says:

“Hey, there’s something in you that needs adjusting.”

If that doesn’t resonate with you, think of it instead as a check engine light on your emotional dashboard. It’s telling you something inside is misaligned. Ignore it long enough, and the little light leads to a bigger breakdown.

The Illusion of Control

When we find ourselves micromanaging others, overreacting to small things, or obsessing over outcomes, it’s rarely about the situation at hand. It’s about the internal instability we haven’t dealt with.

Psychologically, we try to control outside of us when we feel out of control inside us. It’s a defense mechanism. A way to avoid the discomfort of owning what’s unresolved, unhealed, or undisciplined inside us.

We try to control other people’s behavior because we can’t control our own emotions.

We demand certainty from outcomes because we lack clarity in our own process.

We lash out at others when we haven’t learned to lead ourselves.

It’s not that control is inherently bad. It’s just that most of the time, we’re trying to wield it in the wrong direction.

Truth is, often the best response to goading or triggering behavior is none at all. Some people worry that this mindset makes them weak; that if they don’t react, they’re giving others permission to walk all over them.

But it’s the opposite.

When you see the triggering behavior for what it really is—something in you that needs attention—those annoying moments take on new meaning.

This doesn’t mean you tolerate toxic behavior or allow dysfunction into your life unchecked. It means you stop trying to force people to keep you comfortable, and start actually addressing and adjusting those bothersome issues until they don’t bother any longer.

The Gift of Empathy

When you do the work to understand why something or someone bothers you so much, it opens the door for you to more deeply understand the other person, too. You no longer need to defend yourself or “win” the exchange. You can respond from a place of calm curiosity instead of outrage.

Because now you have the chance to fix it. To grow. To shift.

Not in them. In yourself.

And that’s when the real magic happens.

Because empathy is also the doorway to influence. Equipped with real empathy, you have the potential to become a person in someone else’s life who sees them clearly and responds with strength and compassion instead of judgment. That doesn’t mean they’ll change, but your relationship with them absolutely will.

And whether you’re leading a team, raising a family, or building a legacy—you’ll need that emotional strength more than any technical skill.

An Invitation

The next time someone gets under your skin, don’t run. Don’t retaliate. Don’t spiral or shut down.

Get curious. Ask yourself:

Why is this bothering me?

Where in my life does this show up?

What is this showing me about me?

When you figure that out, you’ll stop dreading the things that trigger you. You’ll no longer be constantly frustrated from trying to control others. Instead, you’ll be growing into and even better version of you that can love more deeply, lead more effectively, and live with increased clarity and fulfillment.

And that, my friends, is a feeling I’d love for you to experience.