If someone displays these 9 behaviors, they’re treating you with contempt

When someone’s treating you with contempt, they’re acting as though they’re better than you and you’re beneath them.

In their eyes, they’re wasting their time just by being around you, and they can be as disrespectful towards you as they want to be because you’re not even going to notice.

Now, the fact that you’re reading this article suggests that you have noticed, or at the very least that you’ve got your suspicions.

But what exactly are the behaviors that show someone’s treating you with contempt? Let’s take a look and find out.

1) They roll their eyes

This one’s pretty easy to spot, even when people try to do it behind your back.

If someone rolls their eyes, they’re signaling that they don’t value what you’re saying or doing. Worse, people rarely roll their eyes just to themselves; instead, they’re normally undermining you in front of a group of people.

It’s up to you how you deal with someone who rolls their eyes, but for me, it’s one of the worst things that people can do. I call them out on it and rarely give them another chance.

2) They keep sighing

When people sigh, it’s distracting at best and downright rude at worst.

The thing to remember here is that people sigh for a number of reasons. It might be that you’ve told them something that they didn’t want to hear or that they didn’t get a good night’s sleep and they’re tired.

This makes sighing relatively ambiguous, certainly more so than an eye roll. But the reason why I find it interesting is that it means that people can accidentally betray the contempt they have for you without even realizing it.

3) They interrupt you

This is one of my biggest pet peeves.

In fact, I’ve told my girlfriend off for doing it because to me, it means that she’s treating me with contempt. And I think it’s easy to see why.

When people interrupt you, they’re basically implying that what they have to say is more important than what you have to say. Fair enough if they’re going to say, “Watch out for that car!” Otherwise, it’s a big no-no.

4) They’re hyper-critical of you

Criticism is a strange thing, because sometimes we welcome it.

The way I see it, our friends and family are often our harshest critics, but they’ll only give us constructive criticism that we can learn from. They’ll also only provide us with feedback when we ask for it.

Hyper critical people will provide mostly negative feedback and will do so without us asking for it. They’re also doing it to be contemptuous and to put us down, rather than to help us out.

5) They make belittling comments

This often grows out of people being hyper-critical, because they’ll pick something that they can criticize and then make belittling comments about it.

These belittling comments are a sure sign of contempt because there’s no chance of any neutral or positive sentiment behind it. Unlike hyper criticism, where they can pretend they were trying to give you unsolicited constructive criticism, this is all about tearing you down.

The good news is that it’s super easy for you to spot. The bad news is that it can be hard to avoid reacting on instinct and returning the favor with some belittling comments of your own.

6) They withhold information

This behavior is often seen in offices when one coworker holds another in contempt. And as you can imagine, it causes all sorts of problems.

The idea is that the contemptuous person will refuse to share information with you because they know it will make your life more difficult. Often, they hope it’ll make you look stupid in front of your peers and your superiors.

The biggest issue here is that it’s often difficult to tell whether someone’s withholding information or not. Even when you catch them in the act, it’s possible that they genuinely haven’t realized what they’re doing.

7) They’re passive aggressive

Passive aggression is different to regular aggression because it’s aggression that’s hiding behind civility.

Someone who’s passive aggressive might make a backhanded compliment like, “This outfit is much nicer than that horrible green one you wore last week.” They might also get someone to open a window by loudly complaining, “It’s too stuffy in here.”

In other words, rather than communicating with you like a grown up, they’ll hide behind passive aggression and expect you to just get on board with what they want.

And they’ll hold you in contempt in the meantime.

8) They’re patronizing

When someone is patronizing towards you, they’re automatically treating you with contempt.

That’s because the whole idea behind patronizing is that they treat you as though you’re a child or as though you don’t have the intelligence required to understand what they’re talking about.

You can tell when someone’s being patronizing because they’ll speak exaggeratedly slowly and will avoid using big words.

They’ll often also go into an unnecessary amount of detail over the simplest of tasks.

9) They act as though you don’t matter

Ultimately, all of the behaviors that we’ve talked about have one thing in common, which is that the perpetrator is acting as though you don’t matter.

What I like to remind people is that everyone matters, and so if someone is treating you with contempt or acting as though your thoughts, feelings and opinions don’t matter, they’re the ones at fault, not you.

Personally, I have no time for people who act as though I don’t matter, because if I don’t matter to them, they don’t matter to me.

And as much as I usually try to avoid stooping to the same low as the other person, in this case, I think you should.

Conclusion

Now that you know the warning signs to look out for, you’re much better placed to call someone out when they’re treating you with contempt.

Of course, sometimes, it’s better to just cut off communication completely and to move on. If the contemptuous person is in your friend group, it may be time to make new friends. But if they’re someone you have to work with, it’s a very different story.

Whatever the case, knowledge is power, and with the knowledge I’ve shared with you today, you should be feeling pretty powerful.

Just make sure that you don’t use that as an excuse to treat other people with contempt.