I seem to keep encountering mean girl energy, everywhere I look. It’s making me feel crazy.
What can I do?
First of all, I’m sorry you’re encountering mean girl energy everywhere. I hate that for you.
I’d like to first call out what I think you mean when you say mean girl energy because it’s important that we know if we’re talking about the same thing before we dive into it.
People with mean girl energy often come across as judgmental and cold.
People with mean girl energy can be manipulative and sometimes threatening.
People with mean girl energy appear to be unseeing, uncaring and closed off.
People with mean girl energy are unconcerned with truth and acting with integrity.
People with mean girl energy are unlikely to be willing to talk to others about anything real or substantial, but they are more than willing to talk about people behind their backs.
People with mean girl energy can feel like they are wanting to get a rise out of you or stir up drama rather than wanting to work things out.
People with mean girl energy are usually unwilling to listen, and more likely to believe preconceived notions about you and others.
People with mean girl energy seem fully entrenched in staying at the top of some sort of ill-defined pecking order.
For the sake of this writing, I’m going to continue to call it mean girl energy since you called it that, but it’s important to acknowledge that this type of energy can come from all genders.
Typically when this type of energy comes from males, we call them bullies and when it comes from girls, we call them mean girls. These are interchangeable.
The thing about people with this type of energy is that they somehow, however inexplicably, attract people. I suspect it’s their sense of confidence and power that appeals to people. Because the majority of people in this world are followers, and followers are looking for strength outside of themselves (for they are often lacking internal strength), they will tend to follow the people that seem to have the most confidence. So, if the person with mean girl energy, sensing that you aren’t wanting to follow her, turns on you, singles you out, then her followers will often do the same. This is miserable.
Now maybe you think that you should just follow along and then you wouldn’t become the target. Maybe. But I contend that acting with integrity is more important than fitting in with people who are morally and ethically despicable.
Now, what you might not realize is that often underneath this type of energy is a lot of pain and sadness and hurt.
And I do believe that it’s wise to be willing to take a tiny peek under the surface and at least become aware that a deeper and different truth might exist, to the extent that you’re able to do that.
A little goes a long way
Before I go on, I’d like to talk about the concept of a little going a long way. Once I was making a four-cheese macaroni and cheese, with one of the cheeses being goat cheese. The recipe said that a little goat cheese goes a long way, meaning that adding this cheese to the recipe would enhance its flavor a lot, but adding too much would overpower and perhaps ruin the flavor. I put too much that first time, so learned my lesson. Or how many times have you learned this lesson with salt? A little salt is flavor enhancing, while a lot of salt will ruin a dish. It’s always important to find the sweet spot.
So, just like goat cheese or salt, being willing to take a peek under the covers of this mean girl energy with compassion goes a long way.
A little compassion goes a long way
I think it’s important to dip your toe into the waters of compassion only from a place of strength and confidence. If you choose to attempt to act out of compassion, to treat these people that are acting unkindly with kindness, do so. I wholeheartedly believe in treating others well no matter what. Then observe what reaction you get. Don’t dive headfirst into the compassion waters to begin with. If their mean girl energy is fairly shallow and compassion is something they’ve been longing for, then you will know – you will see a change in their behavior.
You hear stories of bullies being given a gift by the person they are bullying, and immediately their demeanor changes and softens and they become a wonderful and nice person. I love these stories. Therefore, I used to instruct my daughters to show love and compassion to people who were mean too them, truly believing it would turn them around. That adding a dose of compassion to bully energy would immediately and completely neutralize it.
Turns out these stories are the exception rather than the rule.
But I still advise throwing just a bit of compassion to somebody with mean girl energy to see what happens. If you see a true softening, then you can feel free to add a bit more. Just remember to trust your intuition and be somewhat cautious. Because people with mean girl energy can also be manipulative. But if you actually listen to your gut and take it slowly, I believe that you will know whether this person responds by diving deeper into the mean girl energy, sensing you as an easier target, or if she responds with an authentic shift, revealing the good energy below.
More often than not, unfortunately, the compassion will bounce right off this person and nothing will happen. Because it’s also possible that, having exposed yourself as a compassionate person, you will become an even more appealing target to them. And that will be your sign to retreat, to cut the compassion off, keep it to yourself, to protect yourself. Remember that a little compassion goes a long way.
If you tend to be a person that wants to see the best in people, now is a time to recognize how you might be projecting goodness onto those around you. We often hear about projection in a negative connotation. And this is the side of projection that gets the most attention. If you are deceitful, you will tend to believe others are deceiving you or if you have some deep-seated anger, you will see anger in others. But positive projection can also happen and can create problems as well. When you are a deeply good person, the natural tendency to project can cause you to project good intentions and good traits on others. And while that sounds good, this can backfire when you are seeing good traits where no such good traits exist. This can backfire when you give people with mean girl energy (and bad intentions) too much benefit of the doubt. And this is where you could use a little discernment.
A little discernment goes a long way
When you are a well-intentioned person and you tend to see others as also having good intentions, just throw a little discernment into the mix. Give the benefit of the doubt, but don’t give it blindly. It’s important to stay objective, even with those whom you have a vested interest in staying connected to. This might be a family member (mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, child, husband, wife, etc.) or maybe it’s somebody that you have known for years. It’s painful to stop seeing people the way we want to see them, but objectivity is important when you’re deciding who to trust.
So, when you recognize that the person you have been offering compassion to isn’t softening or offering you the same in return, or if you witness this person treating others with disdain and cruelty, it’s important to be honest with yourself about who this person might really be. Popularity doesn’t always predict goodness. In fact, popularity can strangely be more associated with mean girl energy than with being a truly good person. Be willing to see the truth, no matter what you fear the consequences of seeing this might be.
Because you can’t talk a mean girl out of being mean.
You can’t talk a bully out of bullying.
What’s important here is not to be so discerning that you pre-assume that everybody around you is mean and has negative intentions. Give people a chance. You want to remain watchful that you don’t start indiscriminately discarding people without getting to know them. In fact, exercising too much discernment can actually cause you to exude the same mean girl energy you are so opposed to.
A little anger goes a long way
Once you recognize that somebody has mean girl energy, a little anger can go a long way. Once your offered compassion has failed, try embodying a little bit of “you can’t treat me that way” anger. If you’re like me, you will be hesitant to do so. Having encountered so much mean girl energy over the years, I had decided that I would never be like them, never be mean or closed off. I wanted to be kind no matter what. This doesn’t work with people with mean girl energy. In fact, they will take advantage of this.
You often hear that a kid will get bullied until he punches the bully back. And while I’m not advocating for violence, a little anger does go a long way in fighting off this energy. Not only does a little anger signal to her that you won’t put up with her unkindness, a little anger also signals to your own self that you believe you are worth defending. Stand up for your own self the way you would stand up for somebody else you might see being treated poorly.
But that doesn’t mean go and pound on them. Too much anger will send you off into the direction of being the bully again. So stand up strongly for yourself without succumbing to the temptation to be cruel in return.
A little communication goes a long way
Often when we have invested time into something, we are less likely to want to let it go. This is true for hobbies and project and it’s also true of relationships of all kinds. Good project management is to heavily research in the early stages of a project, gathering as much objective and realistic information as you can as early as you can, so you don’t waste time on projects that are not likely to succeed. This same philosophy can be applied to any type of relationship.
Unless you were a baby when the relationship started (as is the case for relationships with your parents and siblings), there is always a beginning to a relationship. It is imperative to try and stay objective at the outset of a relationship, to see the person objectively, and to try and gather as much information as possible. This is commonly referred to as watching for red flags.
And this is where a little communication goes a long way. Maybe you tend to avoid talking about topics that might cause conflict, such as religion or politics. Or maybe you have shied away from too much communication in general because you’re scared of what you might find out. If your primary goal is avoidance of conflict, then you will shy away from any real communication.
But even when the people you are getting to know disagree with you ideologically, you should be able to communicate about those things. People with mean girl energy are notoriously unable to talk about things that might shake their sense of self. They typically have fragile egos, so feel threatened when people disagree with them. Because they are closed off, they hold their points of view tightly and are unwilling to listen to another side. Therefore you can find yourself skirting real issues, avoiding kicking the sleeping bear, walking on eggshells, or whatever other analogy works for you.
But here is where I say that a little communication goes a long way. Take the risk of waking this sleeping bear. You need to know that it is, in fact, a bear. Once you are certain that it’s a bear, you can make the choice to turn and walk away. But tiptoeing around it forever will only prolong the inevitable. And once you have invested a lot of time with somebody, inertia will prevent you from leaving.
So communicate early and directly.
But resist the urge to over-communicate. Resist the urge to try to convince them to be different. You can’t talk a mean girl out of being mean. And you can’t talk a bully out of bullying. So don’t even try.
A little honesty goes a long way.
So now you’ve decided to communicate with these people early and directly. Now be honest with yourself about what you see. If you are desperate to hold onto somebody, you might try your hardest to interpret all of their actions in the best possible light.
But a little honesty goes a long way. And mostly that honesty needs to be honesty with your own self. If you see problematic tendencies, including judgment, coldness, manipulation, threats, the tendency to be closed off, lack of honesty, lack of integrity, unwillingness to talk to you or others but a willingness to talk about you or others, or any other indication that they are worried about staying at the top of a pecking order, admit this to yourself.
Just observe it and acknowledge it to yourself.
This honesty is the first step in doing something about it. You might try being honest with them, dipping your toe in to tell them that you don’t like the way they are treating you or others, and then observe how they respond.
If when you are honest with them (in as kind a way as possible), they become defensive and angry or condescending and cruel, notice that. A person with mean girl energy will not take this type of feedback well at all. Now it’s true that the shame triggered in many people when confronted by somebody might cause an initial reaction that looks like this, but a person with mean-girl energy will carry that reaction through forever, while a person with kinder energy will be willing to stay curious and open, even apologizing if their initial reaction wasn’t the best. And it’s important to allow this type of recovery. You will be able to tell the difference. True mean girls will hold this against you forever.
In the spirit of learning to face the truth, if you do have a suspicion about somebody carrying mean girl energy, draw in just a little closer. Ask some questions, tiptoe into the discomfort of honesty, lightly tap the sleeping creature to see if it’s a bear. Then stop talking and give them space to respond. If you notice that they are responding differently than you wish they would, resist the urge to keep communicating. This urge comes from wanting them to be somebody different, but you can’t make that happen. Watch what they do, learn who they are and be as objective as possible. After the initial communication, be willing to listen and really see the truth.
A little communication is a light tap on the sleeping creature’s shoulder, where too much communication is trying to talk the newly awakened bear out of being hungry. It will not work. Resist the urge to try to talk them out of anything at all. Just observe and be honest with yourself.
A little distance goes a long way
Once you can see what you’re dealing with, a little distance goes a long way. Like many people around you, you might feel inexplicably attracted to this type of energy, perhaps in a misguided attempt to win favor with the mean girls or perhaps in an effort to prove to yourself or others that you can be liked by that person. Don’t do that. It isn’t worth it. Instead, create space between yourself and them. Both emotional and physical space, if possible. Space is imperative to stay objective and honest with yourself.
There was a time in my own life when I was very confused by mean girl energy. I was surrounded by a lot of it early on, and so believed that I was the problem. I thought that I somehow deserved this negative energy, that maybe their unkind treatment of me was somehow a reflection of what I deserved. And because I was surrounded by so much of it, it became normalized in my life. I had become overly used to that energy in my life, resigned to it. It honestly felt so normal that I didn’t rebuke it. I didn’t walk away when I encountered it. In fact, I held on all the more tightly, determined each time to prove them wrong.
Once I made the choice to create some distance from people with this type of energy, I felt lighter and freer. I was able to see more objectively that their view of me had less to do with me and more to do with the kind of energy they were exuding. In this way it was really about them all along. Distance helped.
So create some distance, however you have to do it, but resist the urge you might have to run away from everybody and everything. If distance becomes your goal, you are likely to find yourself running so hard from people that you end up running away from everybody, including your own self. Create distance from the people with the mean girl energy and keep the rest closer. After all, you get to choose where you put your focus, so focus on the people with the good energy, drawing them closer.
A little integrity goes a long way and a lot of integrity goes even farther
So let’s go back to your question. You say that you keep encountering mean girl energy everywhere you look and it’s making you feel crazy. You ask what you should do.
In a nutshell, get good at recognizing it for what it is, depersonalize it, understand that the energy represents something broken in them and represents nothing about you, and accept that you cannot change it.
Regardless of how many of these people you are surrounded by, keep in mind that you get to choose how you act, how you treat others and how you live your life.
You will no doubt continue to encounter people with mean girl energy, and you will encounter a lot of people who follow these people blindly. You cannot change this about the world, but you can choose your focus.
You can choose to turn around – turning your back on that negative energy and shifting your focus to being the kind energy that you are looking for.
Accept that people with mean girl energy exist and it’s not your job to convert them or convince them. Resist the urge to personalize it – their energy means nothing at all about you.
Turn around and focus on being kind. The world could always use more kindness, and that you do have control over.
