Have you ever experienced a person who insults you in the slightest and smallest ways on a regular basis, but when you confront them about it they say that you misunderstood, or that you are over reacting? Well I am here to inform you that you are not crazy, you did not misunderstand, and you are not over reacting.
Many of us engage in this behavior of slight insults or making comments that have double meanings. There is an umbrella term for this in psychology known as micro aggressions. Although, much of what you will find will refer to situations involving race, gender, and sexual orientation, micro aggressions occur on a regular basis regardless of the situation. The reason why people may deny that they have insulted you is because they may not even realize that they have said something offensive. Another view of this can be seen in the response, by saying that you misunderstood, or over reacted is another form of an insult, in other words, this person is telling you that you do not know when you are being insulted, and that you do not know how to respond socially. Notice how the aggressor reveals his or her position when you react and call her or him out on a comment this person will respond as I stated earlier which lets you know that the comment was meant to be hurtful. People who engage in micro aggressive behavior love an audience and will often launch their assaults in a situation where there is a lot of people or in situations in which a negative response from you will seem off the wall to others who are in the situation but did not pick up on the assaultive comment. That is why these are called micro aggression because they are small insults, rude comments, or derogatory statements that can be only understood once they are analyzed.
Most of us typically ignore these comments as we well should, the problem with ignoring the situation completely means that the person engaging in the micro aggression will continue to do so. As the assaultive behavior continues you begin to collect a bank account of mini insults from the person which one day needs to be cashed out, in other words, your angry so-called un-called for response. It is better to deal with these comments as they happen in a calm and matter of fact manner, and understand that the person that you deal with will not be happy that you will not allow them to launch micro assaults at you with no response. These people will typically attempt to launch more micro assaults your way in an effort to maintain their behavior. I would highly suggest researching micro aggressions online to learn about this phenomenon and ways to deal with it.
