If someone is horrible to you do you try to understand their motives / psychology?

[Iwanttoliveinagardencentre]

I have a situation with a neighbour at the moment.

(I have name changed for this thread for obvious reasons.)

She is a complete nightmare to deal with, irrational, immature, aggressive. Twists everything to accuse me of the very behaviours she herself shows.
It isn’t a personality clash because another neighbour has experienced her behaviour too but to those who haven’t she appears reasonably normal.

I try, and fail, to think myself into her head as to why she behaves like this.
We have disagreed on something she has done to me and eventually I had to confront her which made her very angry so she is now doing everything she can to make my life hard. She behaves like a middle aged playground bully.

I really don’t like conflict and had tried my hardest to avoid confronting her but in the end there was no other option left to stop her.

I worked as a mental health nurse (now retired) and have always tried to understand other people’s point of view even if I don’t agree with it but I am flummoxed with this woman.

Are some people genuinely unfathomable?

Not for a neighbour i dont.

A family member, a friend i loved, yes, probably.

But anyone else, no. I wouldn't waste my time, Id just stop interacting with them beyond absolute necessity.

I had neighbours like this. 12 years of hell and if we confronted them they would just shout "Give over" repeatedly over what we were saying.
Gradually they fell out with everyone and moved away blaming all the horrible neighbours.

I don't understand what enjoyment people can get out of life behaving like this.

I also had a neighbour like this. Everyone, including her family, knew how difficult she was. It did vaguely cross my mind to wonder why she was like this but of course, with no frame of reference to her past life, there was no way to know. I chose the cool, distant approach and eventually she died. I have lovely neighbours now.

I think you just have to distance yourself from some people both mentally and physically. Not always easy but why expend your energy? Life is too short. You share nothing in common with this person and she doesn't enhance your life in any way. Her belligerance shows a need to control. Winter is coming when we see less of our neighbours. I would use this as an opportunity to reduce contact. Good luck.

I think there is a difference between trying to understand something from someone's perspective and trying to understand their psychological motivations for behaviour. They seem to be massively different to me.

So, I think it is fine to try and understand a neighbourly issue about say a dividing fence or a shared driveway from both perspectives. But trying to get inside the psychological reasons for why a neighbour is behaving really badly is probably not a route I'd want to go down. I don't think there is any benefit to it and you could well end up making assumptions that are incorrect because you can't know the full story.

No, I couldn't be arsed to use the mental energy over a neighbour.

If it was a loved one, then yes of course.

But your neighbour is just someone who happens to live in the same street as you and as much as it's nice to get on, if you don't then you don't.

Getting inside her head isn't going to change her behaviour anyway.

It’s usually fairly obvious to me. I don’t go to any particular effort, no.

Our difficult neighbours are difficult because they are snobs and don’t like unapologetically WC people living next door to them, for instance. It absolutely killed them when they realised that someone from the wrong side of the tracks knew the admiral of their prestigious sailing club.

It doesn’t mean I give their POV any headspace.

I do always do that. And usually conclude that they have had a lot of hardship or suffering in their lives to make them that way. Or that they may have mental health issues, or both.

Life can be really cruel to some people, and it's not easy for everyone to put on a nice, happy front when things are feeling so bleak for them.

Also some people are just beyond caring what others think of them. And if their default emotion is anger then so be it.

No. Not for one moment. I try to get them out of my life ASAP.

Your nieghbour sounds like she is super defensive she may be point scoring and getting back at you out of revenge.

She sounds like she has no moral sat nav, and she is confrontational with you to put you in your place and make you step back.

• Now its time for you to minimise contact with her, if possible.

• Log EVERYTHING write dates, times of past incidents and if vinegar tits starts to confront you again, log that too

• Do not threaten her with the police or local authority......she"ll go ballistic and make things worse. If you report her, tel her nothing

• Contact the LA ( Council) , give them the log you made.

Councils work with the police in an effort to erradicate ASB. I understand what you have been through is pretty awful and the woman is a complete fool who is cruising for a bruising.

Log everything and report, report report.

Get a doorbell camera, police told me these are great for collecting evidence and they are. (I have one).

Stay strong, you got this.

I'd second what a PP said about logging everything. We did this and passed it on to the community warden. We were having hundreds of cigarette ends dumped by our door early every morning. He visited them to ask if they'd seen anyone and that we were having CCTV installed to catch the culprit. We never had any more after that.

@Iwanttoliveinagardencentre
Hmmm.
I think it's helpful to try and understand someone's psychology behind poor behaviour because it helps you to understand why they're treating you badly. If you can understand and identify the cause of their behaviour then it reassures you that the problem is them, not that they're targeting you because of a problem with you.
I find that if I can work out the psychology for someone's unsettling behaviour then it helps me feel less upset by their behaviour towards me.
BUT - and this is a big but - this does NOT mean you put up with their bad behaviour.
You still need to put firm boundaries in place and you don't let anyone in life treat you badly.
So you don't put up with their shit.
But I still believe it helps settle your own mind to be able to work out, from a psychological perspective, why they are behaving in such a bad way.
Plenty will disagree with me though. Plenty simply wouldn't waste any headspace on nutters like your neighbour. And they might be better for it. But personally speaking, I need to be able to understand in order to make sense of someone being a nightmare towards me.
Hope things settle down for you OP. You'll get lots of good advice here💐

I think there are just people who fall out with others. Alarm bells should have rung for me when I first met them the woman said they'd had horrible neighbours where they lived before. No doubt they'll say they had to move from here because the neighbours weren't nice to them.

What I don't understand is why people can't see it's THEM who are the problem, not everyone else.

Not always , I think it’s just the luck of the draw when it comes to neighbours . It’s not personal though as these antisocial neighbours will behave in this way no matter who they live by .

I agree with this perspective.

@CrispAutumnLeaves that's all well and good but not much comfort when your whole family including kids and pets are subjected to it and your health suffers as a result.
In our case it was personal as the woman would deliberately refuse to let me pass yet move aside for someone else.