How to Accept Responsibility When You Trigger Someone

Photo: Sylvain Reygaerts

Activism in the 21st century lives both online and on the streets. Both are crucial to communicating the progressive, intersectional messages that our society needs to hear. It's difficult to write-off Internet activism as lazy and meaningless, when it has helped make phrases like #BlackLivesMatter into a global conversation. That being said, communicating online can be incredibly challenging because you lose the tone and context that are crucial in difficult conversations. Basically, it's really easy to get your feelings hurt when you speak up online.

Just because people's feelings get hurt, doesn't mean they have to stay hurt. It may feel uncomfortable and impossible to right a wrong or to mentally and emotionally support someone who you disagree with, but it's worth it. Compassion doesn't cost a lot and it will make your life ten thousand times more fulfilling and peaceful, because even if other people stay angry, YOU won't be.

It is really hard to show compassion when someone is telling you that you did or said something wrong. People react can react in any number of ways when they're triggered. Sometimes people react with anger, other times with sadness, and other times they'll tell you that what you said was not okay, verbatim.

It's not being naive or weak or overly-sensitive or PC to give people a chance when they tell you that you've hurt or offended them. If you're confident in your beliefs, listening to someone else for a few moments shouldn't shake your solid foundation of morals and ideologies. If it makes you uncomfortable to listen to someone else, for more than a few minutes, that's probably a deeper conversation you should have with yourself.

If and when someone says you've hurt them, the first thing you can do is thank the person for telling you how they feel. It's hard to say that your feelings are hurt in a competitive and apathetic world like ours. Vulnerability becomes synonymous with weakness. Thank them. Thank them. Thank them. They're probably not saying it to insult you... they're giving you a potential moment of growth.

Once you've thanked them, challenge them to tell you specifically how they feel and why they feel that way. Pick their brain to see what part of their reality you may have stomped on or missed when you spoke. Maybe a joke you said made light of a terrible experience in their past. Maybe your comment made them feel unsafe or excluded. No matter the reason, it's important to recognize the humanity in them because you can't ask them to understand you if you don't try to understand them.

After they've explained where they're coming from, the best thing you can do is thank them for what they said, thoughtfully explain what you intended to say or express, or tell them that you will take some time to think about what they said. There's not one correct answer. The overall message, however, is that you're grateful that they shared, you;re learning from the experience, and you're thinking about this for the future.

You don't have to change any of your beliefs in that moment. You don't need to think you're an awful, stupid person. You don't even have to agree with the person. But accepting responsibility never hurts, and ultimately, it will make you a more well-rounded person who can safely and respectfully talk to people from all walks of life. And that's a cool thing.