What does it mean when someone keeps handing your olive branch back to you (and when we do that too)? And how to protect your peace when they keep trying to pull you into their drama?
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What happens when you stay calm in the middle of someone’s drama, and instead of things getting better… they get worse.
This is part two of a little series that came out of my summer holiday. I went away with my partner’s family, and a family member shouted at me in front of everyone. This was Drama that had nothing to do with me, and somehow I took the front of it.
In part one, I talked about judgment. Why it’s never really about us, but also why some comments stick and others bounce right off us. It comes down to whether the comment matches an old insecurity you’re already carrying. What I call a velcro patch.
And I also talked about what I call paddle down. When someone tries to pull you into their drama, they’re trying to start a game of ping pong with you. They need you to pick up the paddle. To react. Otherwise there is no game.
Paddle down means choosing not to react. Not out of fear or to keep the peace at any cost. But because you’re intentionally choosing to protect your peace.
If you want to know more about what I just spoke bout though, you can listen to or watch the replay of part one called “Why other people’s judgment isn’t actually about you” .
But putting the paddle down doesn’t always have the effect you’d expect.
When Paddle Down Isn’t Enough
After being shouted at in front of my partner’s family, the drama didn’t stop there, at least not for the person who shouted at me. I had put the paddle down, meaning I’d decided not to react. And as far as I was concerned, that paddle was going to stay glued to the table, because my only job in this moment was to protect my peace.
For the rest of the holiday I made a conscious effort to behave kindly and leave the door open to conversation. I did my absolute best to defuse the situation. But every attempt at connection, every invitation, every “good morning,” was met at best with a grunt or a blank look, and at worst with more anger.
Are they just being d*cks?
No. When people consistently throw the olive branches you hand them back in your face, they’re not trying to be d*cks.
Think about it, it’s probably happened to you too. You’ve had an argument with someone, they try to reach out, to be the “bigger person,” and somehow it pisses you off more, makes you feel even worse.
It’s not their fault. But it’s also not entirely yours.
In that moment, we’ve taken the place of the victim. We genuinely believe whatever happened, happened to us, and we fail to see our own part in it. We start seeing whoever we argued with as a persecutor, the person to blame for all our suffering.
“Victim mindset means believing that whatever happened, happened to you, and failing to see your own part in it.”
There’s a simple model I use with clients for this, called the drama triangle*, developed by the psychiatrist Stephen Karpman to explain the difficult interpersonal relationships. It has three roles:
- The victim, who believes things are happening to them, and can’t see their own part in it.
- The persecutor, the person they’ve cast as being in the wrong.
- And the rescuer, the person who steps in to fix, save, or smooth things over, often at their own expense.
*if you want to know more about the drama triangle read my article : “Remove unnecessary drama from your life”
In my holiday’s version, they’d cast me as the persecutor. And it would have been easy to actually become one: shouting back, listing every unfair thing they’d said, making absolutely sure they understood how much they’d hurt me.
It would have been just as easy to slip into rescuer instead: over-apologising, trying to prove how much I care or love them, taking on blame that wasn’t mine, or shifting blame onto someone or something else, all to try to make them feel better, so they come around faster.
Persecuting punishes. Rescuing appeases.
Both are just ways of ending the discomfort of the moment, never actually helping, always feeding the drama.
I didn’t do either. My olive branches weren’t about taking blame, they were about accountability.
“I’m sorry for the part that was mine. I’m here for you whenever you’re ready to talk. I’m not going to force anything, but the door stays open.”
That’s not persecuting, It isn’t rescuing either. And I think that’s exactly what was so hard for them to sit with.
Refusing both roles only resolves things if the other person is actually ready to let go of the victim role too. When they are, refusing to play along is usually a relief, they’ll welcome the chance to meet you there.
I had this experience with my mother last summer. Every time she made a cutting comment, I’d change the topic and divert the conversation, without animosity, and not to make a point, just because in that moment I chose to believe the comment wasn’t really addressed to me. It wasn’t. It was a mirror of her own insecurity. To her credit, every single time, she let the topic change and softened. I believe part of her was relieved to be handed the chance to let go of something she’d said that she probably regretted the moment it left her mouth. We ended up having a wonderful summer regardless of all the comments thrown at me.
That’s not what happened here, because that person wasn’t ready to leave the victim role. When that happens, refusing to play along can create more anger, not less. Unconsciously, they still need someone to take one of those two roles, and if you won’t, that refusal itself can become the next thing they’re upset about. I refused both. The paddle stayed down. And for a while, at least, that was met with more anger, not less.
“The victim can only be the victim if someone else agrees to play persecutor or rescuer. If you cannot force them to step out of their role, you can refuse to entertain it.”
Here’s the thing about the victim role: it needs a persecutor or a rescuer to be able to stay in place. And as long as someone hasn’t realised they’re playing it, they’ll unconsciously keep creating situations that keep them there.
Why? Because coming out of the victim role means taking responsibility, instead of someone things simply happen to. And responsibility is work, uncomfortable and often uneasy.
And here is the important caveat people almost always fail to see: Taking responsibility isn’t the same as taking the blame.
Taking responsability is about taking action and moving forward, it’s about learning from our mistakes and putting things in place to make sure they don’t happen again. Taking the blame is simply saying “it’s my fault” and sitting in the victim seat for longer.
“Taking responsibility means taking action and moving forward. Taking the blame just keeps you sitting in the victim seat for longer.”
And for someone who has spent a long time maybe enve most of their lives in the victim role, taking responsibility can feel like stepping outside their comfort zone entirely. It can feel genuinely dangerous.
That’s the part I only understood afterwards, too. Why the shouting had been building for as long as it had.
The Kindness Debt
In part one, I mentioned reverse paranoia, and how I’d had no idea this person had built up months, maybe years, of resentment towards me. That’s the part that stayed with me. Not the shouting itself, but how long it must have been building without me knowing.
I think about it as a kindness debt now.
A kindness debt is what happens when you give someone something, time, patience, tolerance, that you’re not actually willing to give, but tell yourself and others that you are.
Maybe they don’t say anything because they don’t dare to. Maybe they don’t realise they’re giving something they’re not willing to give. Or maybe they think their kindness will be returned eventually, and again, that’s not a gift, that’s a loan. Whatever the reason, it starts running as a tab, even when it’s dressed up as “it’s okay, I don’t mind,” or “you don’t owe me anything.”
“A kindness debt is what happens when you give someone something, time, patience, tolerance, that you’re not actually willing to give, but tell yourself and others that you are.”
The debt accumulates over time and with it pressure builds. Eventually there’s a collection day: an explosion, a snap, a sudden coldness that looks, from the outside, wildly disproportionate to whatever just happened.
And because the debt was never consciously tracked, most people don’t actually know why they’re this upset either. They just know they are, and that confusion often comes with its own layer of shame, embarrassment at having reacted so strongly to something that, on the surface, doesn’t seem to warrant it. Which makes it even harder to walk back, or explain, or apologise for. Admitting you overreacted is hard enough, admitting you don’t fully know why you overreacted is harder still.
That doesn’t excuse how they behaved. But it changes what it means. It wasn’t really about me, or even, really, about that one conversation. It was about their inability to express boundaries for months, maybe years, that was coming back all at once in that one moment.
The choice to move on
So when someone refuses to rise to your level, it doesn’t mean they’re being d*cks. It usually means they believe they don’t have a choice, and moving out of that belief is a far bigger ask than it looks from the outside.
That’s a strange thing to sit with, because from where you’re standing, the choice looks obvious: Let it go, accept the olive branch. But somewhere in them, accepting it means admitting the anger wasn’t entirely justified, or wasn’t worth holding onto this long. It might mean apologising. And once you’ve been angry for that long, calm doesn’t always feel like relief, sometimes it feels like exposure, giving up or not backing yourself. (more on that in part 3)
When we’re stuck in the victim role, the only thing that gets us out is realising the only person keeping us there is ourselves. The moment we realise we can choose to let go of the resentment and the anger, we free ourselves from the pain, and we become able to accept other people’s kindness. We become the creator of our own experience again, instead of someone things just happen to. Any attempt before that moment will be met with more anger, because when we feel like we don’t have a choice, it angers us to see someone else trying to make us choose.
“When we feel like we don’t have a choice, it angers us to see someone else trying to make us choose.”
So if you’re on the receiving end of that: don’t take it personally. Remember, they believe they don’t have a choice.
You don’t have to fix their mindset and you definitely don’t have to keep proving your kindness is real. You just have to remember whose responsibility it is to find their way out.
Back to my holiday. They never did come around, not that day, not by the time we left. They stayed in their own prison of pain, one only they had the key to. I couldn’t hand it to them. Nobody could.
I could have felt angry about that. Ten years ago, I probably would have, and I’d have carried it home with me on the flight back, replaying it, wondering what I should have done differently. This time, what actually came up was compassion. Because I understood, underneath the frustration, how much a mindset like that asks of someone to leave behind.
There’s one more thing I only noticed afterwards. Because I never gave more warmth than I actually had to give, because every olive branch was real, not a performance of one, I didn’t walk away carrying a debt of my own. Nothing to collect on later, nothing waiting to explode in some unrelated argument, years from now.
Peace, protected.
Try This
Next time someone doesn’t warm to your kindness, no matter how much you offer, pause and ask:
Is this about me, or about their belief that they don’t have a choice? Your invitation was genuine. What they do with it isn’t something you can control.
Am I trying harder to be liked, or have I actually put the paddle down? If you’re still working to win them over, there’s still a paddle in your hand.
Their anger was never proof you’d failed. It was proof they hadn’t yet realised they had a choice.
FAQ
Why do some people get angrier the nicer I am to them?
That reaction usually isn’t about your kindness. It’s about their own belief that they don’t have a choice in how they feel. Being offered a way out can feel threatening when you don’t yet believe you’re allowed to take it. It tends to soften once they realise the choice was theirs all along, not something being forced on them.
Why does it feel like nothing I do makes a difference?
Because their reaction isn’t actually measuring your effort. It’s measuring how ready they are to let go of their own resentment. That readiness has nothing to do with how many times you show up warmly.
How do I stop taking someone’s coldness personally?
Remind yourself what’s actually happening underneath it. Most of the time, it isn’t about you at all, it’s someone stuck believing they don’t have a choice in how they feel. That doesn’t make the coldness easier, but it does make it easier to stop absorbing it.
Does this mean I did something wrong if someone stays cold towards me?
Not necessarily. Someone staying stuck in resentment says more about where they are than about what you did. You can be genuinely kind and still not be met with warmth, and that isn’t proof of failure on your part.
Is it my job to help them see they have a choice?
No. That realisation only happens when someone is ready for it, and you can’t force readiness. What’s yours to manage is your own peace, not theirs.
Why is it so hard for someone to leave the victim role, even when it’s clearly causing them pain?
Because leaving it usually means admitting something first, that the anger wasn’t entirely justified, or wasn’t worth holding onto for this long. That’s not a small thing to face. It can feel safer to stay upset than to look at what letting go would actually require.
Why did their reaction feel so out of proportion to what actually happened?
Because it probably wasn’t about that one moment. If someone has been giving you patience or tolerance they weren’t really willing to give, and saying nothing about it, that builds. What looks like an overreaction to one small thing is often the collection day on a debt that’s been quietly growing for a long time.
This is part two of a series on judgment, drama and boundaries. Part one covers why judgment lands, and the difference between fitting in and paddle down: Why Other People’s Judgment Isn’t Actually About You. Part three covers what to do about behaviour you’re not willing to accept, and why timing decides whether a boundary actually lands: The Boundary Timing Nobody Talks About.
