Learn to Withhold Judgment and Stay Silent

It is an objective fact that one person’s cognition may differ radically from another’s, and in most cases such differences cannot be changed in a few words. With someone far removed from you, the wisest course is to withhold judgment and stay silent. When two people differ too greatly in cognition, it usually means a vast gap in personality and educational background—something conversation cannot bridge. Such people often talk past each other, or their words are twisted by the other into something wholly unlike what the speaker meant.

For example, when a patient or family member and a doctor perceive a problem completely differently, and the patient or family tries to control the doctor, demanding care on their own terms, the situation becomes dangerous; medical disputes or incidents may well follow. Experienced clinicians know that this scenario occurs often in practice.

I tried many ways to handle it, and finally found the best approach: withhold judgment and stay silent. A person’s fixed cognition is almost impossible to change. Those who are opinionated and want to control others, making them act on their own wishes, are rarely capable of deep trust in others—even when they need others’ professional help. Such people are hard to communicate with; deal with them carefully, as if treading on thin ice, lest you be devoured by their personality.

Why not judge? Because judging provokes them and creates serious trouble. In any crowd, many cannot bear being judged; a single slightly negative or critical word can trigger an overblown defense mechanism. Their first inner reaction is anger, answered with rebuttal or even retaliation. That is why the grace of accepting advice readily is so rare and precious.

Psychology holds that the underlying mechanism is a shattered self-confidence system in childhood, leaving them in a state of constant over-defensiveness, quick to make a mountain out of a molehill and to nitpick. But the latest brain science suggests such people may have shown abnormalities as early as the fetal period; they did not cooperate well with their mothers during delivery. Their problems are not caused by poor upbringing, and in adulthood they are prone to psychological or mental disorders.

Usually such people also tend toward anxiety and depression, because they more or less feel out of step with their surroundings and find it hard to get along with anyone. They struggle to relate well to family, friends, and coworkers; some cannot even work normally or enter into truly intimate relationships, and they readily blame others for every strained relationship.

Such people have high sensory sensitivity, with labile emotions; they are prone to allergic disease, acne, and insomnia, and easily fall into tense states, needing help from a psychiatrist or psychologist. Women show these traits more often, but when men do, the destructiveness is far greater; highly sensitive men in emotional rage easily hurt people and destroy property, and they are more likely to be domestic abusers.

The nervous system of highly sensitive people differs more or less from the norm. At times they keenly perceive the faintest inner changes in others, seeming remarkably perceptive; at other times they are completely wrong, utterly misreading others’ intentions. Their perceptiveness is like Duan Yu’s Six-Meridian Divine Sword in Jin Yong’s novel—sometimes working, sometimes not. Their underlying logic is that the world is full of malice and others are untrustworthy; they habitually assume the worst of people, not the best.

Their emotions swing easily, often alternating between hypomania and depression; in severe cases this may progress to paranoid, borderline, or bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, or paranoid psychosis—but diagnosing these requires great caution. Personality traits are not mental disorders; the depth of a trait determines psychological adaptability. Only when a person can no longer adapt to normal life, and the clinical symptoms persist for some time without remission, can one diagnose the corresponding disorder. Most people with such traits may have only a tendency, not a disease state.

Personality traits can change, but reshaping them is a long and extraordinarily difficult process, sometimes requiring professional psychological help. Deep introspection and techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy can reshape traits. The classic example is Cluster B personality disorders (borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, dependent, and the like), whose symptoms often ease markedly after a certain age—usually after forty—much as Confucius said, “At forty I had no doubts.” Cluster A disorders (paranoid, schizotypal, schizoid) are less readily corrected.

But this is not to say everyone with such traits can change; change demands enormous effort, requires the person to realize they differ from most, to engage in deep introspection, and to deliberately train emotional resilience.

Highly sensitive people’s emotions swing wildly; they start things with a flourish and trail off, unable to sustain a steady state or stick to long-term goals. They grow restless, easily rupture relationships, fall into interpersonal and financial crises, and in severe cases are prone to self-harm (some cover their hands in scratches) and suicide; their suicide rate far exceeds that of the general population. So much of the time they are in pain, and after a certain age they have a strong desire to change. On forums I have seen their urgent pleas for treatment.

Withholding judgment and staying silent is the best way to avoid provoking them. Doctors usually take a humanitarian stance toward such personality traits, sympathizing that they were born different and that few understand their inner pain.

But if a doctor or counselor shows excessive sympathy and eagerly wants to help such people, they themselves will fall into trouble. Such clients are known as “therapist killers”; their relationship with the counselor is extremely fragile and may rupture at any time.

On the contrary, showing calm before them, always keeping a certain distance, and avoiding provocation is better for them. Once the boundary is broken, their relationships with anyone tend to dissolve into chaos, swinging between intimacy and loathing.

Loving—or building a family with—a highly sensitive person is also agonizing, because their roller-coaster emotions are hard for a partner to handle. Perhaps, for their partners, withholding judgment and silence is the helpless choice most people finally make.

Master Xingyun said he spent his whole life keeping a distance from others that was neither too near nor too far. Buddhists hold that “non-controversy over right and wrong is liberation,” which makes them best able to withhold judgment and stay silent. This, perhaps, is a rare wisdom for dealing with the world.