Some years ago, I worked with a VP who was a notoriously “difficult person” and a classic “boss from hell.” Very bright and funny, he was outwardly impatient, perfectionistic, competitive, contemptuous, and sarcastic, and inwardly self-critical, anxious, and desperate to be accepted. He was, like every narcissist I’ve known, regrettably self-unaware. I was hired to work with one of his teams, not to be his coach or mentor, so I advised him as skillfully as possible, in the context of my engagement, about the impact of his harshness on the team’s capacity to deliver the results he wanted. He trusted me as much as he was capable of trusting anyone, and was, thankfully, so focused on problems in another part of his organization that I had a great deal of autonomy. Within three months, the team really turned itself around and started “showing up” in a very different way; my client’s colleagues were soon complimenting him and interested in whatever he was “doing” with his folks.

When the CEO expressed interest in how my work might benefit the senior leadership team, the autonomy I’d enjoyed was gone. The VP quickly transformed into the “client from hell,” who tried to control every aspect of my contact with his boss and colleagues. Despite the fact that his boss’s interest was the result of my (virtually unsupervised) work, the VP saw this as the perfect opening through which to push his agenda and position himself as the CEO’s confidante. What had been an inspiring engagement devolved into a nightmare.

As I talked with colleagues about the challenges I was facing, I witnessed a range of responses I had not experienced and heard about a variety of approaches I had not considered. It’s so easy to label such people and situations as “difficult,” but how do we account for the fact that what irks me does not necessarily faze you? If I make myself wrong, how do I account for the circumstances in which I’m steady while you are thrown off-center? It’s definitely more challenging — and infinitely more rewarding — to be curious about the difficulty I experience with a particular person or situation I’ve demonized, without demonizing myself.

A somatic approach is much more useful here than a purely cognitive one, as the felt sense of difficulty in my own body always comes before the distancing tactics of projection and labeling. By becoming more attuned to my own bodily experience and acknowledging the difficulty I am having, I free myself to choose from among a range of responses rather than simply act out my default reaction. In this way I discover, again and again, the power hidden beneath a sense of powerlessness. Viktor Frankl said it best: “Everything can be taken from a man but . . . the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance, to choose one’s own way.”

Some months into my work with the senior leadership team, I told a friend I was forever grateful to the VP because his outrageous behavior had elicited in me deeper compassion with clearer boundaries. A moment passed before I realized that I had now projected my sense of appreciation on to my client, rather than acknowledging that I had grown, not because of my client’s bad behavior, but because of my relentless commitment to working with whatever challenged me.

In our culture, the pattern of blaming others, situations, or ourselves, for our suffering — while deflecting credit for the work we’ve done — is widespread. Through cultivating our capacity to notice the felt sense and bring curiousity to our embodied experiences, we greatly expand our portfolios of possibility.

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