By Tami Pyfer | Chief Impact Officer, Dignity.Us
For me, one of the most precious things about our work building a dignity movement is the privilege I have to meet with groups all over the country—presenting the Dignity Index and listening to people’s stories. They share their struggles and successes, their heartaches and hopes. Their experiences with dignity—and contempt—deepen my understanding of the power of dignity to repair broken relationships and, sometimes, broken parts of ourselves.
My colleague (and daughter!) Karren also travels frequently to present, and we regularly discuss the conversations we’re having. Lately, one question has come up again and again:
What happens when someone keeps treating you with contempt? How do you protect yourself? Does contempt never have a place?
We recently compared notes on how we discuss prioritizing safety, setting boundaries, and leaving conversations—or sometimes relationships—when necessary. Then Karren said that in a recent workshop, she responded to this question with a line no one anticipated:
“Contempt has a time and a place.”
As Karren tells it:
People were very surprised at this answer (I actually heard a gasp), so I let that sit for a second.
I explained that contempt is an incredibly powerful pain reliever. When we are in extreme emotional pain or in danger, contempt can protect us. It numbs something. It gives us distance from the person who hurt us, and it can help us survive the moment.
I think of it a little like an opioid after surgery. The medicine doesn’t heal the injury, but it relieves enough pain that your body can begin to heal. The problem is that powerful pain relievers can also be addictive. We wouldn’t want to take an opioid every time we stubbed a toe, got a paper cut, or had a headache. And if contempt becomes the only tool we have for dealing with emotional pain, we start reaching for it every time something hurts. Eventually, it becomes our default. Part of the work of dignity, then, is giving people more tools for dealing with pain so that contempt isn’t the only pain reliever they know how to reach for.
Karren described what happened next at this workshop, after explaining that there was a place and time for contempt:
A woman shared that several years earlier, during a painful divorce, she had been bitter, angry and, in her words, broken. Looking at the Dignity Index, she realized she hadn’t simply dropped occasionally into a THREE, TWO, or even ONE. She had lived there.
“Contempt was all I knew how to do,” she said.
Eventually, she realized she couldn’t keep living that way. She began reading, listening, talking with counselors, and learning new ways to communicate. Because she and her former spouse shared custody, she couldn’t simply eliminate him from her life. She needed to protect her boundaries without allowing contempt to consume every interaction.
Over time, things cooled down. She still had no interest in restoring the relationship. Her boundary remained, but she felt better about the way she was showing up.
What stayed with Karren was the woman’s recognition of what contempt had done for her—and eventually, what it had done to her—and the power of the Dignity Index to help her make sense of that journey. She said she hadn’t had the language before to describe her experience.
“Now I do.”
Contempt had given her something she needed during an extraordinarily painful time. But eventually, it began taking something from her, too.
Dignity gave it back. It gave her agency—the ability to decide how she wanted to show up, even when she couldn’t control how someone else behaved. She could protect herself, maintain the boundary, and leave the relationship behind without carrying the contempt with her.
Maybe that’s the answer to the question Karren and I keep hearing. Does contempt have a time and a place? Yes. In an emergency or in moments of trauma and distress, contempt can soothe us for a time. But only dignity can heal us.
Tami Pyfer
