How to Handle Opposing Opinions that Bother You

The Art of Responding, Not Reacting

Opposition is always bitter. How should you react and cope when someone disagrees with your views, thoughts, or expressions? Even with the closest friends, disagreements can lead to conflicts, and opposing views can hurt the other person, potentially ending the relationship. Nowadays, with many opportunities to express opinions on social media, there are equally many opportunities to hear reactions to those opinions. Sometimes, these opposing views can turn into heated debates. The same is true offline as well.

When faced with an opposing opinion, the first reaction is a ‘physiological response’ — a physical reaction of the body. This is typically an autonomic nervous system response involving tension and excitement. Depending on each person’s inherent physiological mechanisms, the degree and intensity of the reaction vary. You might suddenly feel your muscles tense up, an inexplicable discomfort in your lower abdomen, your heart racing, or your face flushing with heat. Separate from these physiological reactions, feelings of discomfort, resentment, and anger may arise.

All of this is perfectly natural. It doesn’t mean you’re narrow-minded, weak-hearted, arrogant, immature, or naive. Any living organism would naturally feel this way. With training or insight, these initial physiological and psychological reactions might gradually weaken over time, but that’s not the goal. Even a single-celled organism like an amoeba reacts when it encounters something. ‘Reaction’ is very natural; not having one would be strange.

There is also a neuroscientific basis. Recent studies show that the brain areas reacting to psychological threats are the same as those reacting to physical threats. The brain areas that respond to physical obstacles when walking also respond to abstract and psychological threats, such as opposition to your religion, ideology, or group.

The key is the secondary reaction — our second response to these physiological and psychological reactions. When our thoughts move forward and naturally collide with different ones, how do we react to this sense of conflict and resistance? The most challenging secondary reaction is the emotional response. The primary physiological reactions are pure signals without good or bad, but we often interpret and feel these signals negatively (especially with opposing reactions). This ‘negative interpretation and feeling’ is our secondary response.

The primary reaction is the pure initial response, simply occurring when two opposing entities collide. We just need to accept, acknowledge, and embrace it as it is, and not be bothered by the reaction itself. Instead, we should ‘use’ it well. Like an amoeba, we can navigate over, around, or away from whatever is in front of us. That’s the right approach.

Unlike the unavoidable primary reaction, the secondary reaction can be controlled. It can be improved with effort. If it doesn’t work out, we can try again at the third or fourth stage. Problems usually arise when we try to change or not accept the uncontrollable primary reaction. These are all secondary reactions. We need to recognize this — that the secondary reaction is the failure to acknowledge the primary reaction as natural. Any reaction that follows the belief that the primary reaction needs to be ‘dealt with’ is a secondary reaction. These occur so subtly that most people don’t notice.

The most common secondary reaction to opposing opinions is a negative feeling about oneself. Questions like “Am I weak?”, “Do they think I’m insignificant?”, “Did I do something wrong?”, “How do they see me?”, and “Do they not recognize me?” arise. However, opposition, conflict, and resistance are actually unrelated to ‘me.’ They are just another ‘piece of thought’ clashing with ‘my thought.’ Of course, we tend to identify ourselves with the thoughts we hold and express, but regardless of that, our thoughts are not us. Many people, however, associate opposing opinions with their ‘self,’ leading to confusion.

For example, if I throw a ball and someone else’s ball hits mine, I might get angry or feel bad about the unexpected situation. Still, fundamentally, a ball is a ball, and I am I. The inconvenience of picking up the ball again exists, but ‘I who threw the ball’ is essentially unrelated to that collision.

Another secondary reaction is having negative feelings about the other person. Questions like “Who do they think they are?”, “Why do they hate me?”, “Why are they so negative?”, “Why are they so narrow-minded?”, “Why do they think like that?”, and “I’ll get back at them later” arise. The other person’s expressed thoughts are just a ball they threw, just as they are not the ball. Yet, we often attack, hate, or get angry at ‘that person.’ Then we become confused again.

Sometimes, opposition doesn’t end with simple opinions but leads to serious consequences. In such cases, we should take active and assertive measures appropriate to the situation. It doesn’t mean doing nothing and staying still — don’t misunderstand. This discussion is about how to best manage our minds while taking the best action.

The opposing opinions we encounter in daily life are mostly just ‘different thoughts.’ It’s rare for new problem situations to arise simply because of differing thoughts. Yet we struggle to accept even ‘differences in thoughts,’ becoming ‘mental dictators.’ If we had power, we might want to eliminate or delete different thoughts entirely. In the ‘kingdom of thoughts’ in our heads, we’ve already become dictators. Although there are no major issues unless these thoughts are expressed externally, it makes us miserable.

To summarize, there are two key points in dealing with opposing opinions. First, accept and understand the natural physiological reactions caused by conflicts and resistance. This prevents unnecessary subsequent reactions. Second, properly handle the secondary reactions, the additional interpretations and feelings toward the primary reactions. Embrace these as they come. In other words, become indifferent to them. Let them flow naturally and pass by, without controlling or changing the secondary reactions directly. The key is to view uncontrolled secondary reactions as natural as primary reactions. Meanwhile, handle external actions as needed.