I was sitting in my therapist’s office rehashing a particularly traumatic conversation. I’m almost in tears when my therapist looks at me, dead serious, and says,

“You’re a table.”

I laughed and scoffed at him. He asked me why I laughed. I was caught off guard by it, but I told him I was laughing because that was preposterous. I wasn’t a table. I’m a human being.

“Right. You’re a human being. You know you’re not a table. So, do you get what I’m telling you?”

I told him not really. The tears were clearing from my eyes and a smile was creeping into the corners of my lips. I was confused, but I was smiling.

“This conversation with this person, it was about them calling you something absolutely nonsensical. You KNOW that insult was false. Next time someone makes a jab at you, and you know it’s not true, pretend they are calling you a table. Laugh it off. Move on. No need to get all upset.”

In that short conversation with my therapist, my entire outlook changed.

I used to “lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.” To be honest, I still do. I hate it when people don’t like me. I consider myself a lovely person. Why wouldn’t someone like me? I couldn’t harm a fly, so why are some people so mean?

My therapist brought up such a good point in my session that day. People lob insults at me every single day. It’s part of the territory of this job. Although this particular conversation was not because of writing, I was still working on thickening up my skin. When he called me a table, I didn’t understand why.

It makes sense now. When someone makes an unfounded insult at you, they’re basically calling you a table. They’re telling you something that you, and your loved ones, know to be utterly and factually untrue. Of all the insults someone could throw your way, they threw something that could be easily disproven. So easily disproven, in fact, that it’s laughable. It’s being called a table when you’re a human being. It’s that obvious.

Since this meeting, I’ve approached situations so much differently. It’s easier to deal with unfounded insults. Strangers love to attack writers, actors, bloggers, photographers, anyone really with baseless insults when they feel threatened. Calling someone an ‘uneducated redneck” when they just rehashed, in explicit detail with sources, why they disagree with a point doesn’t make them uneducated. Just like calling a beautiful person ugly doesn’t make them any less beautiful. It has no merit. Baseless insults have no merit because the person doesn’t know you, doesn’t know your dreams, doesn’t know your heart. Why waste time on those opinions when you know it isn’t true?

Instead of exerting energy trying to disprove someone’s absolutely false assertion, pretend they called you a table and laugh it off. They look stupid, and you look even better for laughing at it like the boss you are.

It’s some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten, even if I did pay for it.