6 Common Phrases You May Not Realize Are Condescending

While we may strive to be kind and compassionate in our communications with people, we’re bound to fall short sometimes. And one of the ways we do that in conversation? When we condescend, or talk down, to the other person.

We’re being condescending when we speak to someone in a way that implies our own superiority, said journalist Celeste Headlee, author of “We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter.”

“It generally involves some kind of haughty tone, but condescension also almost always involves a passive-aggressive behavior,” Headleetold HuffPost.

“In other words, when you are condescending to someone as in, ‘Bless your heart,’ you are putting on a false persona of kindness but beneath that is that clear message of superiority. You’re treating them in a way that shows that they are an inferior.”

The tendency to talk down to others may have to do with trying to elevate our own social status, Headlee suggested.

“Our survival has always depended on our rank, our status, within a community,” she said. “We need to be in a safe place within a community because it is through belonging — it is through community — that human beings survive.”

Every conversation we have involves “impression management” in one way or another, she explained,“meaning that we are constantly managing the impression that we make on others.”

“So people condescend because it’s a way — whether it be conscious or not — that we can establish our rank above another person,” she said.

According to Southern California psychotherapist Elisabeth Crain, speaking to others in a condescending manner can often be “traced back to underlying insecurity or an inflated ego,” though she acknowledges this also happens when a person is just having a bad