6 Low-Key Gestures That Speak Loudly When Someone Is Very Threatened By You
People who are threatened want want to watch you fall.
Omid Armin | Unsplash My husband was a full-time DJ … until the people in the local scene collectively decided to stop booking him. They kept offering to rent his equipment, often asking him to pay for his entrance at the club.
Things got worse. Soon, people were trying to book him for free, often at slots that were for newcomers. My husband is not a newcomer and gained recognition from international headliners for his work. He deserved a better slot.
Eventually, people started saying that his popularity was based on his looks. They accused him of being fake or having me carry him through his career. The people who did this got very threatened by us, so we left. We were told by multiple people, in no uncertain terms, that certain people were jealous of him and felt threatened by his success.
That’s fine. I feel betrayed and so does he, but we’re doing our own thing now. I kind of blame myself for letting this go on as long as it did. There are always low-key gestures that speak loudly when someone is threatened by you. Looking back, these warning signs are the ones that should have tipped us off.
Here are the low-key gestures that speak loudly when someone is very threatened by you:
1. They spread rumors about you and badmouth you
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This is the number one way to tell if someone low-key is threatened by you, full stop. Do they tell others you’re awful? Do they lie about you? When you showed up, were you greeted warmly followed by an inexplicable ice-out?
Even if they seem nice to your face, the fact that they’re doing that means they are threatened by you — assuming that you did nothing to them, anyway. (If you earned that bad rap, you earned it and should work on damage control.)
People who are threatened by you are looking to push you out ASAP. This means that they will make stuff up to dissuade others from hanging with you if they can’t find any legitimate reason to hate you.
2. They tell you to check your ego
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Fun fact: I wrote a whole article about this phenomenon I noticed. Whenever people say that you should "check your ego," it translates into "You’re a threat to me because you’ll outshine me and I know it."
I have yet to ever see this behavior be anything other than insecurity lashing out and an attempt to control someone’s shine. It’s awful. If you notice this behavior, your best bet is to either avoid the person entirely or ignore them. It depends on the role that they play in your life.
When someone tells you to check your ego after feeling threatened by you, it usually means they perceive your behavior as stemming from an inflated sense of self-importance, potentially leading to arrogance or aggression.
A 2006 study explained that they are asking you to reevaluate your actions and consider the impact they might be having on others, especially in a way that could be seen as overly dominant or self-centered.
3. They actively sabotage you but try to make it look like your fault
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I see this most often in corporate settings, particularly when a boss wants to fire you and moves the goalposts so that you can’t work. However, it can also happen with colleagues and even subordinates.
One time, I even heard of a coworker altering spreadsheets to add errors in them for the sole purpose of getting their target fired.
Most of the time, though, it’s way more subtle and done by moving goalposts.
This is like having the Queen Bee of a group of friends say you can’t sit with them until you lose weight. When you lose weight, they come up with another carrot to dangle or tell you that you’re too skinny.
Infuriated yet? Oh, wait until you get slammed for something else they told you to do or neglected to tell you to do. When you raise objections about this, the people who do this often say, "It’s not my fault you did this!"
4. They encourage you to do harm to yourself
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Perhaps the most pervasive way that people show they feel threatened is the way they encourage others to behave. We all know good advice when we see it, which is why you should hit the pause button when you hear people encourage you to do things that don’t feel right.
This is insidious because this behavior often comes from people who are supposed to look out for you. It can be any of the following:
- The church counselor who gives you advice they know will hurt you. I often see this type of behavior in Christian fundie circles — particularly with female church elders who are jealous of the looks of younger women.
- The friend who has a crush on the same guy as you, warns you that he’s "just going to cheat on you." We all have had that one Pick-Me friend in our flanks. This is a classic sign of a bad friend, too.
- The coworker who tells you not to pursue a certain job role. How strange! That coworker applied for that very same gig! Coincidence? Nope, never.
- The people who tell you others hate you when there’s no reason to believe that. This is a way of knocking you off your feet to try to get you to mess up your relations with those people.
When it feels like people are trying to get you to slip up or make bad decisions, it’s time to hit the pause button and ask why. More often than not, they have a motive that involves knocking you off your feet so they can steal the spotlight.
Research by The University of Dublin explained that when someone feels threatened by you and says things they know will hurt you, this behavior is often described in psychology as a form of emotional manipulation or psychological aggression. In this case, the person uses your vulnerabilities to gain control or leverage in a situation, usually from their feelings of insecurity or powerlessness when faced with a perceived threat.
5. They've expressed envy over traits and skills you have
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I’ll be real. Most of us are oblivious to how others perceive us. I, for example, didn’t realize that a lot of women were threatened by me because I had a good figure back in my 20s. That remained true even when I was a model!
Had I realized how threatened so many women were by beauty, things would have made a lot more sense in my life. It sucks because all I wanted from them was their friendship.
If you’re reading this, you might be in that boat right now. Sometimes, people just don’t click. That’s not being threatened by someone. That's just someone being a jerk to you.
However, if you have reason to believe that they would be jealous of your social life, skills, looks, or connections, it could be that they are threatened by you.
6. They try to undermine your confidence in yourself
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Did you ever notice how narcissists seem to be threatened by everyone who isn’t praising them and "less than" them? It’s a thing that almost everyone notices to some degree.
When someone’s threatened by you, they are going to make you want to shrink down. They often do this by a wide range of methods — most commonly, through ridicule, could-shouldering, and negging. (Yes, your dates can be intimidated and threatened by you as well.)
If it feels like people are trying to throw you off your vibe by being mean for no reason, it’s likely a matter of being threatened. Something about you triggers them.
It sucks when you realize people hate you because they see you as out of reach. This is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to react to it by leaving those people in the dust. How they react to your success is not your problem.
When someone feels threatened by you, they may resort to undermining your confidence as a defense mechanism to protect their self-esteem, often through subtle criticisms, negative comments, or discrediting your abilities.
According to a 2024 study, this behavior is commonly referred to as social undermining. If appropriate, calmly address the behavior with the person, pointing out specific examples of their actions.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.