The opinionated blunt person is often neither a jerk/crazy nor a prick/obnoxious. Instead, he or she suffers from having low emotional intelligence. He or she also suffers unconsciously from “anticipatory pushback” which causes him or her to come off as controlling rather than condescending.
Their low emotional intelligence is about their having little awareness of how they’re coming off or about how others are emotionally reacting to them. Often they have the best of intentions to help whoever they’re speaking to and can’t understand why the other person isn’t happy to hear what they have to say.
What is operating in them that is out of their awareness (which is why they don’t stop it), are the many past experiences of truly wanting to help someone and having their unsolicited input reacted to as uninvited, unwanted, unvalued, and resented. As a result, before they talk they are already anticipating pushback and rejection from the other person. This causes them to feel resentful before they even say anything and causes their tone to be strident or aggressive.
Since these people are often very decent and actually do have the best intentions, it’s important to not react to them as you would to the offensive opinionated know-it-all's above.
However, similar to the above two categories of opinionated people, don’t expect them not to act that way. And, as above, when they give you their unsolicited advice, look them in the eye and let them finish. Say to yourself in your head—and you may need to scream it to avert your taking what they say the wrong way—“He or she is not your enemy! He or she is not trying to upset or hurt you! He or she just doesn’t know any better!”
Then pause for 2-4 seconds and say, “You want what’s best for me, correct? What you’re saying is really because you care, right? Well then, I need your help with something. When you say what you say the way you say it, it triggers a flashback of people in my life who talked at me like I was stupid or foolish or who even bullied me. It causes me to overreact to hearing you. That makes me unable to realize that you’re actually trying to be helpful.
"To prevent my kneejerk and childish reaction, it would help me, and I would appreciate it, if you were to say, ‘I just noticed something, can I say something or make a suggestion?’ Just doing that would go a long way in preventing me from becoming defensive and I am likely to be more receptive to what you say and even do it, since I know you only want what’s best for me. Also it would help if I knew that I could politely tell you that I'd rather not hear.
"You may say, ‘Why do I need to walk on eggshells if you’re the one who’s oversensitive?’ And to be honest, I don’t have a good response, other than I think you’ll get me to cooperate and be appreciative if your tone feels more like honey than vinegar to me.”
