Mandy,

Without knowing the ethics of your profession, its difficult to say. If it were me, I would patiently introduce the person to the arising mutual affliction from unkind actions (such as action without kind attention hurts self and other), perhaps see if they were experiencing stress fatigue or burnout, maybe offer some help. If that wasn’t possible, or they were unreceptive, I would bring the behavior to my supervisor, and then let it go.

Grass grows, people mistreat each other, the suffering in the world is all around us, what can we do but try to bring light? As we let go, set down the gavel and sword, their actions inspire a better performance from our own heart. Such as seeing an elderly woman being mistreated can inspire anger toward the aggressor, or empathy for the elderly. Usually not both. 🙂 If we let go, accept both sides but rest more in the empathy (especially if we’ve exhausted all the paths we can see that might resolve the issue), our next interactions are a little softer.

In practice, such as for a doctor relating to patients poorly, as you see the exchange going poorly, without tender care, your heart goes BLEH, but it also remembers, does a better job of bringing light and love where it can to honor the moment of pain it saw. Its OK to trust that, rest with it… like playing the cosmic “long game”. 🙂

Our ripples of love and kindness (skillfully applying our warm intentions), in my opinion, more than make up for whatever we saw that inspired our anger. Hopefully they’ll get it one day, learn the lessons, and if we can help, great. If not, we can move on, protect our own sensitive spirit. We can sigh, find someone that wants a hug, and give a good one. 🙂

With warmth,
Matt