Disclaimer: This is not about other people/whether or not their anger is justified/healthy. This is about my (unhealthy?) reaction as a witness to it. I am not good at watching people be angry! I can usually stand my ground if people are angry at me, but watching someone be angry at someone else makes me want to melt into a sad puddle. It punches me fight/flight response and I either need to solve everything (which is impossible) or runaway and hide (and deal with guilt for not being able to do the impossible). I used to try to solve all the problems forever, but I've come to accept there's no magic words to make everything better, so I usually choose the running away. I'm worried I'm conditioning myself to run away from anger every time, and making myself even more sensitive to signs of anger. I know it's not my job to make everyone happy or even my business to try, but it seems like there should be a middle ground. Is there a way to constructively approach witnessing anger?
oh my god! me too. you make an important distinction about the "can deal with anger directed at ME, but other people.. nope" (I can't even deal with like! mild disagreement! just people disagreeing and being snippy about it! help)
Okay, at the very least, we know we are not alone with this reaction. (I mean, I didn't think I was, but it always nice to know for sure that other people know what I mean.) WRT the comment I made about conditioning, I'd like to expand. One of the problems I worked on in therapy was my intensely negative reactions to chewing and humming. My psychologist said that my negative reaction was getting reinforced every time I tried to escape the stimulus, and associated it further with anxiety and panic. That's what I'm concerned about with my reaction to anger, that I will only make it a stronger reaction by trying to escape the stimulus. The exercise for the chewing/humming problem was flooding therapy, which worked pretty well! (Thanks, ASMR YouTube community! Your videos were not used as intended but were very helpful.) I... somehow don't think immersion therapy would work for a reaction to anger, though. Unless someone knows that it does?
I don't have this problem, but I know folks who do and I've asked my therapist about it before. If that kind of thing works for you, CBT practices can sometimes help? Like, being able to sort through your sorts and zap your anxiety with logic. Taking a step back and evaluating "Why is this person angry. Am I at all to blame for this anger? If yes, why? Could I have prevented it or was it outside my control? If it wasn't my fault, or out of my control, is it fair to feel or take responsibility for their anger? Can I help? SHOULD I help? Would helping be detrimental to me? Can I be ok with the fact that I'm not responsible for how people interact with others?" That sort of things appeals to me personally because I like things to be logical, but I also know that sometimes (a lot of times) the brain, especially one dealing with anxiety or depression, can be pretty impervious to logic. Practicing this kind of stuff when you're not suffering from that anxiety can be a good way to get into the habit if you can't think straight at the time. Flooding therapy... might be useful? It depends on whether you have very specific triggers (like if other people shouting at eachother is an immediate punch in the gut) or if it's a more generalised thing. Flooding can be intense, as you probably know and all, but it -might- help? I wouldn't rule it out. And really, it's OK to excuse yourself if you find that kind of thing unbearably upsetting. Or even just acknowledge you find it upsetting and not tack on the guilt of "I shouldn't be this way", if you don't want to have to excuse yourself or get away. WAAAAAY easier said than done, I know. But I officially, in my complete unofficialness, give you permission to acknowledge that being around angry people is upsetting and hard and it's not a moral failing. Sorry, I realise all these bits of advice are fairly CBT-like and that doesn't work for everyone. Hurp. Brains are hard.
so coming from the side of "sometimes I just wake up angry" sometimes the best thing other people can do is walk away. I have a few friends who are horribly uncomfortable with anger, for different reasons, and most of them will just leave me alone if I am angry. I feel like a lot of this is, like, if a kid is having a tantrum, my default response has either been to be horribly irritating to them (distraction) or to leave them alone for a bit. sometimes my brain has a tantrum. I do, though, understand the guilt feels behind doing that, and would suggest, just, letting people you know know that you have a problem with anger and you will leave if you feel it. if someone is angry in a professional or public setting, you have even less responsibility to them. it is their job to be professional, basically, and it is (imho) a big crossing of boundaries to bounce their feelings off of you ...I have deep anxious feelings when other people express sadness or panic, actually, and that can spiral into anger pretty easily. which generally makes those people worse, which makes me worse. so when people I respect/care about are having those emotions, my default is to find someone else they can talk to, leave the area, and continue any conversations through text. not sure if this helped, actually. good luck?
@boyacrossthestreet I totally feel you when people are being angry in an ~unreasonable or ~frightening way - but if it is just, like, my mom and dad being snippy about who's going to empty the dishwasher, I feel kinda silly telling them to stop or not to do it around me, you know? X)
ohhh yeah that kind of back n forth stuff man, usually I join in, but my whole family does that I don't know your family dynamics, but in my family, sometimes we can hold being actually snippy for only so long before it turns into a game of course, that only works if everyone in the game knows it's a game, because I've pulled that on other people before and im pretty sure they thought I was actually mad at them (whoops) I usually have a few stock answers to someone being snippy that can flip it from "could be grumpy" to "im gonna win", though, and most of them are really terrible inside jokes
with my friends at school I could join in or decrease the seriousness no problem, but I grew up with my parents being suuuper nice/calm/non-snippy to me and each other - I mean it's entirely possible they were doing it to make tiny Bluefox feel better, and then I went away to school and Suddenly I'm An Adult - anyway now that they ARE being grumpy I have difficulty reading it as anything other than "genuinely frustrated/angry and just not expressing it loudly." not like it's a very high frustration level! I should still be able to deal with it! and yet and yet. sorry for the thread hijack, haha
This is all very interesting, but sort of veering away from what I was interested in, so here's a question to redirect: If you feel like you have a normal/healthy reaction to seeing other people be angry, could you describe what it's like? A very generic example: two people you like and follow on tumblr (or Twitter or Facebook or whatever) have a disagreement that turns into an argument. You don't have a personal connection to either of these people, and there's no apparent right/wrong answer. How do you feel? What are your emotions? How does this affect your mood or day?
thanks for the redirect back to subject (sorry about that haha) hm. a disagreement like that...the times it has happened, my reaction is usually interest. I read the different sides, and if I decide I don't have a personal opinion on the outcome, I go in with my day. if I end up with an opinion, I usually stick my oar in. which, you know, gives me something to do for the day. sometimes I already have personal impressions of people as "vaguely abrasive", and this disagreement might add weight to that impression, depending on how people argue. usually the most this will affect my day is if I mention it to someone else irl, and then we might have an interesting discussion. I also have difficulties remembering that people online are real, though, because I don't pick up inmediate emotional perspectives, so that could also be a factor in how much these things don't really affect me
That's very different from what I experience, and also made me realize another facet of this: I don't have a problem with watching people be angry, I have a problem with watching people be angry with another person. I mentioned it as an example in the first post, but I was thinking more in the context of direct interaction. But no, heading someone say how they're angry with another person who isn't present gets a similar reaction (wanting to either make them stop being angry or change the subject ASAP). Anger at circumstances is something I feel like I can be around and be okay. In real life, it's hard to be around people who are angry at another person even if I don't know the other person. On the internet, I am usually okay if someone says they're mad at someone I don't know, but it gets me all twisted up to hear that someone is mad at a person I do know. I don't know why that distinction is there, but it is. For comparison, this is how I react in that scenario: I get a twinge of panic and I feel my stomach drop. I immediately worry that I'm going to have to take sides, and/or that these people I like will be consumed by anger forever, and their lives are doomed to be like this now. I also get terribly curious about the subject of the argument, as if I have some moral obligation to know about it and take a side, even if it's something completely irrelevant to me. It makes me want to read both sides and engage with my own questions, again even if it's irrelevant to me. But thinking about the topic is also now connected to thinking about people fighting, which makes me panicky and jittery. Unless I have very clear personal stance on the topic AND I feel like I have something to contribute, I don't get involved. This is both because I don't want to derail others, and also because I know this only puts me closer to the anger and makes me feel worse. Generally, if I see angry interactions between people I like when there is no clear right/wrong answer (using Tumblr as an example), I unfocus my eyes as I scroll pass so I don't accidentally pick out words and get tempted to read the whole sentences. Then I try to pretend like I haven't seen anything, with mixed success. After a while, I feel like I need to check to see if the issue has been resolved. Seeing an argument resolved and people being on good terms again instantly resolves all the unpleasant feelings I get, which is why I am so compelled to check in. 90% of the time, though, nope anger is still happening, and I go back to pretending nothing is happening. I have gotten better about keeping my days from getting messed up if I witness this, but it's still not great. It changes the tone of the day and while I might not be in a bad mood, it keeps me from being in a very good mood. It's like knowing there's a sink full of gross dirty dishes at home, except it's feelings. With time, the impulse to look to see if there's been a resolution lessens, and that's how I usually get past these things.
yeah, that is pretty different from my experiences do you have a history of having to pick sides? I am suck at remembering people's stories, if I've heard them. I have a pretty long history of people dragging me into disagreements, and sometime at the end of junior year in high school, I had so much stressful situations happening in conjunction that I actually managed to turn off the part of my brain that is actively curious about other people, I guess? so, in terms of disagreements and switching sides, most people know that I am not a mediator, I do not take sides, and I don't have to take sides. and because I am kind of a stubborn asshole about this, it usually works. that anxiety response sounds sucky. I wish I could give suggestions that aren't "turn off parts of your social programming", though
I do have a history of having to take sides, yes. (*looks at parents*) I sort of knew that was the source, and talking about it only solidifies it. Oh, I forgot to reply to the comment @Dischordian made about CBT earlier. That kind of thinking has definitely helped me with not feeling like I'm obligated to get involved, but I can't think of how to apply it to... getting rid of the impulse to run away? Or lessening it enough that I don't condition myself to flee every time anger happens. Any suggestions?
HMM. Possibly going for the angle of incrementally sticking around in those situations, even if it's only for a minute or two at a time, and building up a sense of "Nothing bad happened to me by staying around these people when they were angry"? That IS something I've done with my therapist for anxiety before, basically building up an evidence base for the brain that "x event/trigger does not necessarily mean y outcome". So it's kind of combining the idea of flooding (or at least, repeated exposure to the stimulus that distresses you) and the whole logic-blasting of CBT.
seconding the flooding/desensitization therapy thinking. the more you show that a does not necessarily lead to b, the more you can show timothy he's being an idiot and he needs to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. (timothy being the annoying kid in the back of the car that is your brain that derails every road trip you ever try to go on) journaling about this would also help i think! like cbt for yourself but writing it down. keeping a diary of every time you experience feeling, and working through a series of questions, will help pick apart some of these nuances of the reaction/behavior/etc
Thanks guys! I'll definitely give these ideas a shot, I really appreciate it. Gonna go ahead and ping @Wiwaxia and @bluefox so they can try these methods if they want.
@Avery I have nothing useful to add to the (excellent) advice you've already been given, I just wanted to say that this thread gave me that very cool feeling of "wow someone else is expressing an experience that I share (but have never managed to explain this coherently)". In my case, the CBT-inspired methods mentioned here have helped me a lot, so, I hope you find something that works for you too :)
I AM SO GLAD! The idea that maybe I can help other people by talking about my problems, even when I don't have a solution, is very gratifying. I know I have been on the other end of "someone said the thing!!" plenty of times myself. Thank you so much for saying something. :D Also WHOO I explained something coherently.
