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Start by recognizing the three states: passive, assertive, and aggressive and learn how to maintain that balance in being assertive.
You don’t want to be aggressive, which is when you are on the offensive and is overtly rude/disrespectful and hostile.
You also don’t want to be passive, which is when you let people run you over and railroad everything you do. You let people disrespect you.
You want to be assertive. You are honest and upfront about your wants/needs in a respectful and calm manner. You make compromises when appropriate and necessary. You aren’t railroading others nor allowing others to railroad you. You understand that others exist and ensure others remember that you exist as well.
The difficulty, at least for me, is that assertive can sometimes come off as aggressive. But standing up for yourself in a reasonable manner is not, no matter what people may think or say. Sometimes someone may think that because you speak up for yourself, that’s aggressive behavior, but it’s really not. Simply telling someone else, “That hurt my feelings and I’d like for you not to do that again” on its own is not an aggressive reaction but assertive.
Try to figure out if there’s a pattern. Maybe all the aggression-inducing events have something in common. Maybe that’s an emotion you haven’t processed or even noticed.
Could be a moment where you feel hurt, ashamed, vulnerable, helpless, hopeless, or whatever. Start by naming that emotion.
Once you figure that out, you can start processing that emotion and what causes it. Eventually, anger and aggression won’t control you anymore.
Thanks. That sounds like a good way to break it into chunks.
In person or online?
If it can’t physically affect you, you can safely ignore it. If it can, best to stay out of its way.
What if I have the aggression?
You’ll basically be doing self therapy. Worth doing some writing or deep thinking on where this aggression is coming from. Reading or hearing podcasts or watching media on the subject tends to help. I would say this needs thinking about in the “cold state” (i.e. when not in heightened emotion and while completely calm and relaxed, but remembering the last undesirable event). Then you can work incrementally on what you can change next time.
Here’s an episode from a podcast I like, to get you started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9WZgqcu3QE
Or actual audio podcast of you prefer:
https://podcastindex.org/podcast/453567?episode=33418257763
Hulking Out! Why You Change When You’re Angry
When mild-mannered David Banner gets mad he transforms into the raging Incredible Hulk. Dr Laurie Santos loves this comic book tale - because it reflects real life. Intense things like anger, pain, even hunger, can cause us to act in extreme ways that we might not predict beforehand or forgive after.
(She must have gotten so so so many messages for calling him “David Banner”.)
Thank you for sharing that podcast. I think it will help to revisit past experiences from the cold state.
What you said reminds me of the Snickers commercial, “you’re not yourself when you’re hungry.” I’ve been using HALT a lot to recognize when to take a break from whatever activity I’m in.
Hungry
Angry/Anxious
Lonely
Tired.
Meditation. I have anger issues, and I find first you must recognize it in yourself, then you can choose how to act. I walk away rather than get all riled up. I love a good argument, but sometimes you just shoot yourself in the foot when you start seeing red. Being able to find a meditative state will help you step back from the aggression when it arises in you
Like being aggressive towards others irl, find yourself rage spiraling, or something else?
Like I feel mad at someone specific at work, in an inward way, but it is not really about them, it is about how we are both in an imperfect system that influences our behavior, kind of like in the Wire, and puts us at odds.
I feel like maybe if I had an outlet where it was OK to get aggressive that might be healthy, but I don’t like to feel aggressive normally.
Like maybe I can play Catan online with someone and try to dominate. In the past I might have played League of Legends, but I didn’t like how that made me feel either.
Guns and profanity
This was the kind of answer I wanted.
More aggression!
/s
If you can leave quickly and quietly, do it.
From within yourself or from others?
You don’t.
Hit it head on.
