Peter Griffiths Daily Herald Column 2000

Are You An Innocent By-Stander?

Daily Herald January 18, 2000

When someone is upset, it helps to find out if you are the target of their anger or just an innocent bystander who is just getting the spray. Sometimes you feel you are in their direct line of fire, and receiving criticism, tension or anger that you believe you don't deserve.

When this happens, check out whether that fire hose of anger is really aimed at you, or if you are just getting the spray from feelings that are aimed at someone else. For if you don't, you may react back defensively, when there really is no reason to. Once you react, the other person may turn the hose on you full force, even though it was aimed at someone else, initially.

When people are angry, they often don't express it directly. Anyone who is within hearing distance can unexpectedly receive a large dose of anger, and wonder why they are getting it. And when they react, they become part of the other person's problem, the other person's anger and usually then, the other person's target.

There are some very easy ways to tell if the main force of the anger is aimed at you.

1. Ignore what the person said, and react pleasantly back to them. Unless the person makes a comment which directly aims the anger back at you, ignore it.
   
   
2. If someone seems edgy and bristly, calmly remark, "If someone is bothering you that you would like to talk about, I'm willing to listen." This gives the other person several options. If they are angry about you, you have indicated you will listen and acknowledge it. It's their choice however, if they want to talk about it then. If they are angry about someone or something else, you have given them an opportunity to either tell you about it in length, to say, "It doesn't involve you", or to just walk away. If they just walk away, they may or may not be upset with you. They may however, be upset about something else, and not yet ready to even acknowledge to you that they are upset, even though you can see it in their behavior.
3. If the person is upset with you, you will likely reduce the pressure in their hose of anger by acknowledging their anger, and being willing to hear them out. About half of all anger is caused, not by what happened, but by the feeling that other people don' care about or don't understand you. Once you get that message across, the anger level is bound to drop. You may still be getting their anger, but you're not being hit as hard by it.
4. It's hard not to behave back the way that you are being treated. But, reacting back with anger to anger usually only makes things worse. The other person just turns up the pressure on you.
5. One way of handling someone else's anger is to imagine yourself not getting angry back in return, and then acting out imaginary feeling in your behavior towards them. This is quite different from stuffing anger, where you refuse to acknowledge your anger and allow it to ferment and build up inside of you. Instead of stuffing it, you merely "pocket" it. You decide, for a certain period of time, to put the anger aside, and pretend that it's not there. And surprisingly, although it is still there and has to be dealt with eventually, pocketing it gives you a chance to behave for a while as if you weren't angry. You usually feel better when you do this. And the other person's anger (which is often what you are getting angry about) tends to subside. You must plan ahead, at a later time, to deal with the anger you put into your pocket. Surprisingly, however, if has often shrunk quite a bit when you get back to it.

So, when you are feeling anger coming your way, first check out if the hose is aimed at you personally, or if you are just getting the spray. Then look for ways to respond to that anger which helps you take care of yourself and keep your own anger safe and dry.