The H-bomb personality
Have you ever had to associate with someone who has a clear knee-jerk response to contrary opinions and responds in a truly emotionally unbalanced way to the slightest provocation? Have you asked someone to relax and had them bring out the nuclear warhead?
Oh, I’ve had a few experiences with this, but I’m thinking of a circumstance not directly related to me. I’m interested in your stories – successful and unsuccessful ways of dealing with this. Did you directly confront them about their problem? Did you get drawn into the specific issues instead of talking about the irrational response? Did you push them out of your life immediately, or tell them to seek help, and if the latter, did it help (and could they take you seriously?) Or did you duck and cover, and hope they didn’t put you in the position to make that choice?
Everyone has their emotional pushbuttons, me included, but some people can’t seem to control themselves no matter what is at stake. Heck, maybe that is you, and you’ve had some tough experiences because of it.
Tell me your story!
I avoid those people. If I find it someone, I tune out and walk away. If they want to keep on, I just ignore them until they go away for good.
I’ve spent too many years dealing with delicate natures and I’m simply done with it.
I am a confrontational person when it comes to personal conflict – I prefer to resolve things immediately and move on.
Sometimes that means I draw that H-bomb upon myself, but I try not to take another person’s psychological effluent personally – for instance, as the guild’s Principal (I am also the Guild Panda, somehow), I find myself doing the more distasteful and difficult gkicking and the resulting conversation. Fortunately, few H-bombs have come from that role, just a weeping teenager or two.
I try to remember that my personal and emotional health is the most important thing, and allowing someone in my life with whom I then have to walk on eggshells is exhausting and unhealthy. Better to leave entirely, confrontation or not.
I rarely, if ever, have personal conflict. :) I don’t like it and I don’t want to waste time on it.
Well now, that’s interesting. How do you define personal conflict? Are you saying that people don’t disagree with you, that you don’t have miscommunication issues, or that you don’t associate with people in which you don’t get along?
I would not say that I enjoy conflict. :) I have a friend who really does, and we employ him to negotiate our convention hotel contracts. :D
I don’t associate with people in which I do not get along. Of course, when you’re in public at an event, you cannot choose to avoid people you dislike. I’ll pretty much just ignore them unless spoken to and even then, I’ll move off as soon as I can.
I don’t like fighting. I don’t like yelling. I don’t debate. If I disagree with someone, I hoist up the “we’ll agree to disagree” flag. If they want to keep up a subject that I do not wish to discuss, I’ll simply walk away.
I like peace and calm. :)
I don’t know you, but you are a woman after my own heart. I totally agree. Debate bothers me.
Sweet! /high5
How do you re-assess your opinions and ideals if you don’t debate them with those around you?
One does not need to debate to do so.
I’ve had two instances where other people got involved in a situation that didn’t involve them. One person’s response was to write something in their journal about me that wasn’t true and was extremely hurtful. The post was friends only but could have been read by a whole bunch of people that would then think I was something that I’m not. Gee trying to be vague doesn’t get the point across.
But anyway, I confronted the person on what was said. It went well. The post was taken down and we eventually worked it out and became friends again. Which changed again later about something that was wrote in LJ.
Most of the time if something doesn’t involve me personally I stay out of it. Like right now I would love to say something about what I think this is referencing but I’ve deleted what I’ve wrote twice on it. I’m staying out. And there goes the third delete. Basically there is generally a reason why people respond the way they do. You can either choose to find out why or judge them on their reaction. Most of the time I try and find out why because generally there is a hurt there that should be addressed.
Any given instance (and considering who you know in my life, I imagine I know which one you’re thinking of) is not directly inspirational here.
I was asking about your experiences with emotional firebrands, not with nosy people – unless of course those situations involved explosions of irrational temper.
Saying that every time someone starts a screaming match comes from a place of reason is, I think, not true, and personally dangerous to follow as a rule. I would hate to think anyone out there would say to themselves, “This person raged at me, I must have done something to deserve it.”
Screaming matches don’t come from places of reason. I don’t recall saying that they do but that there is generally a reason for it. It may not be logical and most likely logic doesn’t play any part of it but rather a completely emotional response. There’s a balance there. I’ve been told by my therapist I tend to respond way to logically to emotional issues, some people are the opposite.
Yeah, I understand you now. Barring chemical imbalance, it’s true, I think, that it comes from somewhere, rational and related or otherwise.
There is a person who is very close to other people in my social circle (not the person you’re referring to in this post) who gets a lot of satisfaction out of making other people miserable online. He starts flame wars, lies, ruins friendships and pretty much drags disaster in his wake. I’ve had numerous nasty run-ins with him over the years. The only thing that has ever been effective in lasting damage control has been a combination of 1) ignoring him and 2) threatening him.
1) I refuse to interact with him in any way whatsoever. If he sends me an e-mail, I do not respond and block his sending address. If he comments to something I posted online somewhere, I do not respond. If I am at a party and he’s in the same room, I find somewhere else to be. I give him zero positive reinforcement.
2) Despite my zero positive reinforcement policy, he approached me at a party a few years ago, attempted to converse with me, and grabbed my breasts. I immediately left the party. I let it be commonly known that if he approached me again I would incapacitate him permanently. I do not espouse violence as a problems solving method, but I will defend myself from unwanted contact.
for the most part this has worked. He occasionally tries to use people I’m friends with to pass messages on to me, but I have maintained my no contact policy and will continue to do so.
Wow, that’s a pretty extreme circumstance I don’t envy.
I had someone in my life who was eager to step in between my friendships and tell people how very uncool I was – I tried to keep the peace, and unfortunately that just exposed me further.
Ultimately, there was little I could do as the person made friends with all the people I cared about within their reach and started a disinformation campaign. I felt like dragging them through the muck would just reinforce my vulnerability, so I just cut off all contact and hoped my friends would respect me enough to contact me directly if they had any concerns rather than coming to conclusions based on that person’s opinion.
That was sometimes effective, and sometimes not. *shrug* Sometimes I miss the people who disappeared, but I try to find peace with the idea that they weren’t willing to give me the benefit of the doubt long enough to talk to me about it, so their value as trusted friends was less than I thought.
Does that make sense?
It makes total sense, and I think I can imagine how frustrating that situation was for you. You’re absolutely correct that if they weren’t willing to talk to you about what this other person was saying that they weren’t valuable friends.
I had a similar situation with a toxic high school/college friend years ago. Not only was she an emotional firebrand, but she seemed to think that we were in competition, for what I don’t know. She spread an amazing amount of misinformation about me and kept me from becoming friends with a lot of people who met her first and were warned off about me so that she could have them all to herself. I don’t understand that mentality, but I guess some people are like that with friends.
It took me a long time to find out what was happening, and I tried incredibly hard to work things out with her, but eventually I had to close the door on the friendship. It sucked. She went ballistic. It was like a breakup. Still the best decision I’ve ever made. She contacted me within this past year trying to mend the fences and become closer again. I politely suggested that being Facebook friends was enough for me. Once again there were emotional fireworks.
I had a friend kinda like that. If I mentioned I liked a guy, she would immediately persue him. It happened with three different guys before I cut her out of my life. I was kinda slow and didn’t think she was deliberately going after the guys. She cried a lot and made all sorts of excuses. Such as her parents were getting a divorce and she needed the attention (she was 20).
It was really sad because I was honestly interested in the guys and she just used them long enough to hurt me really.
That was one of the things that friend did as well. And when I would ask her about it, she would guilt trip me. If they wanted her and not me, who was I to stand in the way of them being happy? Why should no one get what they wanted because I couldn’t have them and she could? Effective guilt trip there, but eventually it stops working when it Keeps. Fucking. Happening.
I guess the consolation is that she and I are so different that anyone who would fall in love with her really wouldn’t be someone that I could have had a good relationship with anyway. But that was a painful lesson years in the making.
Hmm.. shades of a couple nights ago perhaps?
As for myself.. I can’t think of the last time I’ve had to deal directly w/ someone who goes nuclear like that. most of the folks I know are pretty mellow.
The clearest instance I can think of is from years ago dealing with a “new” engineer, who came into my office and started cussing up and down about mistakes he found printed on a drawing. I was furious, but managed to somewhat keep it together and tell him that he did NOT come into my office and speak to me that way and he shut up pretty quick and apologized. I ended up bringing it up to my boss and he told me he’d handle it. But he also informed me that as of that morning, that engineer was now my new boss… I found a new Job about 2 weeks later.
I’ll put up with some griping and rough edges on people. But there’s a hard line for me, and once you cross it.. Thats it. One of us, is being removed from the situation.
Which, frankly.. is rather how the incident I’m thinking of went a couple days ago :D
True that. It sounds like you directly confronted the problem AND left the situation as a whole. That is a rare road!
Well, to be truthful, I saw the handwriting on the wall. Me, young 20’s CAD person, him older “established” engineer (but new to the company), I knew I wasn’t going to win in that fight. I’d already seen shades of his personality in the few weeks/months he’d been there before the incident. No way they were keeping a just above minimum wage computer monkey over the guy w/ the degree’s and accolades.
On the other hand.. I found out several years later, he was.. I can’t remember if I was told he was “fired” or “asked to move on” by the Division head (his bosses boss, of the EAST COAST), apparently after he blew up on him like he did me…
If only I’d been patient enough to last 6 months w/ him as my boss..
Yeah, but man those six months would have been hell.
I almost forgot about an old boss of mine. Working under him was an absolute nightmare – he would spend his afternoons looking up 4-wheelers, and chew me out for checking my mail, and accuse me of not working when the whole reason I spend three days loading a classroom was because of his shitty network configuration.
He crossed the line and I went to my boss’s boss about it the next day with an ultimatum … and found out he was transferring to another department. Clearly he decided he could burn some bridges at that point.
Yea~ No way I would have made that 6 months. One of us would have ended up going out a window if I had :)
Bummer on the shitty boss, least he’s well behind you now :)
I think that being able to recognize that your best efforts would not be enough to make the situation workable is a mark of wisdom. You had no way of knowing that the boss would be out on his ass in 6 months. There is also the possibility that 6 months under the guy could have been detrimental to your career. Could he have blamed you for problems in your department noted by higher level management? Could he have made you look bad to make himself look better? You bet. Many guys like this can and have. You were smart to see the writing on the wall and get out with your reputation intact.
I once had this government job and I worked for this guy. I’ll call him “Doctor S.”, he would go nuclear at the drop of a hat.
Sounds like a real cowboy.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/study_majority_of_calm
I had a friend for YEARS who would go from calm to irate in 10 seconds; very insecure and angry girl. She saw the problem in herself and did go to therapy, but it didn’t really help. When my apartment was robbed five years ago, and I posted on here about it, and said that the scum who took my things was a piece of trash, this friend accused me of being racist towards the thief. That incident, and a few others, finally led me to walk away from the friendship about eight months ago. I have not looked back. My philosophy; life is too short to surround yourself with angry, unhappy people.
“My philosophy; life is too short to surround yourself with angry, unhappy people.”
A-frackin’ Men.
Man, I’m a hard-left individualist living in and around Detroit my whole life. I was raised by lawyers and trained by philosophers. I don’t necessarily want to blame *people* for blowing up around me, because I seem to press ALL the buttons on the average Joe.
I like debate, and I tend to like people who are good at it, and I don’t really consider “asshole” a major personality flaw (as I’ve pointed out before, many times it’s the irate asshole who defends our civil rights when everyone else is too busy being complacent and “nice”). I’ve gotten much better, though, at spotting people who don’t like debate, and who just want to have their opinions and not have them explored or questioned. I tend to avoid those people, or at least not talk to them, because I’m not interested in hearing opinions that I’m not allowed to question or think through — and I like DEBATE, not emotional explosions. I’m an intense conversationalist but also a trained philosopher; I don’t believe in getting personal, screaming, or getting too far off-topic, and I will apologize if I do those things (but I usually don’t anymore). I almost never take a debate too personally; unfortunately the fact that I’m used to them means that I tend to be calm to a level that people find irritating itself; calm discussion of certain topics really annoys people who like to get emotional about those particular topics, I’ve found.
When it becomes clear to me that I’m talking to someone who either was never, or is no longer, interested in an actual conversation or debate, I’ll bow out. I don’t see most conversations as adversarial (unless they’re in an academic setting, or something’s actually on the line), and I don’t mind letting people “win” to avoid unpleasantness. Plus, to be perfectly honest, I can slaughter the vast majority of people I meet in any rhetorical battle; and if they’re not very good at it or not interested in trying to do it without turning it into a fight, then it’s really not worth my time. (Wow, that sounds really snotty. We’ve met, so I’ll just hope you know I’m not particularly snotty. Really! ;)
Anyway, you asked about situations I’ve been in…gods yes. I’ve provoked people to violence more times than I can count, simply by calmly, patiently stating why their position or their actions are illogical. THAT REALLY DRIVES SOME PEOPLE CRAZY. I’ve been almost killed in a Taco Bell, had books thrown at my head in college classes, been screamed at and accosted by various parents and citizens, driven co-workers to quitting…you name it. Before I realized that *most people aren’t like me*, I would frankly discuss just about any topic someone else raised, without realizing that 90% of the time, they just wanted to tell me what they think and then move on, not hear anything I had to say about it (especially as a philosopher or logician or, more recently, monk). As you can imagine, I hardly ever discuss religion, which for the vast majority of people is not something they want to be debated on. Even in my own Temple, I have to watch my tongue; Logic can offend amazingly quickly even where outright hostility might not.
Of course, I was never very social to begin with, and I got even less social upon learning that to most people, frank discussion of sensitive issues is totally unwelcome and likely to provoke anger or other very emotional responses (oh, the times I’ve made young women run off to the bathroom and cry and refuse to come out until I left…to be fair, I’ve done that on purpose exactly twice, but they were really driving me crazy). Now that I’m a grown-up, I keep my tongue locked up unless I’ve checked a dozen times to make sure the person I’m talking to is down for some friendly arguing. It makes me verrrrry quiet in groups and mixed company, and people are often surprised to get me alone and find that I’m the world’s biggest motor-mouth. ;)
*laugh* Yes, I imagine when you’ve made it your passion to essentially argue and work through sensitive topics, I imagine you leap into it with a fervor most people aren’t ready for.
In these kinds of situations I find that most people haven’t thought through why they have a given position – they just picked what seemed good in the moment, and having to then defend that position is difficult.
Having to admit that they think a certain way with no research or ability to back it up is entirely humiliating to some people, which is where, I think, the anger comes from – they’ve been involuntarily debased by saying something that they’ve gotten away with among dozens of other people.
My buddy Scott is exactly like this (OMG the two of you must meet) – I have watched him enrage people by poking them in their assumptions… though that was a decade ago, and I do believe he too is more cirucmspect these days. ;)
Also, yes, I would like to experience this motor-mouthiness, as I’ve only hung out with you amongst a ton of new people you don’t know. :D
Hehe, entirely true on all counts. I shall spare you a debate, then. ;)
Seriously, though, it is hard to understand, at first, what effect that kind of discussion is likely to have on people who aren’t looking for it. Once I realized that essentially, most people feel that I’m backing them into identifying their self-worth with their chosen position (which, as you say, is often unexamined–as are everyone’s in some case, including mine!) –I felt bad and started being more careful. When you’re on the “inside”, you kind of learn automatically that what you think or say isn’t the same as who you are; I think because you have your thoughts and words ripped apart so many times, and you survive, so you get pretty sanguine about it happening to you. I wondered for a long time how come people would overreact and take it so personally…of course now I see that they don’t have a reason not to, unless I can give it to them. I see my next phase of learning as “learning to discuss things with people in such a way that lets them separate the topic from their self-worth” — because even if I don’t ever convince them anything else, if I convince them that it’s SAFE to think rationally about those things, that’ll be good in itself IMO.
Thanks! And I’m sure you’ll experience it eventually…I can never hold back for THAT long, no matter how good my intentions. ;)
I think my strategy is to employ similes that make me look like an idiot. :D
Mmm, thanks for the tip!!
And how!
Did I pick this up from you, or you from me? :)
*laugh* Perhaps we both came about it naturally. ;)