There is simply no escaping it. Sooner or later, you are going to run into and have to deal with an angry and bitter person or persons. Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life. Someone is angry, bitter, upset, jealous, mad, enraged, and you just happened to cross their path. So what’s a body to do when they are faced with this wild beast known as an angry human and they are bent on taking their frustrations with their life out on you?
There are several options open in how to handle an out of control person. Remember that for a person with chronic anger control issues, the anger is their problem, it’s eating at them. It’s not about you at all. You just happen to be the one they are crying out to for help. How you choose to deal with the angry person can not only help you but perhaps even help lead the angry person to peace.
The first option would be to run the other way. That’s easy to do if you happen to be in a store or something of the sort, but not so easy if you are around this person often due to school or work situations or something similar.
The second option is to strike back with a vengeance. This is human nature. When someone hurts you, our first initial reaction is often to return hurt for hurt and pain for pain. But this isn’t right. Returning vengeance for a wrong done only makes you look bad, and it only puts a burden on your heart. The angry person is seeking love and acceptance, but often they are so filled with anger, bitterness, strife, and jealously that love simply has no room in their heart.
The third option is the hardest but the most rewarding, and that is to listen to the person and let them throw all the anger they can muster at you because the angry person isn’t really striking at us to hurt us, even though that often happens. They are striking at us in hopes that we are strong enough to handle what they are throwing at us, needing someone not to run away, but to listen to them.
An example: Nicole started a new job at a hospital helping to prepare meals for the patients. Kathy, who had been there several years, was her supervisor. The first day on the job, Nicole was the constant target of Kathy. Nicole could do nothing right, no matter how hard she tried. Kathy would go behind her and berate everything she did, telling her it wasn’t done correctly. Nicole went home and cried, already hating her new job. But she returned the next day. Kathy was worse. Kathy followed behind Nicole, and would immediately tell her that whatever she did needed improvement or wasn’t correct. Again, Nicole went home in tears, convinced now that Kathy hated her, even though she didn’t know her at all. Yet, she returned to work day after day.
She tried even harder to do the best job she could, only to again meet with severe hateful comments from Kathy about everything she did. Finally after days of the same bad behavior from Kathy, Nicole could take no more and confronted Kathy about why she talked to her so hateful and with such anger.
Kathy, who was shocked at being confronted with her bad behavior, broke down right there. She started telling Nicole how her husband had died six months earlier and she was left not only with a child to raise alone but horribly in debt and health issues that would soon force her to be unable to work full time any longer. The worry and stress, the pain from the loss of her husband, and the health issues turned a loving woman into a bitter and angry woman, and Nicole was an innocent target. What she never counted on was that Nicole wouldn’t run away, but chose to deal with the anger and bitterness, and chose to listen to her. That was the turning point in Kathy’s life. Someone actually cared enough to take the hate that she threw at them and see it for what it really was, anger and hurt and bitterness.
While this surely is not the case for all people that are angry, it can be something similar. Often a person behaves badly because of jealousy and anger. It’s not about you at all. It’s about them. They simply target you. It doesn’t matter that the person doesn’t even know you or anything about you. Remember, it’s not about you. They aren’t angry at you. They aren’t bitter at you. They are angry with their life and bitter about their life. They might very well be jealous of you however. Often when a person has chronic anger issues, they are often jealous of the peace that you have. They don’t understand how you can be so at peace and so joy filled when they are so filled with rage and hate and take it out on you, yet you don’t return that rage and anger to them. That in itself makes them angrier because they want that peace. But instead of seeking that peace, they attack you even further, all in vain attempts to make themselves feel better, but only sinking themselves deeper into an anger filled pit.
When a person who is filled with anger, seemingly towards you, the best way to deal with them is to simply remember the fact that it’s not about you, it’s their problem, their issue. How far into listening and trying to befriend them is up to the individual. When you keep in mind that their anger is indeed THEIR anger and THEIR problem and THEIR issue, then you can see that it’s not you they are angered at after all, but rather they are angry and upset at something in their own lives. While it’s admirable to want to help them out of that anger pit, that has to be something the angry person wants. If they are too wrapped up in their hate to even realize how badly they are behaving, then the best way to deal with them is to walk away and let them wallow in the anger. If they truly want help out of that anger, there’s hope and peace waiting.
