One type of emotional bully is the person who attempts to use anger as a way of protecting themselves, controlling others or as a form of connection. Anger is often a hurtful emotion for those on the receiving end. For emotionally sensitive people having someone angry at them can be devastating and result in their withdrawing, fighting, acting in unhealthy ways and experiencing hours of emotional pain.
One of the ways to cope with anger is to change your perception (see previous post on No Matter What the Problem, There Are Only Four Things You Can Do). If you blame yourself whenever someone is angry with you, or have an automatic response that isn’t effective, a first step of pausing and considering the reasons for their anger could be helpful.
Spouses who verbally attack, the controlling boss, the critical parent–all may be described as angry people. Bullies are often angry people, regardless of their age. Maybe it’s hard to understand why someone would bully another. After all, being chronically angry has many negative consequences for both the person who lives in anger and those around that person.
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Add “Anger as a Deception”.
There are places in our head we do not wish to go and will protect ourselves from going there with anger.
If you push me towards those places i will react with anger.
If you even hint that those places exist i will react with anger.
Like maybe you are indeed cheating on me and i know it but i want to hide that truth from myself – anything you do that reminds me of my self-deception is going to evoke anger.
pop
ps
you seem to have a thing about abandonment. I suspect this is a self deception to hide something else. Do you perhaps have a clue what it is?
Also, you seem to mix healthy anger and psychopathic anger together in this post – i’d try separating them under different streams – anger does not equate to bullying (and most real bullies don’t use anger – they are more cold and mean as i well remember from my school and martial arts days). I have often felt that those who assert that they are equal posses nasty passive-aggressive tendencies used to undermine the validity of those who react with anger to their machinations.
p
Yes, anger can be used to avoid dealing with issues or other emotions and used as self-protection. You are right that there are many people who manage their anger in healthy ways. Certainly not everyone who gets angry acts as a bully and there are those who bully for other reasons. Thank you for your comments.
David
2:41 am on
January 27th, 2012How does this relate to something like borderline personality disorder?
Hi David,
Emotional sensitivity is on a continuum. People with BPD are among the most emotionally sensitive. They can also be among the most affected by the emotions of others. Also, in efforts to protect themselves some can have episodes of rage. Most often though their anger is turned against themselves. Thanks for reading.
sonjia
5:10 am on
January 27th, 2012Thanks for the information, there seems to be a problem more and more with bullying it has become a serious problem. I see bullies a lot of FB and sadly a lot of people creating support pages for mental health disorders are bullies.
It can really do a lot of damage and harm , I would like to know how to deal with bullies. I see so much on FB and also real life, I guess it is really damaged people and people who feel very entitled. Could you provide info of how to deal with them.
Sonja,
I agree that it’s important to know how to deal with emotional bullies. We’ll discuss some ideas in a future post. Thanks for your comment.
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