Confrontation and anxiety

[ankietyjoe]

This is something that has increased massively for me in the last year.

An example would be minor tiffs when you're driving, a heated conversation with a neighbour about something trivial, noise etc.

The type of conversation that can happen in life when people don't understand that it's not actually desirable to be an *******.

Anyway, I used to be able to shrug these off, but now they cause intense and immediate anxiety causing my heart rate to rise over 150 and shaky legs etc etc.

It's annoying because this stuff will happen in life, and I want to be able to cope with it when it happens.

Has anybody else had experience with this?

[sial72]

Yes, totally. For a long time I just tried to avoid and ignore these situations because the would make my anxiety worse, now I can handle them again xx

[Oosh]

Yep.

Try and work out what you feel the threat is. Do you feel someone will get one over on you or you'll be ridiculed etc etc. Then find a different way to see it.
Eg on the roads let the goal be to get from A to B without getting caught up by any of the idiots out there who will mess you about and drag you into things.

Success can become the avoidance of them and their ridiculous road habits rather than it being about fearing you're not being respected or whatever so feeling your adrenalin kicking in.

An advanced motorist would back away from an angry/poor driver, would smile at an irate driver or look straight ahead and when they make it home unscathed and unaffected, they win. Getting home safe and unaffected is the goal, not making that driver see that he can't do this and that to you.

I had an issue with a . . . cheeky neighbour recently. I dealt with it calmly and am happy with how I did it but I still wanted to strangle him.
I was aware I was being bothered by him so worked on seeing it differently.
I tried to empathise with him and his position. I saw how someone could end up feeling like that. Realised anymore negative body language and attitude would just make him feel I was a threat. So I saw myself holding my hands up instead and saying "look, I'm a cool, easy going neighbour. I don't want to get caught up in anything with you. If I can ever help you out give me a knock. "

Seeing it this way instead of focusing on any threat completely changed how I felt about it. It says I'm understanding, i'm a cool neighbour, I'm friendly and I empathise.
And I see him being cool back because I'm cool and friendly. "Oh, better calm down. I've got this guy all wrong. He's actually a nice bloke"

Instead of giving him evil looks in the road I'd click on, smile and say hello.

Life can be all about perceiving threat and danger. I think it helps to try and see it in a new way. For me, it's had a dramatic effect on how I see myself.

You feel cooler about the world and feel it's cooler with you instead of thinking "ugh, there's THEM on the roads and THEM two doors down and THEM at work uugh".

There's lots of idiots out there. You can empathise with them and why they might be difficult. But YOU are cool, you're friendly and a good dude and you'll smile and try and get through your day peacefully. If they can manage to calm down you'll be nice to them and they'll see you're friendly and that there's no need to be agro with you.

It beats screaming at people "YOU CANT DO THAT TO ME" and getting absolutely nowhere. And it is less likely to trigger your adrenalin.

[ankietyjoe]

Thanks guys

I think you might have hit a couple of nails on the head there Dave.

I'm used to dealing with confrontation confidently and ending it there and then.

I like a peaceful life, or at least that's what I want.

Because I can't deal with confrontations in a satisfactory way I do mull over what happened and feel frustrated that it didn't end the way it wanted. Intellectually I know that in the grand scheme of things these occurrences don't actually matter, but they're difficult to let go of sometimes.

To a certain extent it feels like a trap, not being able to deal with these things as they happen.

In an ideal world none of us would have to deal with fools, but sadly that's not the world we live in.