How to Recover From Others' Aggressive Behavior

Aggressive behavior may flair up and die down within moments, but for those on the receiving end, its emotional effects nearly always linger long after the events that caused them. People who suffer protracted exposure to aggressive misconduct -- for example, through entrenched peer bullying or domestic abuse -- frequently develop chronic and debilitating psychological responses. These include persistently heightened anxiety, chronic low mood, involuntary mental "flashbacks" to previous traumatic experiences, and profoundly negative expectations about the future. Recovery involves learning the arts of challenging negative beliefs and practicing self re-empowerment.

Instructions

• 1

  Close your eyes and focus on the phrase "aggressive behavior" (preferably in a quiet, restful room). Let your feelings, memories and thoughts come freely and spontaneously to mind (Freud called this "free association") and jot them down quickly as you go -- single key words or short headings will do. Keep going for as long as the ideas flow, but maintain some boundaries around the exercise; try not to exceed 50 minutes at a time -- the average length of a psychotherapy session.

• 2

  Review your writing; pay close attention to the feelings you describe and think about how they influence your beliefs and expectations. Stay in the "here and now," and jot down whatever comes to mind when you think about about facing a new situation, like a job interview or a social gathering. What emotion dominates, hope or fear? Neither response is necessarily "healthy" or "pathological," so don't beat yourself up. But if anxiety and fearfulness predominate, you'll need to start challenging your beliefs.

• 3

  Notice how often you mentally replay the aggressive act. The psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel used Freud's concept of "repetition compulsion" to explain why people constantly replay unpleasant or traumatic experiences in their minds. Such flashbacks constitute attempts at restoring mastery: a victim of an aggressive act experiences a frightening episode of helplessness and passivity, a traumatizing inability or failure to repel a threat. This acute sense of defenseless exposure to threat effectively turns into a mental presence, an inner narrative of helplessness and endangerment. Repeated mental playbacks of the aggressive act signal that more psychological work remains to be done.

• 4

  Run toward imagined fear, not away from it. The fear of attack frequently gets installed in the mind after an aggressive act, functioning like internal propaganda promoting persistent feelings of failure, anxiety and helplessness. People experiencing this need to challenge it as soon as it arises by practicing what cognitive-behavioral therapists call "positive self-talk." For example, "I'm going to fail/get hurt" might become "I fear failing so I always back away; today I'll outface my fear and genuinely try." Paradoxically, fear grows in size as you flee from it.

• 5

  Write a list of negative self-beliefs and counter each one with a positive self-talk alternative. Actively learn the positive self-talk rebuttals; having positive responses already prepared reduces the chances of getting wrong-footed when fear kicks in. Think of your fear as the work of an inner aggressor, an unwanted inner guest who whispers a constant stream of undermining gossip. Every time it you tells you you can't do something, practice positive self-talk to rebut its destructive influence and do the activity anyway. Unless continually challenged, internalized aggressive acts not only become chronic but spread out to undermine huge swathes ordinary, everyday activity.

• 6

  Challenge negative beliefs with positive self-talk and positive actions whenever and wherever possible. Beliefs require corresponding actions in order to truly diminish fears. By internalizing trauma, people frequently act as their own worst enemies, consistently undermining their own self-confidence and self-belief. Outfacing that fear actively shrinks anxiety and fosters confidence. Devise a series of daily "outfacing anxiety" exercises built around specific fear scenarios, taking care not to exceed your gradually recovering confidence and self-belief. Fears tend to be unique to each individual -- but always start small and build up to bigger challenges as your confidence grows.