Sadly, many of us have to deal with people being aggressive, whether as part of our work, or in the course of our daily lives. Parents with toddlers will often be dealing with frustration and aggression on a daily basis—but that may be rather easier to manage than aggression in another adult! It is, after all, not really acceptable to give an adult a ‘time out’, even if you think it would probably help both of you.
The First Thing of Defence is Self-Control
Aggression is often associated with deep emotional responses: it is a reaction to threats, or anger. It therefore triggers an emotional response in other people.
If you are going to deal effectively with aggression in others, it is important that you understand and can manage your own emotional responses.
For example, you need to know what sort of behaviour or person makes you feel angry and potentially aggressive. Which kinds of behaviour get ‘right up your nose’? You also need to understand how you react—and then learn to control your feelings and ensure that your response is appropriate to the circumstances.
You can read more about this in our page on Recognising and Managing Emotions. You may also find our other pages on Emotional Intelligence useful.
Making an appropriate response can help the other person to manage their emotions, even unconsciously. For example, an assertive response (instead of a passive or aggressive one) can help move the other person to become more assertive, rather than aggressive.
There is more about this in our pages on Assertiveness and particularly in our page on Dealing with Non-Assertive Behaviour.
One of the most important things to understand is that it probably isn’t personal: you are simply in the ‘firing line’. You therefore don’t need to take it personally, and become defensive, because it isn’t a criticism of you.