Trouble dealing with confrontation

[st_99]

I have this issue of being really uncomfortable with confrontation.

My heart rate goes sky high, adrenaline pumps through my body, breathing gets shallow and I go into a fight or flight stage. I simply hate that I cannot just be calm, assertive and just deal with it rationally and calmly.

The problem can be with anyone, girls or guys.

A couple examples:

A friend of mine who happens to be a girl says "don't talk about so and so that way" my immediate reaction is to snap and go defensive as I get a feeling of being talked down to or disrespected or something..

Another example would be my neighbor saying that I'm being loud and getting pissy about it. Instead of just being cool, calm, take the lead and talk it out, I get flustered like I'm being berated so I get defensive and go into a high heart rate state.

Another example is some weird crazy lady trying to take my bar seat (she was really crazy) instead of staying calm and just being like, calm down lady, its my seat, why don't you go have a seat somewhere else, I go into a high heart rate panic state where I just want to lash out at her.

This only happens during uncomfortable confrontation situations and i really wish i could just be cool and calm knowing that people are weird or silly sometimes instead of getting panicked, want to fight or flight and getting nutty over it myself.

Any suggestions, perhaps it goes back to my child hood of being hit by my mom or something..

 

[Jeffst1980]

I think that there are times when that aggressive, flight-or-fight response actually works to your favor. Customer service reps seem to respond to controlled displays of anger far better than rational requests, for instance.

It seems obvious to us that a calm response to conflict is the correct one, but I wonder if that is actually true, and what "correct" even means in this case. Certainly, MANY alpha males throughout history had formidable tempers- I wonder how that affected the way others viewed them.

 

[Warrior74]

I used to get that lot as well. My Dad the Sarget was fond of corpral punshiment and my older brother used to beat my ass alot until I turned 16 and finally kicked his ass. Up until then I had to learn how to use revenge and blackmail to keep him from beating me up. I have rage issues.

I would get into fights in the neighborhood and later in college and in most of those fights I would rage out. I stopped fighting because I would red out and the last fight I was in they pulled me off a guy because I was choking him to death and didn't know what I was doing. It's been a few instances of violence since then but mostly it's controlled on my part. I tend to stay calm during most confrontations at least outwardly.

As for women, I never get that way with girls because I don't take anything they say or do seriously. Even if some girl is screaming at me I tend to just laugh it off. She can't hurt me, and if she calls some dude into it, and he won't back down they the switch will get flipped and we'll all regret it. I'll walk away before that happens. I can't be stupid like that anymore.