Don't suppress your anger
Anger is the most potent of all emotions inside us. The Bhagavad Gita says there are three major vices in human beings – anger, lust and greed. Among the three, anger is the only one that is most apparently visible through body language. Your facial expression changes, your muscle twitches, your jaws get locked, your body stiffens. One look at you and people can tell you are angry.
Now, lust can be managed via masturbation or by engaging with a prostitute. Greed can be managed by reassessing your wants, cultivating patience. Because greed, although lethal, doesn't have the same level of urgency like the other two emotions. Anger on the other hand can only be managed if we deliver that wrath boiling inside onto the person who is the reason behind it.
That is why depression is so severe. Before depression there is frustration and anger over the situation. But under that anger and frustration lies hopelessness over the circumstances. When you are done with the anger, the hopelessness surfaces. It makes you realize the truth behind all the pain. You become angry at yourself. But raging at self is vastly different than raging against others. It metamorphoses into self-hatred. Which then leads to the worst outcomes. That's why depression is rage turned inwards.
The philosophers say anger is always about how you perceive a situation. You are trying to exert control over a situation that you have no control over. The Bhagavad Gita links it with desires and expectations leading to too much attachment towards the outcome. But anger is also in response to unjust treatment and a sense of injustice. If a politician mistreated you out of ego, you would hate the politician, the party he is associated with, and if not resolved, you would even hate the country they belong to.
Our need for justice – what we call "fair" – has to be met. When bad things happen to us, we want to dominate that situation by reacting in a way we consider fair. In our head, bullying has to be met with further bullying, which we also call justice. We don't mind brutality if it's happening to someone we think has done something wrong – like a pedophile. The more anger there is, the more dominance we want to assert and the more comfortable we become with brutality.
Alfred Adler explained it beautifully that all forms of anger are about asserting dominance. What he didn't mention was how should we manage mistreatment. We can explore the nature of anger all we like, but how do we get a closure for it? If you accept mistreatment from your bully, they will not stop – they will continue with their bullying. You cannot even walk away lest you will be considered weak. People will paint a target behind your back.
The Bhagavad Gita said do your righteous duties in the face of injustice and leave the outcome to me – it called it Dharma-Yuddha, righteous war. But no one was more savage than Seneca on the topic of justified anger. When asked "Isn't it sometimes right to feel and be angry? What about righteous anger? If someone hurts your family?" Seneca answers that you certainly have duties, but you can perform them better if you are not angry.
Anger is the emotion that hasn't even spared the Gods. Moses broke the tablets in anger when he saw Israelites indulging in idolatry. Jesus was enraged when he saw lenders doing business in the Temple of God. Krishna was angry when Duryodhana refused his peace proposal. All of these are divine examples of what we consider as righteous anger.
So, there does seem to be a provision for anger as a useful tool to emphasize your message. Impulsive vengeance isn't a good tactic strategically as it blinds you against good reason. Instead, one would benefit a lot from cold anger. It gives more satisfaction when it's justified and came out of meticulous planning. Hot anger is often seen as an act of passion – it's impulsive and often lacks the nuance. As opposed to it, cold anger is an act of choice and planning. That's why coldness is more dangerous in the long term. Hot impulsive anger is a short-term nuisance.
It's prudent to keep your emotions in check against injustice and instead of reacting instantly, one should be methodical, calculated and plan to deliver justice with cold heartedness. While one should do everything to walk away from the situations that might incite such passion in you, but if things come to a point where you cannot walk away, then you must fight completely with cold heartedness. But remember to annihilate your enemy completely.
Should one apply the same tactic in mundane routines? Absolutely. The first plan must be figuring out how to avoid the situation. If you try your best to avoid such situations and yet the situation comes to you, do not offer another cheek – you fight instead. You need to evaluate all possible consequences of your vengeful actions because it will attach to your reputation. Your actions must be in accordance with the reputation you want to build.
There are only two kinds of fights – with weapons and without weapons. You don't have much of a choice with the first one. Avoid street fights, but if you get into one, avoid escalation and adapt defensive tactics. Street fights won't transform you into Batman, so don't fight till death.
In the second kind of fight – that is without weapons – diplomacy and negotiation is the best option. You need to know what the other person wants, what is he fighting for? Does their desperation for superiority impact yours? Verbal bullying falls into this category. It's always about establishing superiority. If you walk away from such situations, they will consider you weak. That might be damaging to your reputation. So, you need to implement tactics that are cold and calculative yet enough to establish peace without coming off as a douche.
While covering all the tactics would fill a book, I would share some of my favorites that I personally like to deploy. One should always attempt from the position of strength and security. Your composure is a sign of strength in the minds of your opponent. Imagine a rock that doesn't budge despite several hammerings. Become that.
Let them come at you with everything they have. Learn about their best tactics. Don't let their insults get to you – this is important because when you are surrounded by people who are laughing at the jokes of your bully, you would be tempted to respond in kind. But resist this temptation. Remember, you are not forgiving them. You are merely shining your blade. Use that anger to cultivate patience so when you slip in the knife, you will have enough strength to twist it.
In verbal bullying, the category of insults highlights the insecurity of the perpetrator. Someone bullying you for height means height is an important factor for them. Use those categories and raise questions on that category. If you tell your bully that statistically they aren't the tallest of the lot, it won't sit well with them. Figure out the category that matters to your bully and attack that category. Because that is the source of their security. Attack that. Make them doubt their strengths and see them losing their mind. That's why they say that bullies are highly insecure people.
One of the most popular psychological tricks is asking to explain the joke, then playing dumb. When you make someone explain the joke, the punchline is gone and with it the effect of the joke as well. And then you question their intelligence for even using that joke. I use it sometimes, but there is a caveat. It might happen that before you could execute this plan, they might achieve the objective of humiliating you in front of others.
In that case, you can deploy another psychological trick that almost always works. You need to keep in mind that verbal attacks in front of others are a sign of craving validation. It's a sign that they want others to consider them smart, cool, important, someone worthy. You need to destroy this confidence. Stare at them. Make eye contact with no expressions on your face. Get that judgmental look and stare at them. It makes weak people uncomfortable, especially when they have just done an act to crave validation. It shatters their confidence.
But the ultimate goal isn't to demotivate them from verbal bullying. It's to plunge the knife and twist it. That's how you build your reputation, ensuring they never attempt anything against you. So, you remain calm and dissect their behavioral pattern in a way that they see how stupid that sounds. If someone's bullying you about your height, show them their common arguments they make every time. Find out the commonalities and explain it to them. And then confront them with "Are you not comfortable in your own skin?" "Do you feel insecure that you obsess over these things?"
Anger doesn't solve problems – it sometimes creates new ones. The cold and calculative approach is more rewarding. You appear stronger. You maintain the upper hand in the end. And people end up respecting your authority even more. But maintaining a calm demeanor is easier said than done. You need to tolerate the initial insults and remain calm throughout so you can be cold and calculative to deliver justice for yourself.
Fights with weapons are simpler in nature than without weapons. You either fight if you can, or you use deceptive techniques to save yourself. And then plan the rebuttal from the comfort of safety. Such fights aren't persisting in nature and therefore rare in today's times. But fights without weapons can end up giving you trauma for life such as bullying. In such cases, you need to deploy tactics that can not only protect you from this trauma but also inflict pain on others.
Even though anger is generally a gateway to hell, righteous anger can be your gateway to authority. Nobody likes to pick on the one who can hurt them. So you must become someone who they think is too risky to pick a fight with.