“I’m just angry at so-and-so and I’m taking it out on you”
“I’m just frustrated because ____________ and I’m taking it out on you”
I’ve heard this phrase so many times in my life (“you” meaning anyone, not me personally) and only in the past few years have I realized how ridiculous it sounds. I don’t think I’ve ever, in my life, yelled or acted angry at someone because of something someone else did, or gotten angry at someone because I was frustrated with someone else. I’d hope the person would be there for me if I wanted to vent about it but that’s different, it’s not directed at the person. And likewise I would listen if the person wants to talk to me about it, but to actually get angry at me because of some unrelated frustration, I don’t understand it at all. I don’t respect it.
Is there some aspect of this I’m missing? Maybe I just hang around the wrong people? I see this theme in TV shows a lot too, and it probably doesn’t do the viewers any good to see it and think it’s common and ordinary.
I suspect that it’s because people bottle their fight or flight responses but they emerge later. The boss yells at a guy and he can’t fight back because he’ll lose his job. But it puts him in a bad mood and he goes home and snaps at his wife for some little thing. He didn’t mean to and isn’t always aware that’s what it’s about. But sometimes he catches himself and apologizes.
My hunch is that if you wrote a list of characteristics, we all fall somewhere on a continuum for each. If the scale is 1-10, maybe you are a 1 (meaning you rarely or never do this bad behavior). But are you…
We’re all better at some things than other things. If you’re really good at not taking it out on others, I can see where it would be hard for you to understand why others do it. But maybe they’re tolerating something in your behavior that’s easy for them but difficult for you.
I have certainly been put in a bad mood by something which has caused me to be cranky to the people around me. Maybe you’re immune to being put in a bad mood?
It has definitely happened to me. How my day has been definitely affects how I respond to people, including around here. And I’ve confirmed with other Dopers that dealing with the pandemic or other cruddy aspects of life has led to being cranky.
When someone says it, they’re saying they overreacted to you because of something else, and realize after the fact that you it was out of proportion. I don’t see any reason not to take people’s word for it. They’re trying to smooth things over, after all, which shows they care.
I know that I’ve been subject to frustrations which caused me to occasionally act negatively toward someone else. I’ve used the phrase to explain why I was treating them that way and to assure them that they were not the cause of my frustration nor deserving of the way I treated them.
I’ve “taken it out” on someone else once or twice. It’s just been being overly aggressive/sensitive with a loved one due to extreme frustration with the state of my life at that point. Some distance from the moment was required to see that that was what I was doing. In the moment I was being reasonably upset with whatever they were doing, and they were overly sensitive for suggesting I was overreacting.
Sometimes the required distance was seconds, sometimes minutes. All depending on my level of general frustration, and whether what I reacted to was random or something I had always found a little annoying.
Maybe the OP has just never been that far under a cloud, or they are a saint who can perfectly control the direction of their anger, or …
Maybe I’m misinterpreting based on my experience. I’ve not used the phrases in the OP. I’ve apologized for being unnecessary aggressive and mentioned my mental state as an explanation (not an excuse). But I can imagine there are those who find some sort of release in an outwards expression of anger and “take it out on someone else” in a more spectacular fashion. Perhaps the OP intended to limit the question to those.
Still, I can easily see that as a continuation of my experience, so I still get it. I’d hope they developed an awareness of it and found ways to work to prevent it, but emotions are not easy to control, and not everyone can easily change the parts of their lives that grind on them.
My father was the poster boy for this. He had an explosive temper, which erupted at the drop of a hat. Any little thing could set him off, and he’d be verbally and physically abusive for the rest of the day. NEVER an apology. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood that he had a lot of personal and professional frustration, and he was just “taking it out on us”.
In Freudian psychoanalysis, this is called displacement. It’s a neurotic defense mechanism, usually caused by the fact that who you’re really angry with is to powerful or too threatening or both to take it out on.
I used to have anger management issues, and if I was having a bad day would start shouting for no apparent reason. Once I told my wife, “I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at myself. You just happen to be standing between us.”
I feel like anyone who says they can’t understand “taking out their frustrations on others” must fall into one of two categories. Either they are one of those remarkably even-keeled people whose emotional state sincerely never impacts anyone, or they are one of those people who don’t quite grok that being grumpy, short, withdrawn, sarcastic or even explosive can be a terrible experience for those around them. They take their feelings put on others all the time, but they don’t think of it that way. They think that if other people have a negative reaction to poor behavior, that’s not on them.
I have been guilty of (rarely) taking home work related stress and then blowing up about it to my better half. Normally it was just venting (which is still rough because it adds stresses to her she probably didn’t need), but on occasion I was cold and abrupt because I was still angry at someone/something else from earlier in the day. Only once that I can remember did I go to bed still angry/cold.
Not that it makes it better, but being human, she has done the same to me, but certainly less, because I skew Lawful Neutral with Evil tendencies and she is absolutely Lawful Good. She normally gets sad when dealing with the crap life hands out to herself or others, and I get angry. Neither of us have every been physically violent, and almost never verbally violent to each other.
Having said that, there is a circumstance where I’ve been angry and said “I’m taking it out on you” to someone and felt minimum guilt, and that is dealing with customer service for certain companies. Normally, like a lot of people, if the service is poor but within minimum standards, I’m going to bitch but let it slide. If it’s gotten bad enough that I’m on the phone or internet chat with someone, well, I’ll feel bad for the person dealing with me, but again, not that bad.
(and no, I don’t get verbally abusive, but I get very curt and go in with a set of demands that they will meet or they will be seeing a BBB complaint, which admittedly, only works with companies that care about the BBB)
She normally gets sad when dealing with the crap life hands out to herself or others, and I get angry. Neither of us have every been physically violent, and almost never verbally violent to each other.