Aggression

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In our society, the words aggression, aggressive has a negative context.

People try to avoid their "aggressive" manifestations and collisions with the aggression of another person. Often they are afraid of such feelings and try to control them, suppress them. For with such energy they can destroy others.

Usually, "aggression" is placed in the chest - a conversation in a raised voice, shouts, insults, quarrels, physical or psychological harm, damage …

Of course, with such a perception, a person tries in every possible way to get rid of any impulses that at least in some shade resemble “aggression”.

In fact, aggression is the energy of life. The word itself from the Latin "ad-gressere" means "movement to", "movement to meet another." Take and eat an apple, hug someone, have sex, ask a question, get a job, win a competition, defend your opinion … Any of our needs requires aggression to be satisfied.

Unsurprisingly, aggressive impulses store a lot of energy. I think you yourself can notice that the level of energy, for example, when you are lying on the couch and when you try to get up, walk, take something completely different.

We have the right to get angry when we don't get what we want, to talk about it, but the world, in the person of other people, is not obliged to satisfy our needs.

We may be lucky and we will get what we want, but if not, we will have to be sad and sad.

Not everyone is ready to move on to mourning the unfulfilled, getting stuck in a point of anger, sometimes even rage.

The meeting place with our own limitations, where our power ends, is one of the most difficult.

If we don't get something, we lose it. And any loss is pain.

Sometimes anger hides sadness, hides pain, and masks powerlessness.

So we are angry because we are in pain, for our own powerlessness, pushing others away at the moment when we especially want someone to be around.

In addition, one of the basic needs is security and ensuring it, also requires a certain amount of aggression. In the form of protecting borders, our physical and psychological integrity. If something threatens this, arousal increases in our body, the level of vitality increases. And all this is happening so that we have the strength to defend ourselves, to defend ourselves.

As a result, we need aggression in order to prove ourselves in the world, to satisfy our needs, to protect the borders.

When does healthy aggression turn into violence that is actually damaging?

There is a major difference that we can focus on.

Aggression - I see the boundaries of the Other and hear the word NO.

Violence - I DO NOT see the boundaries of the Other and I DO NOT hear the word NO.

Healthy aggression is always about contact with the Other; in violence there is no contact.

In contact, I respect the Other, his boundaries, needs, I am aware of our difference, I see him and hear him, I notice how the other reacts to me, I can stop without destroying.

In violence Another object for me. All of the above is not present.

The difficulty lies in the fact that only I can understand whether violence is being committed against me or not. And it all depends on my sensitivity to myself, on knowing my boundaries, on the ability to say no and leave contact if they don't hear me.

Very often we also commit violence against ourselves, when we do not defend our boundaries, suppress our feelings, do not say “no” or “this does not suit me”, do not manifest ourselves as we are, do not satisfy our needs.

Without healthy aggression, life becomes apathetic, boring, procrastination or depression appears.

If you deny your aggressive part, you deny your very life in yourself.