People Lash Out When They're Sad

Remind yourself to look for the cornered, fearful animal behind the angry words.

Burnt Umbrage (1997) by Dorothea Tanning

Many people get angry and cast blame when they’re upset. I’m writing that down in plain language because it’s something I haven’t acknowledged adequately over the course of my life. I haven’t recognized it in myself often enough. I haven’t witnessed it through clear eyes with others.

If you grew up in a household where it was common to yell at other people when you were sad but uncommon to stay in the same room and cry with other people and talk about why you were crying? You probably cast blame when you’re upset.

If you grew up around people who never said things like “Here’s the pain I see behind this person’s desperate action” but often said things like “This is what’s fucked up about this person,” as if all mistakes were signs of deeply immoral character flaws? I’m going to guess that you analyze what’s fucked about everyone else when you’re sad or angry.

I’m not insulting you. It’s logical to deal with anguish the way you’ve witnessed other people doing it. It’s adaptive and even resilient to observe and mimic. Don’t beat yourself up for having these reactions to the world. Don’t heap more shame on yourself over how broken you are the second you start feeling strong emotions.

The cure isn’t more blame. The cure is witnessing without being invested in which behaviors are right and wrong. The cure is noticing those moments when your heart races and you’re pissed off and you want to make a case against someone else. The cure is reminding yourself, “People do and say crazy shit when they’re panicking or overwhelmed.”

I tend to collect people like this, as a matter of fact, because they’re the ones who write and make art and entertain and celebrate the absurdity of life in all of its complexities. Why would you wade into the tangled and often ugly puzzles of existence and do so with a great sense of humor, if you didn’t have a long history of forcing your brain to untangle ugliness and blame and regret and shame, and forcing yourself to have a sense of humor about it all, in order to survive and feel joy? The most exciting and dramatic and loving people I know are also the ones who turn the most vicious under pressure or when they’re despairing.

Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine them as animals frozen in fear. Sometimes it’s helpful to just back up and not think about them at all for a while. And while there’s always room for analysis or reflection or debate or conflict or direct confrontation, if your own mind and heart move to these courtroom and policing options first? Chances are your best first move is doing the opposite: Standing back and watching and allowing and reminding yourself that the most colorful and imaginative and entertaining people you know and love will often be tough to love.

Sometimes they will make themselves even more tough to love when they’re grieving or panicking. They’ll challenge you not to love them. They believe that they don’t really deserve love. Their desperation and panic means that no one will ever be there for them when they’re truly sad, truly in danger. Sometimes when people like that produce a panicked or defensive or frozen reaction in you, it’s a way of fulfilling their deep-seated belief that no one truly cares.

It's hard to be there for someone like that. When stress and grief descend, they have completely different personalities. It’s unnerving.

I know people sometimes write in the comments that they don’t want to know anyone with an artistic temperament, because those people are a fucking nightmare. I absolutely empathize and I also think that we should throw in academics, artists, certain artisans, certain healing arts types, some entrepreneurs, some tradespeople, a few scientists, a few architects and therapists and contractors and teachers and doctors and chefs and actors.

I think we should throw in everyone, in other words. Because underneath every even, smooth, loving person, there is an passionate artistic temperament. You’ll only see it when they reach their breaking point. Some artists reach their breaking point several times a week. Some calm, balanced adults reach their breaking point once every few years. But when they do, what you see is surprising, bewildering, distancing, upsetting.

Lately I’m starting to see that I’ve spent a whole lifetime approaching other people’s panic attacks and breakdowns from a clinical remove, guided by a moralistic notion of THE RIGHT WAY TO FALL APART. This reaction isn’t uncommon, and it makes perfect sense, really, since I’ve historically approached my own despair and agony with similar mercilessness, with similar shame, with similar inflated moralistic expectations. When I had cancer, I barely paused to feel sad. I rose above the problem. I started to say, “It’ll all be fine, this is easy for me because I’m tough” before I had my first operation.

I’m only able to share that because I no longer see it as some kind of moral failing to be a very specific sort of weirdo who reacts to the world in extremely eccentric and odd ways that don’t seem normal or appropriate to others but also don’t hurt anyone else directly. I also share it because I recognize that I couldn’t go back and do it differently through sheer force of will. If you put me in an absolutely devastating situation, I will panic and cry for a few days and then I’ll start mapping out the optimal route above, over, through. I will optimize hell. I don’t even fucking mind it. I ENJOY being a serene tour guide through trauma. Trauma made me this way. Trauma taught me to calm the fuck down and look on the bright side OF HELL.

Any weakness can be a strength in another context.

If I didn’t blame and analyze and second-guess under duress, I never would’ve been a cartoonist, book critic, TV critic, advice columnist, or idiot shouting in the public square of Twitter. I never would’ve come to know and love so many other shouting idiots.

But my intention at this moment, when a lot of people are losing their minds out in the open, is to accept that every single person on the planet has their own peculiar way of metabolizing despair. (By the way, I don’t think people are freaking out because this moment is darker than any other moment in human history. I think things are very rough right now and people are uniquely unqualified to handle it, thanks to a complex web of conditions that include the psychotic workings of high capitalism, alienation, isolation, global culture, the internet, climate change, how long a list do you want?)

The point is, you don’t have to love the byproducts of a person’s trauma and grief in order to love them. You can allow them to navigate what’s in front of them the exact way that’s right for them. There is no objective appropriate or right way to feel awful.

My challenge is that the most intense and interesting people I know and love manage their grief with WORDS. I can relate and empathize, because I do, too. But when you put someone who analyzes and debates and blames in the company of someone else who is analyzing and debating and blaming, well… go online, that dynamic is everywhere. No one takes a breath, no one learns, no one listens, no one heals.

My intention is to notice the animal frozen in fear behind the words. (I want to notice this fearful animal in others and in myself when I encounter them.) My intention is to love the cornered animal clawing its way out of its sadness. I want to do this for myself and others without pretending that I’m above it, without analyzing it too much, without getting so wrapped up in the mechanics of the moment that I can’t step back and say:

We’re all just here to love each other.

I’m here to love every single motherfucker who reads this column. That sounds stupid because it’s a big sentiment and maybe an impossible goal. But when I acknowledge that this is why I’m here? It feels right.

Why are you here?

Find a way to love your way forward. Find a way to show up and be gentle. And when that doesn’t work, when you’re too tired and too MEH and too ill and too indifferent, and you’re surrounded by people who just don’t seem to care about you or your needs at all? Remind yourself that most people grew up on pirate ships, on desert islands, in the trenches of a brutal war. Most people learned to swing a long sword and sail away with the wind and spear fish and fire a rifle before they learned to sit and cry and breathe and tell the truth.

Most people never learned to sit and cry and tell the truth.

Have mercy on them. Notice their pain. Honor their big hearts. Relish your body’s endless capacity for love.

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