Chapter 7: Anger and Aggression

I'm still lost in terms of finding my way around this Forum. It is going to make me mad (at myself) if it continues.

I was going to respond to the recent posts about sympathy and empathy. I do agree we are on the same page but it seems that we need to have specific examples of each (anger and/or responding to someone's absorption with depression). So we can share ideas about helping someone with both of those emotions...

Back to my frustration with this Forum...I read the discussion of empathy and sympathy, wanted to make a brief comment, but then I couldn't find my way back to that recent discussion. Then I stumbled on the Anger and Aggression thread and decided post a comment here. Is there a simple way to understand this? _Sky has made several efforts to help me...but then I'm not posting for a few days and I get lost again. Now share with us all what you think would be good empathic responses to me in this situation? and sympathy responses?

Now I have two worries: What if I can't find my way back here to see your thoughtful responses? The second worry is that I might get into a disagreement with my own ideas when I'm quoted by _Sky.

Ok np (she types as she gives a silent chortle) http://forums.psychcentral.com/showf...664#Post550974 I think that's the link to the Survey question that had empathy /sympathy in it?

You can from HERE go up to the top of the page and on the right hand side see: Previous Index Next Threaded (well I view things threaded, you might see them in flat mode..now THAT is confusing for me!)

Click on INDEX and it will give you a menu of all the current threads in THIS forum for Self Help.

If you go to the very top and click on FORUMS you will get a page of Index of all the FORUMs

I just read the two posts on page 6 and I'm confused, too. Then again, maybe I should start from the beginning?
_Sky, I've noticed, you are really good with this computer stuff. You amaze me.

Are you confused about maneuvering around on the site, about finding the chapters in DrClay's book, or about the subject matter of Chapter 7 on Anger and agression?

I know my way around the boards. Reading Dr Clay "talk" about it and then your responding to to him somehow made it all sound very confusing.

Oh yes, I'll definetly be checking out the Anger and aggression section.

I've been reading this thread from the beginning. I wish I saw it when it started-I would have loved to jump in. Anyway, I'm finding it to be very interesting and helpful. Thanks DrClay.

You can still discuss! I'm just posting the chapter highlights in case some can't or aren't able to go to the book link. Make any comments about any part you wish!

Okay, thanks Sky. I'll be reading more tomorrow.

I currently have a anger problem. It has 2 major components.

1) I am unable to see whether I myself am just asserting myself or actually being agressive. I'd like to think I'm just being assertive. But if I was agressive, I would be decieving myself into believing various assumptions about the 'enemy' to placate my ego. how can I myself check whether I'm subconciously fooling myself or not.

2) it is nigh impossible to curb the emotion of anger with rationalisations. Even if I tell myself that I'm actually far too uninformed to make a judgement on others that I'm frustrated with, this will not stop me from doing so. and currently the outcome of that judgement is not positive causing stress because I have to stop myself from acting out really agressively

some suggestions on how to deal with these problems would be appreciated.

I'll write down some background info on my current frustrations to allow anyone that would feel like trying to help to get better insight into the situation. if you don't feel like reading this entire piece of text, feel free to just comment on what I wrote above.

I'm currently at the end stage of a school project that would get my my BSc. if it wasn't for the fact that I don't think I'll pass it with a sufficient grade. luckily the content of this project was actually really enjoyable so I have no real quarrel in having to do it over.

The preceding project had frustrated me completely however, It did so because I was essentially not doing what I wanted to do. I had to work in a team, and had to sacrifice, what I considered to be, too many of my own desires regarding the direction of the project, leaving me very unsatisfied with where it was going and where it ended up. This had a very significant impact on the amount of effort I was willing to put into that project.

At the start of the current project, not having registered in a specific group I and a group of 2 other fellows were suggested to team up for a specific project. We were warned that it would entail a lot of hard work, which caused one of them to jump out immediatly. Seeing my chance to work in an group as small as possible I convinced the other guy to take on this 4 man project with the 2 of us.

Now, on the other guy, not being native to my country, communication proved a pretty big problem. he speaks dutch and english, but at the utter minimum required to get things done. On countless occasions I didn't know what he meant. This caused minor frustrations which I would've had little problem in dealing with were they single, but added later ones made me unable to cope.

One of the people that oversaw the project was a professor doctor from a medical university. I experienced him as a very pushy man, who didn't really advise us on the project, but ordered us to take this and thus direction. Because of my experience with the earlier project, I felt uncompelled to take his orders if I didn't see their merit. I was aware that this would cause some frustration on his part, but didn't think things would get out of hand as much as they eventually did.

Over the course of the project I became increasingly frustrated with the work my companion delivered. It was often a copy-and-paste job from memory of ideas, computations and material properties, earlier mentioned by others, either in meetings or in books. This meant they were old ideas expressed in a broken hard-to-understand way. Even worse was that they were often not applicable to the problem at hand. I had to explain various things we should be aware of already from the ground up, as opposed to just reminding him of them, in order to get him to understand that. Beyond that I grew rather annoyed at his lack of trying to assert himself into the project, in trying to give it something of himself. I felt that all he did was ask me, or one of the overseers what we wanted to have done, and than he did that, incompetently. Considering there were mitigating circumstances, his not knowing my language very well and just being a naturally unassertive person, I was willing to let this go, although it did not rub of well on the impression we made on the overseers of the project.

I do not know exactly why, probably because of one of the earlier mentioned factors, but the pushy professor at some point started to become more and more agressive. He systematically started to throw covered insults our way (saying things that implied we were incompetent, lazy etc.), as well as making straight out threats that if we didn't do what he wanted he would fail us. (he does have an impact on our grade, but not large enough to be able to back up such a threat) Those are kinds of things I DO NOT RESPOND WELL TO. Despite that, he was a lot older then me, a lot more educated, so out of respect I didn't stand up to him on this as soon as I would've any normal person.

however, at a certain point, my limit was reached, and I made a critical remark, which in turn caused him to become very upset with me, which caused me to become even more upset. He sent us away from that meeting, and I didn't feel any motivation to get back in touch with the guy whatsoever, so we didn't speak for 2 weeks or so. My comerade became rather worried about whether we would pass this project, so eventually he actually called the prof. himself. (which made me happy, as he actually took some initiative for the first time) during the next meeting we actually got along pretty well. Although he did make some remarks that made me cringe, I threw them off as just being part of his personality, and not a malevolent attempt at getting me upset. At the meeting after that, we were looking through a minipaper about the project, and when he made a remark that we should basicly lie to get a better grade, I tried to express my moral issues with this. He shut me up however, saying that I had made enough comments, and he would only listen to anything my comerade had to say. I tried to get to say something three more times or so, getting more polite as I went on, but he just repeated the same thing, which started to sound a lot like 'shut the %#@&#! up kid'. at a certain point I had had it, told him my comerade was a 'doormat' (which is more or less true in my opinion) and tried to continue to make my point regardless, but he interupted me(I think I can count the amount of times the guy actually let me finish a sentence on one hand) and told me to leave the room, at which point I considered the guy a lost cause and left.

At first I wasn't so upset with the guy, merely disappointed, but as time grew on, and I recycled what happened time and time again in my mind, trying to figure out where exactly things went wrong, I became more and more angry with that professor, to the point of me now having fantasies killing him. Still the safe kind though, where I do it in a way not physically possible, like turning into a dragon and eating him, opening the gates to hell and throwing him in or firing beams of wanton destruction from my hands. (since it's not physically possible I'm less worried about trying to do it in real life, but all this still this worries me.)

anyway, despite realising there have been some generalisations in my train of thought, and assumptions which may not be valid during this whole thing. I feel I've been most patient with those involved, so I don't really know to what point my actions have been agression, and to what point they were just assertiveness. at most I feel I shouldn't have been so complacent with both the prof and my teammate from the start, but I'm worried that if I apply that in the future it will just lead to more agression faster.

worse still, as much as I try to tell myself that something just went wrong in the whole socializing process, that it couldn't be helped by any of us, that noone's to blame, and that I shouldn't hate them, the hate just keeps flaring up. keeping these emotions in check is proving to be quite hard.

so anyway, that's more or less what happened. any ideas on how I can calm myself, on what went wrong, on how it should best be fixed and on how I should prevent this from happening in the future (without turning into a doormat myself) would be appreciated.

thanks in advance.

Hi Maarten,
First, I'm curious, are you a female? I'm just curious because of the way the professor treated you and showed respect for the guy who seems to have no gumption and rather uncreative.
No, I see it as your being between a rock and a hard place.

Why you choose to make things harder for yourself by doing 4 people's work with just 2 with the 1 person who hardly speaks english-is beyond me. You didn't look before you leapt. If you're going to take on such a challenge then at least know your partner is going to be able to handle it. I admire your bravery but I think this was a major mistake on your part that started the disappointment even before the project began.
You may have been a little controlling with the Dutch guy. As I read your post, I imagine your hovering over his shoulder watching what he was doing. Or maybe not. I have anger issues and I can be a bit of a control freak so I may be just projecting here.
The other thing I saw was- sometimes you got to do what someone tells you to just simply because you have to in order to get the results you want.
When the professor told you to be quiet-maybe you should have done just that instead- just nodded and smiled- until your silence annoyed the hell out of him. You may have came off as being arrogant.
I'm sorry if this sounds mean-I think honesty helps more than evasion although I'm not always so tactful.
It's a long post so I may have missed a few other things but those are what stuck out at me.

Maarten:

Thanks for the detailed description of an anger-causing situation. It should be a situation that both you and all the rest of us on the Forum can learn from. It is a serious mess and may be hard to get out of.

I have read your post carefully but there are many interactions I don't understand. It is 9:00 and I have get up at 5:00 AM tomorrow. I'd like to take more time and respond to you tomorrow morning. My first impression is that you were too assertive with the supervising professor if he/she were in charge of supervising your study. I they were not in charge but were merely helping out the responsible professor, then it seems like you got much too aggressive and disrespectful when it would have been helpful to ask the responsible professor to intervene much earlier (who you did not mention much about) to resolve the conflicts and hard feelings. Does it seem like I misunderstood the situation?

Looking over Chapter 7 about anger might be helpful.

drclay

drclay

Maarten:

I sent a brief response but I have to get up at 5:00AM. So, I'd like to take some time tomorrow morning to re-read your fine detailed response.

Thanks for posting about this stressful situation.

drclay

Thanks for the replies everyone. Don't worry about sounding mean pickles, or anyone else for that matter. I didn't post this to have random strangers on the internet make me feel I was right and they were wrong. If anything, I'd rather have the reverse, that I feel I was wrong and they were right, so I knew what behaviour to use to prevent similar situations from happening. So be honest, even if it drives me an uncomfortable position where I'll have to face some of my less desirable character traits. Also feel free to notify me if I and up becoming a bit too defensive, than I'll try and be more honest with myself.

And no, I'm male actually. but the remark made clear that I may have rushed through the way I and that professor related. He wasn't really unfair or anything to begin with, we had more of a growing process of displeasement with one another. This is what more or less caused me to only notice things were really going awry when it was too late, when the fallout had already happened. Because things got worse in little steps I failed to notice how bad it got, like a lobster being boiled.

I took on the project with a lack of group members, exactly because I wanted to have to work together as little as possible, to minimize having to sacrifice what I want from the project. I wanted to prevent what occured on the previous project to reoccur. This is likely the cause of my disposition at the start, which may have served as a starting point for the worsening relation with the professor.

As pickles said, my initial behaviour might also have pushed my teammate right into the position I was in during that previous project, where he felt he wasn't getting what he wanted out of it. I already noticed that halfway through, as I was wondering why he acted so incompetent. If my teammate was really as useless as he made himself out to be around me, there is no way he should've even gotten to this project. Not to mention that he did have his moments of brilliance, mostly when it didn't matter for the project, but still. So I specifically gave him more room to breathe, despite not feeling like I'd been overly controlling, but to no avail.

I never considered myself much of a control freak, although I've always been very bad at dealing with people trying to control me. This does get me labeled as arrogant more often than not, which I guess is true. This is probably why beyond anything, the threats pissed me off more than anything. The rest of the things I found frustrating did more to do away with any respect I had for the professor, which made it easier for me to go against him whenever I felt it was necessary. I felt going against him was necessary mostly because we had differing ideas on where we wanted the project to go. If we were after the same results, there would've been a lot less friction.

now on the 'chain of authority', there were three people who oversaw the project. A grad student (is that the word? studying for his PhD.) from our own university, The professor from a medical university, and a doctor from a hospital. The doctor was mostly there for giving medical advise, and was the one that originally asked for a project of this kind to be done. However, he gave us full freedom to explore and do as we wanted. The grad student was the most direct supervisor we had. The one responsible, so to say, from an educational point of view. Nice guy I have had little problems with. The medical professor was, as far as I was concerned, the grad students backup, since he would be more knowledgable and better capable of putting everything in an educational context. As of such, I found his overly controlling tendencies unwarrented. He himself probably had a different idea on his place in the 'chain of command'. Then there were me and my comerade. We were in charge, and considering there were only two of us, I considered it shared command, but since my comerade didn't assert himself in any way it felt a lot like I was in charge.

A note here that the professors of our own university who handled the classes that went with the project and oversaw the whole myriad of little projects had specifically said that we should become independent researchers, and that they would not look kindly on excuses such as 'supervisor X said we should do such and such, so we did such and such', so my claim to authority on the project is not based on pure arrogance that we should be in charge because we were doing all the work.

well, I think I made enough remarks on the circumstances for now. now for my own feelings on the matter:

I think that it is mostly a question of who had authority that really got things to get out of hand. From reading ch. 7 of your book dr. clay, I can see a lot of different things playing a role in things getting out of hand, and influencing the why and how of my anger. Much as I hoped, some of the anger I couldn't get rid of by rationalising other's behaviour already seems to have abated by just writing it down and talking about it with you all. It's not all gone, and could flare up again, so I'm not letting my guard down yet. I hope to get a better grip still on why things went wrong, so look forward to and will welcome any and all comments on that, or on how to prevent these things from happening and just become a better person. sorry for writing such a big text again, and thanks for reading.

It's good you're able to be introspective and able to be honest with yourself enough to accept criticism from others. I admire that. I'm interested what Dr Clay is going to say. I think you're doing wonderfully-you care enough to want to understand if and what you did to influence the outcome which you feel was not pleasant. You care enough to want to learn from your mistakes. A lot of people would have just blamed it on everyone else in the project and walked away. ((((((((((Maarten)))))))))))))

Maarten:

I'm responding to your PC posts on June 3rd and June 4th. Your attitude of wanting to learn more seems commendable. I agree that it is one of life's learning moments. Most of us have a few of these awful but beneficial learning experiences. Unfortunately, a few of us don't learn and seem to live through a series of hot conflicts.

I'd guess that most of us have a few nightmarish experiences that set off alarms that tell us to "be careful" or "go cautiously" or "get the hell out of this situation." Those warning signals (anxious) serve us well. I understand that you may have been trying hard to avoid the mistakes of the previous project. One of the warning signs that we may need to pay particular attention is when we seem headed into a conflict with a person who has authority, strong opinions, uncompromising attitudes, etc. The professor from the Medical School showed some of these signs. I wonder why you weren't alerted to these problems? You said you saw he was 'pushy" and "gave orders." But you decided to disregarded his orders even though "you thought this might cause problems." If I were you, I would have been pretty anxious at this point, especially since the co-worker wasn't carrying his load.

Then the situation gets really bad...name calling "lazy," incompetent, threats of failure. And you got more angry, made some critical comment about the medical professor, and didn't speak for two weeks...and the fantasy of killing him.

It seems to me that you were worrying if you were being aggressive or assertive, as though it would be OK if you were just assertive. My view is that the animosity had gone way to far. Someone who can resolve the conflict should be called in to stop the project or stop the fighting. This person to resolve the disagreements could be the professor actually responsible for grading your project, the department chair, a Dean, an Ombudsman...

I don't see it as one of you being wrong and the other right. The medical professor was just as inappropriate as you were (I've just focused on your actions) and I think both of you should have stopped interacting much earlier. I can see how you were made to feel in charge of the research. The medical professor should have been told you were in charge and if he couldn't accept your ideas that the disagreements should have been settled in a specific manner.

The provision of an opportunity to do research as part of this class is commendable. However, with several big projects it just has to be expected that there will be intellectual and personality conflicts that need to be resolved quickly. Perhaps the graduate students could be told to report serious difficulties to the course professor who could then resolved these kinds of problems (or have a group who specialized in personality conflicts or in design/statistics problems). You could benefited from such a group, just as you got some help from this Forum.

Please raise any more concerns with us...and I would be especially interested in how your project was finished or if it was just stopped. Good luck. I'm betting that this experience will have a major influence on how you watch for and resolve conflicts in your life. What do you think?

drclay

Sometimes I find that I am angry and I have no idea what the heck I'm angry about. If I'm angry when I first wake up then I'll chalk it up to a bad dream/memory I had while I was sleeping. But sometimes, I'll be going on my merry little way and out of nowhere, without being provoked in any way, shape or form-I'll feel it start to press in behind the ears, my jaw will feel tight, my stomach feels a little tight, my chest stretched and my breathing becomes different. I'm aware of it but it feels like being in a car with someone else driving. I don't know how to make it just stop and I don't freak out, yell nor scream and throw things-my anger is more of a *****iness. I'm aware of it coming on and I feel the physical symptoms but since I don't immediately know why I have those feelings I start thinking of reasons why I SHOULD be angry so the physical feelings of anger I have make sense. I create the reason for the physical feeling of being angry and things can esculate from there.

thanks for that excellent post dr. Clay. I've been contemplating the things you said all day now, and have actually come to a pretty positive conclusion on the whole matter.

The suggestion that I was overly focused on whether or not my conduct in a bad situation was correct or not is likely true. I should be focused on what caused the bad situation to begin with, and deal with it from there. my conduct in the bad situation itself is more or less irrelevant. Thanks for pointing that out!

And it is likely that things were indeed bad far earlier than I realised. I initially supposed things went bad when I put my foot down on a matter, at which point the medical professor exploded in my face, but it'd probably been going on far longer. I assumed all the treats and insults were just him being an '***' because that was his natural disposition or something, but he was trying to show his frustrations and was never just 'naturally' a bad guy. Much like I'm not generally a homicidal maniac in my dreams but can become so when frustrated with someone, he could've become aggravating equally because of frustration. The fact that I didn't even notice this probably made him even more angry.

With him cleared of the 'emperor Palpatine' status I had given him as opposed to the 'Obi-wan-kenobi' status I ussualy append to professors. I was able to think far more rationally about what happened between us, and I think his 'threats' and 'insults' may have been interpreted too much as such.

I think he may attribute value far more on how things ouside him judge him on things, whereas I attribute value based on how I myself judge things, i.a.w. he's more extrovert, while I'm more introvert. That in mind, he may have mentioned external means to try to motivate me to take a certain action, and I may have interpreted that as a theat far more than it was intended, because I don't naturally see anything outside myself as a strong motivant. This misinterpretation would've undoubtably worsened my own disposition, despite me trying to keep my cool as much as possible, adding more fuel to the fire.

If all these assumptions are true, there is probably more blame on me than on him.

You already seemed to have noticed the part of me not being able to read that he was frustrated and asked why that might be. I never like to think of it as such, but I have been diagnosed in the past as suffering from a mild case of autism, usually specified as asperger's syndrom. It basically boils down to me not being able to properly guage other people's emotions. It is however a pretty mild case, and I'm usually capable of getting along with others pretty well. (as far as I can gather, at least.) In my 23 years on this planet, this has only been the 3rd time that someone has exploded in my face so violently. In earlier cases it always singled the end of interaction and that was the end of it. Both earlier cases were females, so with help of the pretty prevalent dogma that 'women are weird, odd, unpredictable etc.' I was able do away with the idea that I had some blame in the situation. As of such I've always rejected the idea that there was something wrong with me, but the current situation really pushes this down my throat. Especially since you seemed to be able to read into this problem so easily without me even mentioning it and having written fairly little about myself. I may have to acknowledge that this asperger's syndrom might actually be a problem. And considering the speed with which you helped me get to what I consider likely to be the heart of the problem, I may also have to re-evaluate my opinion on asking for help, which I usually don't like to do very quickly.

Now for my next problem, with my anger mostly if not fully subdued and my trust in the general goodness of the human species restored, what is the best way to mend things between me and him? An apology would probably be in order, and telling him where I think things went wrong would also be a good idea. I'd sent him an email with it if it wasn't that I know he doesn't read his email because it's too cluttered with spam. Which leaves direct contact, which is not my forte, to be honest. What is the best way of preparing for something like this? The fact that I have dealt with most of my anger doesn't mean he did so to, and I am sadly human, so if he makes a wrong remark while I would be apologizing it's very possible of me getting aggrevated again, and things escalating once more. Something like that has to be prevented at all costs, so any advice on how to do this would be appreciated.

Oh, and the project ends at the end of this week, so I doubt they'd stop it this far in. We have final presentations next friday (where that professor will be one of the judges), so don't worry about not getting to know the end of this whole ordeal. and yes, it will probably leave a pretty big mark on my life.

(P.S. pickle, I have no experience with anything similar, as I usually supress most of my emotions (except wonder, I love to be amazed at stuff) rationally, until they're too strong to ignore. so I can only wish you the best of luck with your problem, and hope you'll become able to deal with random flares of anger. Good luck. )

Maarten, you're a wise young man. i commend you for your work at understanding your situation. xoxox pat

Maarten:

I was glad you responded quickly. I did that partly because you don't have much time left in this class and mostly because you seemed to be inclined to deny your anger and the seriousness of your situation. In my earlier post I wanted to confront you as seriously as I could so you would face the risks in such situations. Actually I was hoping that I wouldn't arouse the fairly intense anger that the medical professor had aroused. To be honest I rather expected the medical professor to report the confrontations you and he had and then recommend that your teaching professor and/or your department put you on probation until you learned to collaborate better (of course, one thing that would have stopped him from doing that was his own poorly controlled behavior).

Let's not worry about who was most at fault. And I have no idea the degree that Autism or Asperger's contributed to your emotional reactions in the research situation. Such diagnoses are hard to make and require an extensive history. However, I do think it is quite important that you benefit as much from this experience as possible. It was commendable and I was impressed with your statement that maybe you should ask for help from a psychologist. BTW university Counseling Centers usually provide an excellent service...and it is free. In the course of making the decision about getting help, I'd suggest that you keep a diary, recording your emotions (especially anger) every day. Be honest...this could help you assess the degree you are bothered by anger.

Now about your concern with mending fences. Your idea of avoiding direct contact sounds wise. There isn't much time until the Friday presentation. So, what about a brief handwritten letter which you hand carry to his office (to be sure he got it) but I'd avoid being there when he read it. If I were you, I'd be apologetic and leave him a phone number or email address where you will be easily available (in case he has ideas about how to finish up the project that you don't like). You might want to seek advice from the graduate student who followed your study about how to write the letter.

Since the medical professor is going to be there, I'd be prepared to respond to any critical comment he might make (such as making comments about having difficulty resolving disagreements between you and him.) You might even want to thank him for his efforts to help you with research in this area.

I wish you luck. May you continue to have relatively few stressful relationships in your life.

drclay

Okay, thanks Maarten.

It may be so rare of a condition everybody thinks in silence. ???

Alright, an update on how everything went down.

Although I played with the idea of apologizing the whole week, I never really got to it. partly because I was likely scared, partly because things were pretty busy.

Yesterday, as we were preparing for the final presentation, 2 weeks of radio silence were ended, as he(!) called my team mate, asking us to come by in the evening, and specifically if I would be there as well. Since it felt to me like he had dealt with the situation, I jumped at the offer. I went by that evening, and took specific care not to make any remark that could be interpreted wrongly and might inflame him. Things went pretty smoothely, and especially the realisation that he was just operating from a entirely different set of values than me made anything I didn't agree with a lot more bearable. He didn't really leave any good opening for me to apologize, so it was only when I left that I got to it. He didn't even let me finish the apology though, but shrugged it off with a 'it's okay', in a let's-never-mention-it-again kinda way. His way of dealing with it was basicly acting like nothing ever happened. I settled for that.

The next day we had the final presentation which went pretty awful. My collegue mostly forgot what he was supposed to tell, so told everything really slowly and not very coherent. Because of the need to finish within time, I had to throw away more or less what I had planned to tell and make a shorter version with references to what was told earlier where I told it in a understandable way, but I was not able to do so, and because of the stress I also bumbled around telling the presentation incoherently.

This most likely was something that professor wasn't very happy about since he expected us to do pretty well, based on his introduction as well as his comments the night before. Considering how I think he works, he may feel our bad grade (we'll have to redo the project) is a blemish on his reputation. in the very least, the look on his face afterwards was, though covered with a smile, not one that made me eager to adress him and discuss how things went.

So that's how things stand now. There is no more out-in-the-open hostility between us, although he may be harboring some frustration still. I probably won't be having to deal with him anymore, so I could leave it at this, and go on with my life. What do you guys think?

Pickle:
don't take this in any way as profesional advice or anything, but I presume you've looked into the possibility of there being some harbored frustration you're not willing to admit, overflowing from time to time, being the cause of your random anger flares? That's the best I can do for a possible explanation for your problem. If you didn't you could try and look into it.

Hello, everyone. I've been having a hard time lately trying to let go of my anger.

Here is the situation:
Two months ago, I went to a party. I met an old classmate, there. He insulted me (I'll get into details later), and I insulted him back. I have now tried for two months to forget about this incident, but it still lurks in my head, creating more anger and hatred.

I want to mention a few things before I get a storm of obvious tips:
- I know that I get nothing out of this but self destruction.
- I should forget it and move on.
- Building up anger and hate makes it worse, and I might become dangerous.
- I should not let him control my feelings. Or atleast his memory control my feelings.
- [insert different points on how this situation is bad and that I get nothing out of it].

Moving on to the background story:
Since I was a little kid, I have always been the "different" one. Not because of my appearance nor my behavior, but because my dad is from Israel. Between the ages of 8-14 or so, kids used to pick on and make fun of me because of my last name and my dads background. At that point in time, I had little self-esteem, and let them mess around with me. The good news is that I don't let anyone do that to me, anymore. I am an atheist, and if people try to make fun of me I always retaliate in aggressive, or sometimes assertive ways. This is situational, but one thing is sure, and that is that I feel perfectly confident and I'm no push-over. EDIT: Just though I should mention that I have been depressed for 4 months. It might count for something.

Anyways, back to the orginal context; this guy threw a nazi remark at me, in the party. I did go over and tell him: "that was not even slightly fun or smart, loser". He grope my arm and held it firm. I ripped my arm away from his grasp, and that was the end of the encounter. I feel rage building up as I write this.

I dunno why this hurts and annoys me so much. Maybe I am traumatized from my young years, and this guy released what I had dug down.
I'm not sure how to deal with this;
- Forgive and forget?
- Meet and talk?
- Assault him physically or mentally? Yeah, I know 2 wrongs don't make a right. But revenge is sweet. If I meet him again, and he insults me, I can guarantee me going physical on him. No WAY am I sitting two more months pondering about what this %#@&#! said.

Last note: Don't get me wrong on this; I don't let people control my emotions at all. I don't let people hurt me or anything close to it, anymore. This guy is an exception. I have learned alot after the encounter with him. I still can't let it go.

Thanks for your help, and sorry for the lengthy post.