By Elayne Savage, PhD
Have you noticed the many instances of air rage in the news recently? And just the other day a passenger tried to bite a flight attendant!
Because I tend to see most things through a rejection lens it seems to me this boiling up of rage usually boils down to someone taking something personally.
Yet these recent incidences of air rage are not limited to airplane behaviors. Air rage seems more like a microcosm of the rage permeating many other venues as well. Raging seems to be all around us.
Rage is an out of control reaction to feeling wronged, slighted, singled out or intruded upon. When someone takes an action that invades our personal space, we feel “dissed” and take it personally.
We know that “dissed” means feeling disrespected. However, there are dozens of “diss” words, all of them translating into perceived rejection.
Consider the painful emotions evoked from feeling disrespected, dismissed, displaced, disregarded, disposable, dishonored or disenfranchised. The list goes on and on.
Air rage is indeed rage. And rage is beyond the experience of anger: where anger reflects something happening in the present, rage reflects overwhelming feelings from the past.
I define rage as "anger with a history."
Rage is usually connected with our childhood life experiences. An event may be distressing in the present, but when it reminds us of a painful or traumatic experience from the past, it sometimes triggers an out-of-control reaction. One minute we feel like a victim. The next, we become victimizer.
The Metaphor Theory
Actions that trigger overreactions are usually metaphors for situations we feel especially sensitive about.
Maybe it’s a childhood injustice: feeling “cut off,” “squeezed out,” “kept waiting,” “pushed around,” “bumped” or “edged out.”
When a similar experience is recreated in the present, we might become We might become outraged and then enraged.
By recognizing these metaphors we can better understand how air age happens.
Getting bumped in line by another passenger. Getting jostled or pushed when boarding the plane. Having someone recline their seat into your personal space, Feeling "ignored" when a flight attendant forgets to take your order. Or feeling an attendant’s instructions/commands/demands are unfair and you feel dissed by their ‘attitude’ or tone of voice.
Most recently the practice of overbooking and demanding passengers give up their seats and leave the plane has seemed infuriatingly unjust to many fliers. And what about the recent incident of security being called to escort a family of four out of the plane –– over the placement of a birthday cake!
Consider that the range of emotions and reactions may be a hot button response from childhood experiences.
Especially when you get pushed or bumped or ignored or talked down to. You may start to fume. Something gets triggered and before you know it you may begin to lose control.
You might get confused and can’t sort out your feelings, and you could begin behaving badly.
Interestingly, you most likely see yourself as usually kind and considerate. How can you be behaving so outrageously? How can this be happening? It seems surreal.
Perhaps this behavior is merely a reflection of the outrageous times we live in. There is a lot of rage out there. Even the “usually nice” ones among us find ourselves crossing the line and losing our patience.
Another point worth considering: some of us tend to have anxiety about flying. And some of us can feel trapped in closed spaces.
This anxiety has to go somewhere. So we might puff ourselves up to feel in control of our situation. The result might be tough talk, power plays and disruptive behavior.
This is an example of 'acting out' behavior. When we can’t talk it out, we tend to act it out.
Here are a few tips for taming rageful feelings:
• Put the incident in perspective by remembering the “metaphor theory.“ Ask yourself if an early hurtful feeling about an injustice is being recreated by this incident.
• Remind yourself: it’s probably more about the other person than it is about you.
• Check in with yourself often and ask "Am I too invested in making someone 'bad and wrong?'"
• Don't ‘fill in the blanks’ with your presumptions – try to check things out.
• Can you put yourself in the other person's shoes? How might they be feeling?
• Remember: you DO have choices –– though in the heat of the incident, it sometimes feels like you don’t.
• Even though you find yourself walking down that old path of overreacting, notice and remind yourself you can always back up to the fork in the road and try out a different path. I call this 'walking along side yourself and observing.'
• If you are being raged at by someone, try not to bite the bait, don’t engage. A confrontation is only going to be a lose-lose situation for you. And you might get hurt.
• Take a breather. Ten slow breaths can work wonders to reduce the stress of the moment.
• Most importantly, don’t take it personally! Chances are the other person’s inconsiderate behavior or careless mistakes are not really intentionally directed at you.
You may recall I wrote last month about my own explosive episode at the blood lab. I know that I was overreacting to my childhood experiences of being told countless times, “You’re imagining it.”
As I’ve written many times I believe that there are copious instances of angry, disrespectful, boundary-less behaviors coming out of Washington. Many of us are taking these models as ‘permission’ to act badly. There seems to be a climate of nastiness that is permeating our interactions which is not limited to airplane behaviors. Instances of raging seem to be all around us, and seem to become more frequent and amped up.
Would love to hear your observations on the air rage situation. What do you think so many people so angry about?
Until next month,
Elayne
Elayne Savage is the author of ground-breaking relationship books published in 9 languages.
Both books are now available on Kindle!
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