Life & Therapy

One day, my husband and I were riding our bicycles around town.  We arrived at a crosswalk that has a sensor for bikes, and when you ride over it, lights on the “Pedestrian Crossing” sign flash, and cars are expected to stop as you bike through.  As we approached, the lights flashed, and we started to cross.  We could tell that an oncoming SUV was going to disregard the crossing and plow through, so we stopped and I made a shoulder-shrugging “What’s the deal?” gesture in the direction of the car as it raced through the crosswalk.  We biked on, and forgot about it within moments; however, the driver definitely had not forgotten.  He actually went around the block to find us, and proceeded to scream at us, starting with, “You think you are so special!” When he didn’t get what he wanted from us (perhaps a groveling plea for forgiveness?), I heard him let out this primal, wordless, crazy-man scream as he drove off.  If, after driving off,  he hadn’t met with a one-way road that leads to more one-way roads and dead-ends, I am sure he would have come back to scream some more.  He was that angry.

The interesting thing about this interaction was the imbalance of power.  This man was driving a powerful vehicle that weighs at least two tons, while we were standing still on bikes that weigh about 30 pounds apiece.  There was very little we could do to hurt him, and very much that he could do to hurt us, yet he behaved as if the reverse were true.  Because I expressed frustration when he crossed the boundary of the flashing lights, he reacted as if we’d wronged him, and this triggered rage that he probably carries all the time.  Suddenly, he reacted as if we were driving the two-ton  SUV, and he’d been run down on his little bike.  He accused us of having grand illusions of specialness, but he was abusing his power, not us, since we had no power to abuse to begin with.

Sadly, this unbalanced power dynamic occurs all too often in many scenarios. People such as this man feel powerless in some area in their lives, and unable to speak up for themselves, so they swallow their rage and take it with them at all times.  Their worlds are split into two realities: domination or submission.  In any situation for someone like this, a seemingly stronger person always dominates, and a seemingly weaker person always submits.  If these people perceive themselves as dominant, and the perceived weaker person does not submit to them, their rage gets triggered and unloaded.  These are the sort of people who actually believe that their dogs need to be kicked, their children ask to be hit, and their partners deserve to be yelled at.  

If you grew up in a household with someone like this as your parent, it can be hard to undo the belief that you deserve this sort of treatment.  It takes time and work to look at the past and learn that this behavior was crazy, and that you did not cause the rage that was unleashed on you, or is currently being unleashed on you.  You do not have to even someone else’s score by submitting to rage that they can’t express to whoever it is that dominates them.  When you realize this, you gain the power to stop this dynamic in your daily life, and walk (or bike) away from would-be abusers and bullies with a casual shrug of your shoulders.