Physiological Troubles with Relational Aggression

[Phallosopher]

Hey again...

So I've read all over the site that it's a good idea to engage in relational aggression to boost social status. Since I'm an attractive enough guy and I have enough experience with women to usually not need to have everything so rehearsed... I'm actually most interested in this in regard to competition with other males. I'll first explain the core stuff and pose my question for those who don't think they need the background information to answer, but then I'll share the background information for those who think it helps.

I want to know... how do you reduce/eliminate physiological stress associated with verbal/social confrontations?

I'm a pretty quick witted guy, so I can come up with aggressive humor reasonably well, and if I have an argument down on paper I can refute the hell out of it or push it way into the sort of meta- territory that overloads the other person's brain. But in the face to face situation I get physically tense in a sometimes debilitating way. Whether I'm responding to confrontation or considering starting it myself, my quad muscles in my legs get tense and I feel like someone is grabbing hold of my very top vertebra and squeezing it like a stress ball. Sometimes my heart starts to pound really hard.

I'm not sure what happened, but I used to experience a minor version of this maybe way back in 8th-9th grade... which I then managed to almost effortlessly train myself out of. Over the past few years though, it has come back full force. So I want to learn how to quickly shrug off (or ultimately just not even begin to experience) these physiological effects of conflict anticipation. That's the body side of the story. As for the mind, I figure that the ingredient there is to learn how to not feel guilty or scared about winning.


Personal note: at the root of this may be that I'm a naturally high testosterone guy, but I had an abusive father, so I got really good at bottling up any masculinity because that sort of thing would get me in trouble. Depending on life circumstances I find that this flares up or settles down... it's just always there as a possibility and I want to get rid of it so that I can use all my good resources for competition with other males, and to knock down female resistance.

Thanks for reading/answering!

 

[Phallosopher]

Anyone?

 

[Cacc]

You shrug it off by becoming accustomed to it. Just like anything else, experience diminishes and ultimately gets rid of fear and anxiety.

 

[Phallosopher]

You shrug it off by becoming accustomed to it. Just like anything else, experience diminishes and ultimately gets rid of fear and anxiety.

No, experience can also confirm or intensify however you are reacting to it repeatedly. So there's more too this than you're acknowledging, and I hope you'll think through your next response a bit more. Usually if you're tempted to say "just like anything else," the thing is being underthought.

 

[Cacc]

No, experience can also confirm or intensify however you are reacting to it repeatedly. So there's more too this than you're acknowledging, and I hope you'll think through your next response a bit more. Usually if you're tempted to say "just like anything else," the thing is being underthought.

lol

 

[Phallosopher]

No, experience can also confirm or intensify however you are reacting to it repeatedly. So there's more too this than you're acknowledging, and I hope you'll think through your next response a bit more. Usually if you're tempted to say "just like anything else," the thing is being underthought.

lol

Uhoh, are we being unhelpful again? See what I mean... if you're unhelpful twice... that's not going to help you stop being unhelpful. Make sense yet?

 

[Michal]

No, experience can also confirm or intensify however you are reacting to it repeatedly. So there's more too this than you're acknowledging, and I hope you'll think through your next response a bit more. Usually if you're tempted to say "just like anything else," the thing is being underthought.

lol

Uhoh, are we being unhelpful again? See what I mean... if you're unhelpful twice... that's not going to help you stop being unhelpful. Make sense yet?

Are you here to argue or listen to people who want to help you? Cacc gave an advice which you shot down because in a certain way, you are right that negative or wrong reactions can reinforce the bad habits. But he brought up certain aspect of this that it is your reaction to it which makes the difference. So go out there in the world, do not be afraid of having a conflict in person and work on being calm during that time. The mind can influence the body but the body is usually stronger. But that does not mean you cannot force your physiology and control it. Anger, rage and fury.

Or you know.. get in youtube comments, find a comment thread about a heated topic and argue there. Sooner or later you will find someone who knows how to argue and starts to insult you because you have an opposite view on the topic at which point you might get angry and that is when that bodily sensation you want to get rid of comes along and you can practicing controling that

 

[Phallosopher]

Well, this is a discussion board, so I'm here to discuss... which may entail disagreeing or seeing some reasoning as incomplete. "Arguing" tends to have a negative connotation. I certainly apologize if I came across as hostile.

Your response is starting to get at what I'm talking about. YouTube and the like won't work, because I think it's the case for all of us, easier to collect and present thoughts and stay calm from behind a screen with plenty of time to think and fewer stimuli to encourage our nervous system to do distracting things...

Going out in the world and experiencing conflict is certainly something that's going to have to happen in order to get better at dealing with it... but that's precisely why I posted here. Do any of you have techniques for staying calm in the moment of a conflict? While you're starting or responding to something negative? That's what I'm wondering about. Of course the solution is to put myself in the situation and figure out what to do about it, but that's trivial unless I have some ideas about what might help.

Got anything?

 

[Michal]

What I use originates from meditation or some other breathing techniques. You need to be good at identifying feelings in your body and be somewhat sensitive to their change. Once you notice an unwanted feeling arising, you just focus on your breath. Slow, deep breathing. You should breathe this way anyway. This should help controling that feeling and the fact you suddenly focus on something else and not the situation in front of you should help to minimize the influence of those feelings like anxiety or anger as well.

This goes for other physical symptoms like clenching your jaw and teeth. This is slightly different because you need to just relax those muscles which are not connected to your breathing apparatus. With feelings, majority of them are felt in the torso, so breathing techniques help to weaken them.

So.. meditate to build a habit of relaxing your musculature and deep breathing.

 

[Sprezzatura]

This is going to be a rather strange post so bear with me...

First of all, I lived in similar circumstances as the original poster so I think I understand what his angle is. Abusive father, high T, strict upbringing etc. I speak from experience that the passive approach outlined (meditation, reflection) was only part of the solution in my case. If you are truly high T like me, then you will probably know that guys like us do not make friends easily. Something in us just rubs the other guys the wrong way. What I learned over the years was that what I was missing is empathy. So if you have empathy + introspection or meditation + quick wit + I don't have to win every argument mentality, you will come out on top. This will not always be easy - when I trained my mind, my body still would not follow - my hormones would take over. You get that fight or flight response because your cortisol rises when you are new to certain stressful situations - that is why your muscles tense and your heart races. So the routine and lifestyle that has calmed me down is as follows:

1. regular weightraining to raise T (1 hour per day max or your corisol rises)
2. healthy diet (reduce caffeinated drinks, no trans fats, low fiber carbs, reduce alcohol)
3. meditate / reflect / write / introspect on yourself and other people and practice your reaction in arguments
4. avoid unnecessary stress because of cortisol
5. learn that most arguments are not worth having except when facing public humiliation/assault on your manhood
6. cut cluster B people out of your life even if they are your family (which is what I did)
7. and most importantly ALWAYS KNOW WHO YOU ARE! (when you achieve the last you are in the zone and no fucker can pull one over you)

The only people who still take beef with me are a minority of high T guys with narcissistic personalities, all other people respect me for who I am. I notice that some people focus too much on only one aspect of their being just mind or body, but in order to truly get your shit together you have to have mastery over both, but you already know that

 

[Phallosopher]

Wow, thank you @last two posts.

Michal, that's a better explanation of meditation than I've heard in awhile. I know about meditation but sometimes I'm not perfectly diligent about keeping up a practice. One thing I really haven't been able to do yet that I could stand to work on now that you mention it, is consciously implementing the breathing/focusing I practice in meditation, in a real life stressful situation. I wonder if it would be difficult to also formulate a response to the other person (if I'm trying not to pay attention to some kind of aggression from them). I suppose that's where I could ask them to repeat themselves or something, I've heard people do that because generally if someone has to repeat themselves they either do so in a less emotional way, or they get fucking mad that they were asked to repeat themselves in that kind of angry moment, which sends them out of line and you "win." I'll try it.

Sprezzatura, we definitely come from a similar situation. Most of my friendships with males are temporary and based on some common circumstance or interest. If it's an interest, it has to not be skill based (not to say I'm good at everything, but I'm a pretty smart and athletic guy, so I often make others jealous because I naturally figure out how to do things). My testosterone and cortisol are both indeed high, I've been to the doctor long ago about it and am experiencing similar symptoms that will be leading me back there I think, probably to hear the same thing. Interesting you mention caffeine, I definitely drink too much of that.

As for arguments not worth having... given this recent history of the troubles I described, I probably find too many of those and engage in them out of desperation to practice changing my reaction. However, there's no use in that if it's just raising my cortisol and I don't have the tools to change (which I now finally might thanks to these posts)...

So last question on that matter... does anyone have some witty ways of disengaging from an argument or refusing to engage in the first place?