Sorting Out Your Feelings When You're the Target of Misplaced Anger — Don't Take On Unfair Rage

You did nothing, yet harsh words were suddenly thrown at you. You were doused, for no reason, in someone else's bad mood. After being the target of misplaced anger, a haze lingers — anger, bewilderment, and the unfairness of "why me?"

In this article, we introduce, from a calm self-help view, a way to sort out your own feelings without shouldering the other person's emotions when being a target hurts.

Being a target is, in most cases, not your fault

Taking anger out on someone is said to be directing emotions the person can no longer hold onto themselves at whoever happens to be nearby. In other words, the real cause of the anger is often somewhere other than you. Fatigue from work, dissatisfaction from another place, restlessness they can't sort out themselves — those emotions with nowhere to go happened to turn toward you.

So first, don't shoulder it too much as "this happened because of me." Even if you look like the trigger, you have no need to take on the contents of that emotion.

Separate the other person's anger from yourself

If you take in unfairly hurled anger entirely as your own, your heart wears down. What matters is separating the other person's emotion from yourself.

While recalling the words thrown at you, try drawing a line for a moment — "this is something they were carrying" — and viewing it from there. Their anger belongs to them; the fact that you were hurt belongs to you. Just separating these two makes it harder to be swallowed by the unfairness. On top of that, not blaming your hurt self, but handling it with care, helps.

Write the distress out to sort it

The haze of being a target tends to replay over and over when left inside your head. That's exactly why you should try writing out "what was said, and how I felt" on paper or in an app. The knack is to turn your eyes to the hurt you received, not to words that judge the other person.

The reason Yurusen offers the small step of "filing" someone you can't forgive into a ledger is exactly this — so you don't hurl the unfair emotion back, but set it down, for now, as a record. For more on the effects of writing, see also The Psychology of Writing Out Anger.

When the distress lasts

When the hurt from being a target lasts for weeks, or you can't sleep, or it disrupts daily life — don't carry it alone; consider consulting a professional such as a psychosomatic clinic or counselor. Sorting things out by writing is an important tool, but there is also distress too heavy to hold with that alone. Not overdoing it, and keeping somewhere to turn to, is also one way of protecting yourself.