Aggression, why?

It seems a never-ending issue of this world: aggression. It takes a lot of forms, from violence to war. From fighting to racism. From teasing to crime. From mild irritation to rage.

Let's go back to the very beginning of your personality. How did it come about? You not only started to notice things around you, you also learned to label them: through your parents, teachers, brothers, sisters and many other people. Remember a situation where you were having fun playing with a favourite toy. Not only you seem to enjoy it, but your parents also seemed to be pleased with your behaviour.

All of a sudden someone approaches you, telling you that you have to give the toy to some other child, "because she too has a right to play with it". You have to learn to share. It is very likely that you will start to cry, because you do not understand it, it is fun for you, so why should you give that away. In normal language we call this "raising a child", "teaching it to be sociable". In terms of your personality we call this create tension, and finding a solution to get rid of that.

When you were very small, crying was a good way to deal with these tensions, and even if a child looks angry or raises its hand in order to hit, it is not taken too serious, it is good for them to learn this. Later on in your upbringing you are taught that this too is unwanted behaviour, and now you have to come up with solutions of yourself. You feel a form of stress, anger, anxiety, but you are not supposed to express that, and now what. Because it is easy for your personality to blame other people for creating this situation, it has a wide range of possible solutions: hit someone, react verbally, withdraw, blame others, attack your own body through eating, biting, physical symptoms, sporting etc.: anything that will help you to deal with the unpleasant feelings within you and should offer release. Or at least block the awareness that there is something wrong with you and you could be to blame.

Now this is what is called aggression. The way you chose to deal with your feelings of unpleasantness. No matter how they came about. Most people have taught themselves through the years to express them in a socially accepted manner, or do not have a very sensitive personality, or one asking for intense reactions.

It is a never-ending cycle. Because you will not feel better after having expressed your feelings, on the contrary, you will experience guilt. It did not bring you what you wanted, you are taught again that your behaviour is not accepted, and now you are wrong twice. There is obviously something very, very wrong with you. Not only for not "wanting to give the toy", but also the way you react to it. In this seemingly never-ending cycle your feelings of loneliness and separation increase, and so does your idea that there is something wrong with you that should be hidden and stowed away so that it may never come out again. You withdraw from contacts with other people. Maybe you look for support with people who go through the same experiences or show likewise reaction patterns, as a kind of comfort that you are not the only one who makes theses huge mistakes.

In a world that focuses on creating personalities (and then release it again), you might as well start to aim directly at the release-part, rather than the building-and-preventing-part. It all begins with you taking responsibility for whatever you experience. Which means that you are the only one who can chose to and really interpret a situation differently than before, thus changing the feelings that will emerge from it. You cannot control what the world does, but you can make choices about how to experience it and how you deal with it.

So, when you start to notice this kind of behaviour and feelings in yourself, allow yourself to experience them in full. t all starts with the belief that someone can do something to upset you, and that aggression can solve something for you, which ultimately simply is not so. It only usurps a lot of energy to try to justify your own aggression, and you will not even succeed in it. Remember the never-ending cycle you put yourself in. Look at your personality and what it does. And do not judge yourself for it, everyone has a personality with these patterns, only the one is more profound and the other expresses itself more socially acceptable. Work with yourself, and make space for your inner Self to become a more profound source of inspiration in your life. Remember that just because you may have chosen a more acceptable form of expressing your aggression, it is the same principles you are acting on as people who express it in a form of rage.