Pedestrian Rage
During the school week I live in town. Everything is easily accessible and in walking distance. I walk everywhere that I need to go and being a pedestrian in town is dangerous. Cars tend to drive fast and it is congested causing traffic. There are cars that wait for pedestrians to cross and there are the ones that don't. The ones who don't lack the patience to let pedestrians cross the street safely and make walking dangerous.
One day I was on my way to Ala Moana with my friend. We were crossing the street going towards the Convention Center. A few yards down there is a bus stop and when the bus stops the back of the bus ends right in the middle of the cross walk or a little before. My friend and I were standing at the corner waiting for the signal to cross the street. A bus was at the bus stop and a van pulled up behind the bus leaving the van in the way of the intersection. The light turned red and the van was still sticking out. Then the signal to cross turned on and my friend and I had to go between the bus and the van to cross the street. As we were walking the van moved forward and my friend and I stopped dead in our tracts. We both turned and looked at the driver who was a lady and we were raging. She stopped the van in time, but it was a shock that she did that. My friend who is a verbal person yelled at the lady "you f_ _ _ing bitch" . I just stared down the lady with a stink eye as I proceeded to walk along. We could not believe the lady almost hit us. She probably moved forward because she was in the way of the intersection and decided to try and move out of the way. Even if that was the case I was still angry, my friend was angry, and all that ran through our minds was the feeling that our safety was put in danger. We were in a situation that gave us the right of way and this lady was in the wrong. If she saw us that is good that she pays attention, but if she did not see us then that is a problem. Regardless, when I saw the van move it made me freeze and I was scared and the lady knew what she did and never said sorry . My friend should not have sworn at the lady and I should not have stared her down. We handled the situation in an aggressive way and that was wrong.
Step 1: Acknowledge
I acknowledge that I had pedestrian rage. I was not just angry at the lady I was past the point of normal anger. It was rage that could have been uncontrollable if the lady did anything threatening back at us. It would have helped if she apologized, but she did not. My rage hit me when I looked at the lady and made eye contact with her.
Step 2: Witness
My sensorimotor behavior was clearly expressed on my face. I had the stink eye that could have been smelled a mile away. My first reaction was to freeze, which is a natural instinct that meant I was scared. My body was stiff and did not move until the van stopped. Then I realized I was not going to be hit and I turned to look at the lady and when I saw her face the first sign of rage was how my face went from shock to anger in a second. I kept a straight posture and started to walk while still staring at her until I could not walk straight and see her. After that I would turn and look towards the van constantly until the van was gone.
My cognitive behavior was full of swear words that wanted to come out. My friend beat me to it. It flew out of her mouth so fast she did not realize what she actually said. I kept thinking did she see us, was she just being evil, what if she did not stop, she did not say sorry, she new we were mad, so what was she thinking, and boy did that scare me to death. My thoughts fueled my rage and talking to my friend who was just as angry fueled the rage twice as much.
My affective behavior was fear. I felt like the world stopped for that split second and everything moved in slow motion. I felt like I had no control and did not know what to do and my immediate reaction was to freeze. The feeling of being scared is not pleasant. Scared is not knowing what is going to happen with no way out. That feeling made me angry when I recovered from freezing.
Step 3: Modify
To modify my behavior in that type of situation is hard. The only thing I can think of is to not have an aggressive reaction. It only causes the situation to become hostile and sometimes escalate into an incident that everyone would regret. I need to learn to control my emotional rage and turn it into a positive way to deal with things. I need to stop and think. What I should have thought was the lady did stop and I am okay and that is all that matters. Turning negative thoughts into positive ones needs constant awareness of my thoughts. This is possible all it needs is time.
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