I live in Vancouver Canada which has a terrible society, I haven’t been to New York but from what I’ve heard it’s a little bit similar. Vancouver is full of angry, depressed, inconsiderate, disrespectful, anxious people. A lot of drug and alcohol addicts. Not everyone is like this but a lot are.
Public verbal abuse and harassment is normal, like on the streets you sometimes see people screaming and yelling at random strangers. Especially in downtown.
Occasionally I’m targeted because I commute by public transit, and those people are everywhere and unavoidable, and while it pisses me off, in my head I just think “this is normal.” And just focus on my priorities and responsibilities for the day.
I think if I was in my early 20’s I would have been snapping back but I’m turning 30 in 3 months and I’m not sure if I’m just become “weaker” or just had enough of this shitty environment lol. Part of me wants to murder the guy, and the other part is just like “same shit, different day…” and mentally blocks it.
Like in my early 20’s I would just react with yelling “shut the F up!” or sometimes resort to getting physical. But I feel like I don’t have the energy to verbally fight anymore. This is mainly due to a concussion I had 3 years ago.
However, 100% I’m confident I could physically take anyone, I’ve been lifting weights for 9 years and have trained kickboxing and jiutjitsu for 2 years. It’s just dealing with this stuff mentally is hard.
For people 30+, 40+ etc how do you react to this stuff, random disrespectful or harassing strangers? It affects my mental health, but I feel it’s unavoidable due to just the way things are here.
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You are already doing the right things.
You don’t want to answer people like that back. It feeds them the attention they want, it encourages them to do more, and it can escalate the situation.
You certainly don’t want to get physical. Fights as an adult mean lasting injuries and criminal records.
You may want to consider moving.
For what it is worth, whenever I’ve visited New York the people there have been helpful and kind, though a tad blunt.
Don’t live in such a city but spent a week in New York. Encountered such an individual. It was so cliche my immediate reaction was to just start laughing. It was absurd. Regardless, my reaction seemed to catch them off guard. They shut up, turned around, and walked.
Can’t say I give a shit about crazies. I truly don’t.
But where I live we don’t see that shit.
I take it headphones aren’t enough to dissuade harassers? As someone who lives in the American South where everyone is strapped, this is a bit of a foreign concept. Everyone here knows anyone can be packing and it has the effect of forcing people to keep their shit to themselves.
I ignore it.
Maybe the fact that I spent some time working on New York subways helps. I saw that crap for many hours, every day and couldn’t leave.
If a toddler was yelling at me, I wouldn’t feel compelled to react.
If a drunk was yelling that he could see through my disguise, and I was part of the team of lizard aliens that had probed him last night, I wouldn’t feel compelled to do much more than stifle a giggle.
Just because they use different words that sound slightly less ridiculous, I don’t have to treat it as any less ridiculous. They are damaged people, looking for attention, saying/yelling ridiculous things until they get a reaction. Get the reaction elsewhere.
Why do I care what random people have to say? I don’t respect their opinions at all. They aren’t experts, and they aren’t people I care about impressing.
Even if I do think they are mentally ill and yelling directly at me – how do I know what is going on in their head? Is there a hallucination standing in front of me that is the target? Do they imagine I look like a giant football or a giant hedgehog? I’d be upset seeing a giant hedgehog, too!
They are damaged. Again, there is no point to put any weight behind their words.
The only time it becomes something worth acting on is when it becomes physical. Try to maintain a position where you are near a door or escape route. See if you can stay visible on cameras. If you have to physically defend yourself, then make sure you call the emergency number right away, and hang around to talk to them. Get any medical help you might need (even if you just cover your own butt), and remind them that the other party needs mental help on top of any physical injuries.
While I don’t encounter it, I personally feel a lot of anger and antipathy towards people these days that wasn’t there before. I don’t know when it started. Maybe before the lockdowns.
I feel quite guilty about the dislike I have for other people. I even had a go at someone at work the other day because she and her friend talk all day and do very little work.
I’m thinking of getting therapy because I don’t like lashing out.
I’m British and about 20 years ago I was in Vancouver and yeah, the people did seem miserable. It was like being home! Nothing like Seattle where everyone seemed so nice.
Just be chill. Don’t let things get to you.
One thing that I’ve come to realize is how little you remember of each and every little thing that you let bother you.
Do you remember that one time you missed a red light four years ago? Or when some guy asked you for money relentlessly? Or when the like you were was going slower than the other lines?
My rubric is, if I won’t remember it then it’s really not worth my energy and mental space to stress about it.
Really? I am stunned by your description of Vancouver. I am from Central Europe and for somebody like me Canada is like a miracle nature paradise. I have heard that many us cities have problems with drug addicts and homeless people but i have never thought that this could reach Vancouver.
Where i live, people are very contained, a little bit depressed maybe but rarely snippy or aggressive. I do not get into physical contact with people so it is a total different situation for me. Allthough i live in a major city i live a really quiet life.
Dalton in Roadhouse said it best
*Be nice…until it’s time to not be nice”
Politeness and empathy go a long way at diffusing tense situations.
And always do your best to ignore when you can.
If you’re asking about how I act, and how I felt, I have an example b/c something happened to me this week. I live in a pretty tame area but had an encounter where I also got verbally harassed by a couple of strangers. Was already mega-stressed/trying to have a phone convo with my brother while I was walking, so I was not in a patient mood. I’m also a bigger guy who’s trained in a lot of combat sports (wrestling/boxing), so there was one voice in my brain saying: “How dare they? Are they stupid? They don’t even know me, I could be anyone… I could be a crazy dude! There are no witnesses here, I’m at minimum 6 inches taller and 60lbs heavier than the bigger one… are they saying they think they’d come out on top?! I could BREAK them like FUCKING TWIGS *bla bla bla more angry thoughts here*”
But that is just one voice in my head, and I had many other thoughts come in like:
* You don’t want to ruin your life over this by hurting someone.
* You don’t want to ruin *their* life over them just verbally harassing you, even if you got away with it.
* What do you gain from this?
* Maybe they have a concealed weapon, maybe there are witnesses we are unaware of.
* Maybe they are just stupid? Or maybe they’re high? There’s a lot of high school kids around here who get doped up…
* Don’t do it. We’re not the type of person who brings violence into a verbal conflict.
What I ended up doing was telling my brother who I was on the phone with that I needed a second, turned to them and calmly explained in a sentence why the thing they were laughing at me about was unfair. They didn’t respond, just chuckled, we both went our separate ways and that was it.
I guess what I’m saying is I get why you felt the way you do, I get why it’s frustrating, but I also think that you and I acted the right way in that situation. If you’re a bigger guy like me, maybe you aren’t used to being harassed by people in public, so when it starts happening it does take you by surprise. Probably best if we start thinking about how we’ll act when someone harasses us so it doesn’t get under our skin as much.
And for anyone reading, no, I’ve never assaulted someone or anything like that, I’ve never been in a fight that wasn’t a sanctioned part of sporting event, let alone instigated one. Just was trying to communicate how it’s normal to have intense and angry thoughts about wanting to hurt someone, but how that doesn’t make you the type of person who will act on them.