People with extreme behaviors can make us uncomfortable, scared, and confused. Therefore, living in a world with 7 billion people, there is a good change we will run into these extreme people. This is why it is a good idea to understand how to deal with these extreme cases.
Who Are People With An Extreme Behavior?
People, who are most likely to make us stressed or uncomfortable simply because they are in the room are:
- Higher status people, like the president of a country;
- People who we are attracted to, like some people of the opposite gender; and
- People who we don’t like or understand, like, for example, our boss, gay people, and religious extremists.
We feel stressed and perhaps threatened by these people because:
- We don’t know how these people are and what they can do,
- We feel physically threatened by their presence,
- There is something about that person that is unattractive or even repulsive to us.
I call these people – People with Extreme Behavior because they are outside of our comfort zone, and they have some power over us.
Why Extreme People Make Us Uncomfortable
We cannot control other people, and we should not control other people, but their presence can cause a physical reaction of discomfort, such as to make sweat and experience our body tensing up. This is, extreme people can put us into a fight-or-flight mode.
This is a purely illogical emotional state.
The majority of people chose to flight in an uncertain situation, but some decided to fight. This is when violence can become an issue.
If a person can negatively affect another person, some ancient, underlying logic says that this other person is an enemy.
Why Do People Do Extreme Things?
This is a million-dollar question because answering this question can end all violence, hurt, misunderstanding, and many other problems we face today.
In order to understand this question, let’s assume that someone is doing something you don’t like. Even within your family or friends, you might know examples of situations where people do not make you the happiest you can be.
Let’s try to put ourselves into their shoes and understand logically and openly why they are doing what they do.
From a person’s perspective with an extreme behavior, they are following something they think is right, at least at that moment.
At any moment, a given person has particular needs that he or she is trying to fulfill. Some needs that humans try to satisfy on periodic bases need connection, a need to get things done, and a need to be happy.
It All Comes Down To Our Needs And How we Satisfy Them
Sometimes people try to fulfill these needs in ways that other people don’t agree or understand. Sometimes people themselves don’t agree or know how they achieve their own needs by involving themselves in already mentioned violent acts.
We do have an unlimited amount of needs that we want to fulfill. After all, we all want to be millionaires because we think that we can satisfy all these needs with enough money. Still, only a truly tremendous amount of money can make us complete, but then what?
As a comedian Jim Carrey ones said:
“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer”.
So people don’t have an infinite amount of resources. It is not the end of the world.
We Just Don’t Know Any Better
Many people are not doing things that they particularly enjoy, and you have to do chores all the time, I bet. It’s not the end of the world.
Sometimes we cannot deal with how things are going, and we rebel, almost like teenagers, and we start doing extreme things to stand up to the way things are, just because we don’t know any better.
Sometimes we act less than rational, and we work on pure emotion. We do a thing because we are spoiled. We want instant emotional gratification, and we want it now.
The negative side of becoming an extreme person is that it often leads us nowhere. When did a defensive or negative fight-or-flight instinct get you anywhere in life? When was a tattoo a solution to self-esteem problems? When did racism and discrimination make a world a better place?
We Don’t Always Have the Best Tactics
Our world can be a scary place because of other people who live in it. It is so because some people are extreme, or at least we perceive them to be so. By putting ourselves in their shoes and understanding that everyone is trying to fulfill specific needs, we can understand that some people don’t have the best tactics to meet their needs. Finally, we realize that we don’t always have the best tactics to fulfill our needs.
Then we are free from the complexity of extreme behavior.
