Towards Understanding Aggression and Violence
By Kim Barthel and Bob Spensley
When we hear the words “aggression” and “violence”, we can feel the negativity in our body. The words create images that elicit memories from experiences that directly relate to pain and suffering. This COVID era with its unrelenting stress, uncertainty, isolation and division seems to have unveiled this aspect of humanity in both expected and unexpected places and people. Given that we are all capable of aggression and violence, aiming to understand its dynamic might be helpful.
In her insightful book Aggression in Play Therapy, Lisa Dion describes aggression as an extension of fear and dysregulation that is driven by a person’s perceptions of themselves and the world around them. When we consider the design of the human nervous system and its bias towards survival, we know that aggression is a form of sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight) activation that presents when threat or challenge is perceived. According to Dr. Paul Ekman “The primary message of anger is ‘Get out of my way’ and communicates anything from mere dissatisfaction to threats.” He describes the arousal state of anger to be a continuum of energy that ranges from mere annoyance to frustration, exasperation, argumentativeness, bitterness and vengefulness through to full-on fury. As this continuum of energy increases in intensity it shifts further away from its potential to offer valuable emotional information about the situation, towards absolute dysregulation and fragmentation.
How do we typically learn to regulate these intense experiences? Our neurobiology is elegantly designed to connect, to interact and to reason. Through the initial gleaming and beaming between caregivers and children that naturally occurs during early childhood development, a child receives sensitive attunement from their caregiver being soothed, engaged and regulated. Thought-leader Dr. Allan Schore has paved the way for decades, enhancing our understanding of what may happen when gleaming and beaming are absent or altered for the developing brain. Early in the 90’s Dr. Schore described how infants with mis-attuned caregivers may perceive aggressive or absent expressions in the faces of their caregivers, leaving the child’s developing brain with the interpretation that they are a threat or a source of alarm to their caregiver. Being incapable of mentalizing what might be happening for the caregiver, the child inevitably personalizes these perceived cues from their caregiver as being “about them”. As these developing brain circuits begin to hardwire, the child’s sense of self in relation to others, for better or for worse, emerges. These early adverse experiences can set the stage for potential challenges with interpersonal relationships across time.
How does developmental trauma connect to aggression and possibly violent behaviour? These same brain circuits that mature and support regulation through gleaming and beaming are the very same neural networks that regulate inhibit and learn to tolerate these potential high arousal states of aggression and violence. The Right Orbitofrontal Cortex together with the developing Right Prefrontal cortex matures within this dyadic dance between caregivers and children. These same parts of our brains evolve the executive functions of human behaviour such as impulse control, self-reflection, insight, empathy and self-compassion, qualities that are necessary to inhibit the excessive emotional arousal of anger and aggression.
Parts of the brain called the Thalamus and the Amygdala process sensations continuously throughout our lives, primitively appraising sensations as safe or threatening. A sound, a touch, a facial expression, a gesture, a movement towards or away from us can become coded as potential sensory triggers. These triggers may be associated with attachment ruptures, neglect, abuse or chaos from our recent past or from much earlier in our lives. The Amygdala has many pathways to ensure that reactions to threat are noticed; the brain is biased towards protection. Angry, defensive and aggressive actions often happen ahead of consciousness. Unlike the many defensive paths to ensure our personal survival, there are limited neural networks from the Cortex down to the Amygdala and the Thalamus that offer us reassurance and a tap on the shoulder to take an extended exhale to pause.
Why is aggression further fuelled by increasing stress? When the Amygdala is stoked by ongoing stress, it becomes on-fire with readiness to survive and holds the person hostage to the energy of readiness to respond. Irritability, lack of flexibility, decreased problem solving and lack of insight dominate the person’s cognitive patterns, minimizing the tools in their self-regulatory toolbox. Under these conditions, people don’t ask themselves “What could I have done differently?” or “How am I contributing to this conflict?”. In the presence of these stoked states of arousal, empathy and attunement to others is less possible. People begin to see danger even when it is not present. The target of our anger becomes more of an obstacle to overcome than someone or something to try to understand. Hostile attributional shifts begin to occur in mindsets, leading to misunderstanding the full situation as it is and often the desiring for revenge and punishment.
The accepted definition of violence is not just physical acts that result in physical harm; violence is aggression that has the intent to harm as its goal. The Cambridge Dictionary’s definition is succinct: “violence is actions or words that are intended to hurt people.” The World Health Organization divides violence into three categories according to who is committing the violence: Self-Directed, Interpersonal and Collective. It then divides violence into four further categories according to the nature of the violence: physical violence, sexual violence, psychological violence or neglect.
In addition to their individual contexts of increasing stress, what are other contributing factors towards why someone might be violent? In his ground-breaking book “The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime” Adrian Raine shares his life’s work illustrating how neurological differences in the brain that are either genetically predisposed or interrupted by developmental trauma can change how fear is perceived. These neurological differences can minimize experiences of guilt and shame in the offender, fueling violent reactions that can be remorseless. Fortunately, this level of violence is relative rare, but it does happen.
When confronted with it, how do we respond to aggression and violence?
· When true danger exists to our personal safety, fight, flight and freeze will arise automatically in attempt to keep us alive. These responses are to be honoured as adaptive behaviours that are protective when they happen.
· Curiosity and compassion toward the aggressor and towards ourselves (either in the moment or more likely across time) supports us in our own personal capacity for regulation in the face of these behaviours.
· When possible, we try to become the external brain of the offender, offering co-regulation to the other. This can happen through our gestural system, the tone of our voice, the expressions on our face, our body language and our breath.
· Less speaking is preferred. Less is more when anyone is activated.
· When the moment is right, we can aim to set boundaries with clarity and kindness. How we communicate our need for boundaries can increase our chances of them being respected. We need to stick with our boundaries without guilt.
· Most of all we need to take care of ourselves. It helps for us to notice our own emotional triggers and honour our own personal history with experiences of aggression and violence.
· We have a very hard time co-regulating others if we are not regulated ourselves. In order to be regulated, when it’s possible for us, we need to be connected to ourselves in real-time. In moments of intense stress, this takes self-awareness of the highest level.
· A key investment is to nurture our support networks of people we trust to have our backs when things do go wrong. And bring in professionals when needed.
What can I do if I realize I am the aggressive one?
· If I’m feeling myself being somewhere along the annoyance-to-fury continuum, in a moment of personal calm when I can find it, reflection is necessary. I could ask myself gently, what is behind my reaction?
· Rationalizing any relational situation isn’t the other’s fault 100%, how am I in any way contributing to the conflictual situation?
· How might others around me be feeling because of my actions?
· What can I do to make the situation easier for myself and the people I care about?
· What helps me self-regulate me when I am experiencing high stress?
· Who can I debrief with after an aggressive/violent moment who will help me see the big picture without leaving me feeling ashamed?
Four Universal Take-Aways:
1. Try to stay away from aggressive, violent behaviours
2. Appreciate humans are incapable of being their best selves in negatively-heightened states of arousal
3. Find moments of relative calm to allow for personal reflection
4. Attempt to take actions that consider all the factors involved
In this moment of relative calm, for which we are thankful, our conclusion on the topic today is this:
It’s through a simultaneous curiosity about our own experience AND what is going on for the other that allows us to lean into relational moments of negative intensity without losing ourselves. This is not easy, but all conscious evolutions begin with an intention.
References
Dion, L. (2018). Aggression in play therapy: A neurobiological approach for integrating intensity. WW Norton & Company.
Paul Ekman Group. (2021, May 25). Anger. https://www.paulekman.com/universal-emotions/what-is-anger/
Raine, A. (2014). The anatomy of violence: The biological roots of crime. Vintage.
Rass, E., & Bowlby, R. (2017). The Allan Schore reader: Setting the course of development. Routledge.
Schore, A. N. (2019). Right brain psychotherapy (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology). WW Norton & Company.