This can be in regards to fighting or other areas of life. I think you can either choose to fight the emotion of feeling intimidated, accept the emotion, or find a way to not feel the emotion at all. These sound like your three options. Any thoughts?
I was bullied a lot when I was younger. Eventually I just got sick of being intimidated. I really think that accepting the feeling is not a good way to live life. If you want to be happy then you need to be able to stand up for yourself and tell people when they have crossed a line. Most of the time they don't even know they crossed the line and even if they did know they usually back down.
Intimidation is essentially a form of fear. Fear what a person is capable of doing and that you think they are intending, threatening, or may just end up doing. So you either accept the consequences of these perceived actions. This can be a good or bad thing; if you accept them because, on reflection, they aren't that important to you, then you have balanced your priorities and are happy with them. It can also be bad because you begin to see bad consequences as inevitable and accept them on that basis. On the other hand you can take action so that you reduce or remove the consequence or their ability to perform the action. Whether this is seeking backing, solving a dispute or being able to kick their ****, or anything else. This is my opinion on overcoming intimidation.
The best way to deal with intimidation is tough talk, bluster, and obscene references to the other chap's mother.
I came up with a situation like this at work, stayed on two hours one night to get a difficult transfer sorted out, first thing the next morning the manager from one of the wards involved came up and started trying to insinuate it was my fault it took so long. Kept telling me 'it wasn't my fault, but it was a learning experience for me' the passive-aggressive little weasel. I tried to talk and discuss things, but kept getting talked over and interrupted, which really got on my nerves. Eventually wound up leaning on the desk and cracking my neck, before getting thoroughly ****ed off and launched in to a lengthy diatribe about exactly how he'd made my life difficult. So I've actually recently been guilty of being the intimidator. What's worse is it worked...very quickly became a 'learning experience for all of us' before being it turned out to just have been unfortunate. Regardless, I rather hope it doesn't become a pattern.
Is this question directed towards people who appear to attempt to be intimidating, or actually have known credentials or experience that make them intimidating? I've experienced both in generous quantities. Those who try to be intimidating I have found to actually lack any real reason to be intimidated by. Those who are intimidating naturally because of their experience, knowledge, or expertise tend to try and not be too intimidating until the idiot who tries to intimidate comes along. If you're not that person, and that person appears intimidating to you, I find they'll back off a little bit if you mention it to them given a proper setting. I come from a different background then most and part of my choices in life so far have been to prepare myself for a lot of different situations so I can lead my life the way I want to, regardless of anybody else. I'm also a pretty big guy, opinionated when I find a conviction in something, and anti-social so I don't find a whole lot of things I'm intimidated by and meet intimidation with humor and upfront acknowledgment that I feel intimidated. It usually works for me. Such is not the case for everyone. I think the best remedy for intimidation is to find what type of things you are intimidated by, and if they mean enough to you seek training, knowledge, and experience in the area. If you have the legitimate background experience in a certain area that tends to give you enough confidence to not be intimidated by others because it is no longer an area of "the unknown." Intimidation is a form of fear, and fear often comes from the unknown. If you gather experience in an area and become comfortable, I find you tend not to maintain that fear and thus you are no longer intimidated.
Ya, probably. I took the latter route. Outside of work, I took up knife fighting and general standup "jujitsu" for a while. After that it was several years of getting thrown and thrown and thrown and thrown in aikido. By the end of it, I'd been beaten down so many times, and whacked with sticks and training knives so many times, that nobody scared me. Absolutely nobody. Color me stupid, but I honestly can not be intimidated by anyone, because I've already been beat up. I've broken several bones over my life, so the threat of a broken leg or something doesn't mean anything to me either. In work, I was a lawyer representing people before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). That's pretty much the scariest piece of the US Government. If there's a devil, that's where he works. Come on, after being stared down by those guys, everybody else is Hello Kitty and Strawberry Shortcake by comparison. :evil:
This is true a lot of the time. Personally i push peoples limits a lot, especially when i'm getting to know people, it's good for me to know where that line is. i want the other person to snap and say "no thats not okay, you cant do that" so at least i know where the line is. probably a bad way of going about social interaction!
