Dealing with unwarranted aggression

Being a particularly sensitive (oftentimes hypersensitive) being, this is a quandary which I have spent a great deal of time thinking about, because no matter how much you prepare yourself for an encounter with this kind of dickholery, the way that you respond to it comes from the fight-or-flight instinct, and it kicks in before you get a say in the matter. 

So the first step, for me, was acknowledging that in this scenario  it's reaction rather than action that you have control over. You can't stop someone being a dick, but you can condition your reaction to be less damaging to your mental health. The key word being condition - choosing a strategy and then consciously reminding yourself of it until the strategy becomes instinct. 

I think that people who are consistently tools spend the majority of their lives in fight-or-flight, because they are emotionally underdeveloped - they live in constant fear of not being the alpha, without ever realising it. They don't have the intellectual or emotional experience to conceive that their actions affect others because their permanent state of fear prevents them thinking about anything but their own survival. Once you can recognise and acknowledge that, it's a small step to actually pitying them. They are, in essence, a frightened animal. A dog that bites you because its life thus far makes it think you are going to beat it rather than pet it, will calm down only when it sees you aren't a threat. 

So make allowances for it. Instinct pushes us to think "why should I? Why should I go easy on them when they are such a dick?". The answer is simple, though hard to digest: you should because no one else ever has. You should because when they see you aren't a threat they have a chance of emerging from fight-or-flight and seeing things rationally. Assess the situation and find a way to make *their* life easier and you will find that, with very few exceptions, making *your* life easier is a happy by-product. And as a bonus, you leave the encounter with the feeling that you may just have helped someone who has never actually seen compassion, rather than feeling you've just gone ten rounds with Tyson