dealing with frustration and anger

[Beth]

Hi,

I was wondering how one goes best to deal with the frustration induced by crazy people (of all kinds).
While Randi has superhuman patience for them and endures their ramblings patiently waiting and refuting every statement they make afterwards. I get this insane urge to shout at my screen "you crazy people, get professional help!". This might be a character defect of me (I'm not very patient) but I was wondering how other people on this forum deal with these frustrations and anger.

I guess replying to them and saying you think they are certified insane is a breach of forum rules.

Yelling at your screen is perfectly okay and a fine way to deal with your frustration in the privacy of your home. If you do it at work or on a public computer, you may find yourself the target of someone saying "You crazy person. Get professional help!"

 

[Baby Nemesis]

This is one reason people shouldn't be too quick to dismiss people with "woo" beliefs as crazy, just for expressing them. When you don't know how they got to have those beliefs, you don't know whether they got them for reasons that would have seemed just as valid to you if you were them.

From the article linked to:

My best friend in Haiti, Bòs, died two weeks ago. He was the one that I ate meals with for two years while I served in Haiti as a Peace Corps volunteer. He was the one who welcomed me into his house as a family member. He was the one who showed me around the village and who sat underneath the big neem tree with me as the sun set over the fields of millet on the other side of the 10-foot wide Route Nationale # 2. And two weeks ago, he died at the age of 47.

His son told me that he died of something 'unexplainable', something caused by a 'voodoo curse'. Yet, I believe that he died because of something that is indeed very explainable and much more scary than a voodoo curse- I believe he died because of poverty and the lack of access to adequate healthcare.

Haiti is the 'poorest country in the Western Hemisphere'. This is a tagline that accompanies almost all news of Haiti. And the healthcare indices support this association. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Haiti has an infant mortality rate of 120 per 1,000 live births and a life expectancy of 53 years. ...

For so many Haitians, the struggle is not only with a lack of treatment options, but also with a lack of diagnostic capabilities. Many, like my best friend Bòs, die without ever knowing what kills them. They do not even have the opportunity to know that there may be a drug that, although too expensive for them to buy, could save their life.

Of course, although left 'unexplained', there is always a reason given for the death - 'the wind was changing', 'God decided it was time for them to die', or 'someone had laid a voodoo curse upon the victim'. This last explanation, a voodoo curse, is often the hardest one for the family to deal with. For, in the case of Bòs, his son now has to deal with trying to understand who cursed his father and why. As he explained to me on the phone last week, his aunt may have arranged the curse because she has had such an inimical relationship with Bòs's wife. Or, he said, it could have been one of Bos's coworkers who was jealous for some reason. And now the son must also wonder if he too is in danger. ...

 

[JohnG]

"I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them"












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