Feeling Skeptical About Verbal Self Defense

[emattson]

Right now, I feel skeptical whether verbal self defense can help defuse tense situation. Feelings of doubt came up while seeing a man in Bible study suddenly blow up in rage and started cussing and screaming at another guy. It started escalating when that other guy hefted a short wooden beam and waved it threateningly. At that time, I fled the scene so I don’t know the final outcome. I still can’t figure out why what he said could cause such a violent reaction. Verbal self defense can easily degrade into a “Blame the victim” abuse—“He deserves getting his face punched in because of what he said.” It can get incredibly difficult knowing how to defuse the situation, even more so if you don’t know the person.

I tried convincing people to get vaccinated. I show my well above average VO2 Max chart along with my daily average 13,000 steps recorded by my Apple Watch. Many family and friends were also vaccinated and they do alright. These are all excellent logical proofs that vaccinations don’t cause health problems but they won’t listen. I belong to a long line of family members who work in the medical profession so it is an important part of my heritage—like how restaurants play a major role in the Chinese culture. Several science Facebook groups I belong to automatically banish, without any warnings, anybody who publicize any Flat Earth theory or Moon Landing hoax. The Facebook administrators and I are burnt out, gave up trying to convince the denialists’ the truth so we just shun them.

If it’s that hard to convince people obvious truths, trying to politely ask someone seething with rage to just walk away feels futile. A friendly conversation won’t stop a "pick 'em out, knock 'em out" game nor convince the cussing man walking towards you with clenched fists to sit down and calmly talk about his feelings. Very low percentage of abusers change.
https://www.thehotline.org/resources/is ... an-abuser/

If you find any scholarly articles in the web which proves me wrong, please show them in this forum.