Wild emotions

I'm not known for expressing wild emotions. The wild emotions are there all right, I'm very aware of them churning away inside me somewhere, but I keep them to myself rather than hurling them at everyone else.

Others are less restrained. They shout abuse at the TV or the neighbours. They scream at other motorists who've annoyed them. They throw crockery or books. They send vitriolic emails. They slice up their cheating spouse's clothes.

Do they feel better for such extreme behaviour or worse? I've no idea. But I definitely feel better for keeping my more fevered emotions to myself. I don't want to end up doing something I bitterly regret 24 hours later but can't undo.

I find it embarrassing and disturbing when I'm present at such outbursts, and feel much relieved when things quieten down again. It's not that I don't sympathise. I know it's a natural response to utter frustration or distress. But I still find it acutely uncomfortable to watch.

I hate seeing parents shouting and screaming at their children. I hate seeing couples having violent arguments. I hate it when people let rip at hapless sales assistants, waiters or airline staff. I'm sure there must be less frenzied, less melodramatic ways of dealing with the problem.

On the odd occasion when I'm so consumed with rage that I express it openly and volubly, people are amazed. They're so used to me as the picture of calm and reasonableness. They're so used to me as the mediator, the one whose first instinct is to settle differences and patch things up.

Oh, and I cried freely at work once over the way I'd been treated by the boss. He must have been pretty vile, as I rarely cry, even in private.

But road rage? Chucking crockery? Cutting up clothes? About as likely as a lunar eclipse.

Shocked

When I was younger, I used to say that nothing shocked me any more, that I'd seen and read so many horrifying things that nothing had the same impact as it used to.

But somewhere along the line something changed and now I find that an increasing number of things shock me profoundly. I don't know if it's because people's behaviour is genuinely becoming more extreme and outrageous, or because I've become more sensitive, or because I recoil from the sheer brutality and heartlessness of what's going on. But whatever it is, these are just some of the things that shock me:

1) Abusive social media campaigns. Like the one directed at Northern Ireland MLA* Anna Lo recently, thick with racism and sexism.

2) Extreme drunkenness in public, often requiring emergency hospital treatment and sometimes fatal.

3) Systematic bullying in workplaces, causing widespread stress and sickness.

4) Routine lying by politicians, leading to general disillusion with politics.

5) Withdrawal of welfare benefits to the poor and disabled, causing severe distress and hardship.

6) Mass shootings at schools, traumatising pupils and their families for years afterwards.

7) Female genital mutilation, on a huge scale in numerous countries.

8) Wholesale rape by soldiers as a military tactic and a display of power.

I'm getting used to being shocked. But I'm not getting used to the things I'm shocked by. And there seem to be more and more of them.

*MLA: Member of the Legislative Assembly. Our equivalent of an MP