What is the 'distancer'?

What is the 'distancer'?

Mike Fisher (Founder - British Association of Anger Management) gives expert video advice on: Are there different styles of anger?; What is the 'intimidator'?; What is the 'interrogator'? and more...

The distancer is a very interesting character. The distancer has absolutely no awareness that they have an anger management problem. They tend to live in their heads. They completely cut off their environment from their feelings. And they tend to think through problems, rather than think and feel through problems. And the problem with them is that often what will happen is that a distancer will throw their anger grenade in the centre of the room, get up and walk out never to be seen again. And you don't often find distancers on anger management programs. They don't believe they have a problem with anger; everybody else has a problem with their anger. And when they do come to anger management programs, they spend the whole weekend or the whole 10 weeks trying to understand whether they have an anger problem or not. And of course that's one of the things that really winds other people up. The goal of the distancer is to get people to run after them begging for forgiveness and ask them to please come back home, ask them please come back into the organization…we love you, we need you, we want you. And also they make apologies about what they said to a distancer. So it puts the distancer into a superior position.