Wise strategy, imho.
Sometimes. . . . only sometimes . . .
one can also provoke thought along the lines of . . .
and after your hysterical fit, what will you then do?
And then?
And then?
And then?
until they realize that there may be better alternatives to decompensating wholesale.
Of course, trying to deal rationally with someone skilled at buying into an irrational construction on reality and ‘forcing’ those around them to join them therein . . .
can be a tricky maneuver!
I am embarrassed to recall that the strategy had worked on me as long as it had. You ask what happens after the tantrum.
My relative was refreshed by her own tantrums - it discharged the psychological stress behind being co-morbid for 3 overlapping personality disorders. However, I was not refreshed by her rages because they were directed at me (she was too cowardly to confront the actual ‘offender’); I found them exhausting and quite damaging. I guess the answer is that training includes punishment - the tantrum is only part of the punishment, there’s always more (i.e. demeaning, clawing, undermining etc.) that is concealed. Punishment is delivered when others are not looking. Wonder if Biden was ‘taken to the woodshed’ after this incident. Then the goal becomes ‘avoid further abuse’ by intervening to defuse ‘impending rage’ episodes before they fester.
I suspect Biden is rather new spending time around someone who employs ‘impending rage’ episodes, especially because Biden seemed to find part of it amusing – but he has seen them. And Obama probably vented on him after that episode.
Yes, it is a…tricky...maneuver (**smiling…at the understatement…..that is large enough… to sustain its own gravitational field**)