The Credible Hulk

Last night I had a dream that I made out with Bruce Banner as portrayed by Mark Ruffalo.  That's neither here nor there.

Can you blame me?
(Source)

This is a post about something I realized yesterday.  First, can we all stipulate that I am very quick witted?  Anyone who has talked to me for any length of time can probably see that.  It's likely an artifact of 1) having lots of time to be alone with my thoughts so I can formulate them in clever ways and 2) watching too much well-written TV.

However, my quick wit, though one of my strongest selling points, has an unfortunate side effect:  when I am feeling angry or defensive, I have the capacity to be incredibly cruel.  I find exactly the right weapon and whittle it down to a true and unforgiving point.  Most often, I am the sole victim of my own cruelty, but I know that other people have experienced it as well.  If my cruel self were a character in a movie, she would be considered hilariously well-written, but in reality, she is ugly and I nearly hate her.  I am glad that I had recently seen The Avengers, because I know that this is how Bruce Banner felt about The Hulk, to have this monster inside of him that he must do everything in his power to control.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to be invited somewhere, and the person who invited me understood that I might not want to go.  And I didn't.  Not because it would be uncomfortable or painful (although it would be), but because I knew there would be a strong chance that The Hulk would come out, and I certainly didn't want people who were just on the cusp of becoming my friends to see that person.

So my question to all of you is this:  what can I do, short of moving to some remote village in India where I will never ever feel provoked (isn't that what he did in The Avengers? I missed the beginning of the movie), to deal with unpleasant people/situations without my absolute worst self coming out?  If I can figure out how to alleviate this, something good will have come out of my Hulk revelation (in addition to a dream about making out with Mark Ruffalo, that is).