I was raised in a very quiet home where conflicts never escalated to verbally abusive fights or yelling and certainly not any kind of physical aggression. I have a lot of empathy for others.

My roommate comes from a troubled past and has no family support and has trust and trauma issues with others. I can see how his pain is what is causing his behaviour.

When he gets really stressed or emotional, it is common for him to punch cupboards or walls or furniture or throw his belongings and yell or growl. Occasionally something of mine will be impacted but he hasn’t broken anything of mine and is never yelling at me or throwing anything at me or threatening me physically, it all seems very self-directed and contained, just like he is out of control. I don’t think he is in a financial or resources position to be able to afford therapy (I think he actually would like therapy, he’s actually pretty in touch with his emotions and is able to speak about them and these episodes are fairly rare but come up in clusters of occurrences when he is very stressed from work or life or relationships).

When this happens, and for some time after even once it has stopped and hasn’t happened for a while, I feel jumpy and kind of freeze about what I should do in the moment. If I am in my room I feel uncomfortable leaving to go to the bathroom or kitchen or to leave the house. Once it is long past, I feel okay enough to bring it up gently and he is very open to the conversation and remorseful and ashamed, because he doesn’t see himself as “that person” (and I don’t think others do either, he’s usually very patient and kind and in control), but eventually it does seem to happen again (I’m guessing because he doesn’t have the coping skills to address it or prevent it).

I have had other people with emotional self-regulation issues enter my life before (mostly at work or school), and because I have so little experience with navigating these kinds of outbursts, and because my brain seems to just freeze, I tend to just avoid the person or stay silent. I do want to work on that for my own sake (in situations where engaging is safe - which I’m struggling to figure out). I was proud of myself that I was able to approach my roommate eventually, but am still figuring out what my healthy boundaries should be and how to best communicate them or how to handle it if one is crossed, for both of our benefits.

Has anyone else navigated a similar situation or been on either side of this scenario? I want to be supportive but fair to myself and don’t want to enable harmful behaviour but also don’t want to tolerate any kind of abusive or unsafe environment (beyond what is “reasonable”? / “expected?” / “predictable?” / “under a certain threshold?” - struggling with what criteria / standards to use to figure this out for myself).

It feels tricky because it’s more of a harm to the safety of our shared space than a direct threat to myself, and because it‘s not consistently frequent, and it happens the same each time, it doesn’t escalate, but it also doesn’t improve or become more manageable for me on the receiving end.

Ugh sorry. I’m not sure if this is just emotional verbal diarrhea. Many thanks if you engage / provide perspective or resources or wisdom.

I care about him and want the best for both of us.