If we insist that we cannot help how we feel because of how others have provoked us, we have given up seeing ourselves as moral agents. We have abandoned our capability of being forgiving and instead are seeing ourselves as being driven to harshness we cannot help experiencing.
Consider that it really isn’t how other people treat us that determine our emotions and attitudes towards them. It is how we are treating them that reveals the quality of our hearts; that reveals whether we are inviters to forgiveness and peace, or provocateurs in fueling fires of hatred already smoldering.