How do you deal with anger?

[Phill4]

Hi DBZ, i was reading your post, and reading your reaction to M ringed a bell to my own accounnt with customers in another thread, i am looking at your reaction a bit differently, mainly how i am projecting it to this situation.


As far as the reaction, consider that you calculated this situation a while ago, somehow you knew she would have this reaction based on comentary of E to you, and it was left to just escalate, when this situation took place you had a reaction ready. In a sense you studies her reactions and your subconcious picked how she would have nothing to say, and looking for the fullfilement of this plan.

From your usual way of reacting to that which we perceive justice and self-preservation.

It isn't something i have not observed in my own petty dramas at work, and some observations of this dynamic. I may have a wrong interpretation of your account since i don't know all of it.

What i find to bring to attention is that your reaction is flowing outside of your control, it is crystalized as means to have a quick way to respond when situation requires it. The problem is that it has been carefully calculated, you knew the way she was, and you are externally reacting an external symptom from a person with so many issues.

Having a calm attitude would have done nothing at this point, but on the other hand the situation was left to scalare this far, when you had already made the observation that she had problems, the course of action instead of asking for rights and consideration from a person who developed self-centerness over time, maybe take steps to move E out of the situation and have her own place. The things were left to mechanical clash between who screams louder. Consider that maybe part of you may be attracted to arguing, dynamics at play may be fed by the energy produced in an argument.

In terms of M's situation, spending some time evaluating "the people we allow in our field" their situation and external consideration that maybe she is not stable enough to reason with reason and how her own suffering and potential attraction of attachment may be a big open window for attack for E and by proxy you.

You can't expect M to consider herself "sick individual" and therefore adapt to your view of her and find the light in a reaction contest. Obviously she was not expecting it, because E sinlently puts up with it to keep peace.

But just because you don't eat the lion doesn't mean the lion wont eat you, E should have more awareness of the risk, while at this point it is best to take steps to drop this one and move to a place where E doesn't have to deal with a person with so many issues and have to endure issues of M that have many inplications.

It may not be fair from the point of view of the contract in renting the place and the agreement for moving , but some people just don't have that kind of respect in comunity enviroments, and there is where you find injustice and need to prove a point, but this is taking part on trying to change someone who need proffesional help drains your energy.

Just some thoughts

 

[cs21]

This is a very good thread and question. I read the others posts and found similarities with petite femme concerning her father. My father was often angry because of his frustration : the impossibility to do what he wanted when he wanted it. I think, it was my analyse. I took this anger for me when I was a child, and started to feel guilty. Later, I became the same : I was angry for everything, repeating the pattern of my childhood. Somehow, I realized that I didn't want to be that kind of person and started to manage and understand this deep anger. I kept my calm in circumstances where it was impossible for me to be calm before. Today, I can say that I more calm. But, few years ago, I met somebody, and the story started to change : this person started to trigger my old anger deeply buried. I sometimes felt hate (especially when I started the iodine protocol) and I noticed that my anger was correlated to my hormons cycle. I must admit that I totally depend on my hormons cycle : I feel more sensitive in the way that every single word I hear would potentially become an offense.... and the question is : do I have to listen to this anger (which could be triggered by hormons cycle?) which could be an amplified alarm of a real offense or maybe do I have to work on this cycle and make the difference between a real offense and an amplified phenomenom due to the hormon...
I don't know if I am clear, I just wanted to note that, for women especially, hormon cycle can play an important role on anger feelings , I found the thread very interesting.

 

[Phill4]

Hello cs21, since you are aware of this situation, i think is best to evalue/explore further what is your situation with the person you are with. Your situation with your father, your general reactions etc.

Eventhough it is hormonal and im taking your word as a woman since i can't relate, what you said seems like a hint about this person and your father, what is it about this person that makes you angry?

And more precisely what is the narrative involved? Meaning is there a situation playing in your head when you feel angry at this person? Things he has done? Previous offences? Etc..

We can be angry homonally or by any other factor but if there is a connection to this particular person it seems like a repetitive cycle, and you were able to spot it.

Here is the thing with "being calm" in the regular sense, we control our outward reactions, and repress them, but that is not calmness , as you mentioned "burried anger" started to come out, we neglect the actual meaning of the anger along with the anger itself by suppresing it, even if you can control your reactions, they get burried every time to maintain stability (remaining calm). Calmness is good but not every time. In reality remining calm is a bit more dificult state to get to, for that we need inner peace, and we reach inner peace by solving our inner conflicts, but that is another subject.

You seemed to have made a connection between your father's anger, and this new wave of reactions, i think instead of just reacting in anger or "calming down" in the typical sense what is important is to explore it in honesty, to explore the connection between your father and this person. To try to get to the bottom of the anger, there may be another emotion or dynamic hidding/playing in the background

People have an effect on us, specially if they are romantic ones, they often bring things about us that "were not there" and trigger certain reactions in ways we/they don't know and viceversa.

I found it interesting, since you recognize there is more to it, and wanted to drop a comment

 

[Fluffy]

Thanks a lot for this Chu.
I have a few people in my family who could benefit from this. My teen daughter is the main one I have in mind.
She has just spent a few weeks in a adolescent mental health unit a few hours away in Shellharbour as a result of years of suppressed emotion which she dealt with by cutting herself. The only real emotion she expresses is anger yet not in a good way at all, she wants to make the people around her suffer as much or more than she does and this has caused many fights where her objective is to make (me in particular) them cry.

I'm not generally an angry person, I have usually always been able to pull myself up at the frustration phase of anger, sometimes it has gone into the silent treatment phase but I want to resolve things quickly so it doesn't stay there long. However, understanding things deeper will certainly give me tools to help my daughter with her anger. I doubt she will read any of it (she might, she's full of surprises) so if I learn to help her identify her patterns and the reasons then may be we can begin to get to the root of the problem.

I have found her time at Shellharbour has helped her with some things to distract her from her feelings rather than confronting them, this isn't the best approach IMO but it's a start to stopping the cutting when she feels the need to do that. Then may be when she's more in control and in a better headspace she can learn to watch her feelings rather than run from them.

I'll have a through read of the whole pdf.
So far it looks very helpful to our situation at home.

 

[cs21]

Hello Felipe4, and thank you very much for your answer.

i think is best to evalue/explore further what is your situation with the person you are with. Your situation with your father, your general reactions etc.

Exactly, I know this person is, somehow, my father. It is like I was healing a part of myself or, if it's not healing (probably not), maybe understanding something I didn't understand.

We can be angry homonally or by any other factor but if there is a connection to this particular person it seems like a repetitive cycle, and you were able to spot it.

Here is the thing with "being calm" in the regular sense, we control our outward reactions, and repress them, but that is not calmness , as you mentioned "burried anger" started to come out, we neglect the actual meaning of the anger along with the anger itself by suppresing it, even if you can control your reactions, they get burried every time to maintain stability (remaining calm). Calmness is good but not every time. In reality remining calm is a bit more dificult state to get to, for that we need inner peace, and we reach inner peace by solving our inner conflicts, but that is another subject.

You seemed to have made a connection between your father's anger, and this new wave of reactions, i think instead of just reacting in anger or "calming down" in the typical sense what is important is to explore it in honesty, to explore the connection between your father and this person. To try to get to the bottom of the anger, there may be another emotion or dynamic hidding/playing in the background

People have an effect on us, specially if they are romantic ones, they often bring things about us that "were not there" and trigger certain reactions in ways we/they don't know and viceversa.

That's it, being calm may be in reality, repress anger : you're right, sometimes, even if I could kept my calm, I needed to scream (alone, in my car...) that is another method to expulse the energy of anger through the body. And as you said, I start to explore the "connection between" my father and this person. "there may be another emotion or dynamic hidding/playing in the background", yes, I'll try to get it.
Thank you so much

 

[luc]

I'd like to share an observation/experiment here when it comes to anger.

I notice that I still have anger issues, which is not good. I guess it's the downside of having learned to "be nice" as a coping mechanism for most of my life - there's just a lot of unexpressed anger and it's an illusion to think it will go away by "being nice", quite the opposite.

It's part of the shadow that needs to be integrated maybe (which Jordan Peterson often talks about), this "enraged monster" that otherwise gets the best of you in an uncontrolled way, especially in difficult or threatening situations. So how to integrate it?

One way might be to "tap" it consciously in small doses for specific purposes. For example, the other day I had to give a guest lecture at a university, something that I was quite anxious about. So while I prepared for that and thought about what I was going to say, I noticed that sometimes I would get a bit angry about my anxious state and my family that instilled this thing in me - and during those moments, the anxiety was gone completely. I felt much more confident, kind of "enough with all the BS, enough with this nonsense holding me back and making me miserable" - it really just blew the anxiety away.

It's clear why I think - the whole point of anger, from an evolutionary perspective, is to dissipate fear. So I experimented a bit further and whenever I got anxious about this lecture, I consciously sprinkled a small dose of that anger on my nervous system, so to speak - and it produced the same effect: anxiety gone, more confident, "bring it on, I gotta show you" attitude. I think about this anger in me as some kind of gun powder - if it burns in an uncontrolled way, it seriously wrecks havoc. But if you take a tiny bit and use it to fire a precise shot, it can be very useful. Especially if you use rightous anger, and your purpose is to overcome fear in order to do something positive.

Whenever I did this sort of maneuver, I could feel my face harden, my body toughen up, my spirits going up, my focus shifting from myself to the world etc., pretty interesting!

Don't know if I am unto something here, but maybe this "technique" is something useful for other people who struggle with anxiety/"self-consciousness" and also uncontrolled anger - maybe these are indeed two sides of the same coin?

 

[Altair]

I'd like to share an observation/experiment here when it comes to anger.

I notice that I still have anger issues, which is not good. I guess it's the downside of having learned to "be nice" as a coping mechanism for most of my life - there's just a lot of unexpressed anger and it's an illusion to think it will go away by "being nice", quite the opposite.

It's part of the shadow that needs to be integrated maybe (which Jordan Peterson often talks about), this "enraged monster" that otherwise gets the best of you in an uncontrolled way, especially in difficult or threatening situations. So how to integrate it?

I think, the first step to integrate it is to accept it as a part of your nature.

One way might be to "tap" it consciously in small doses for specific purposes. For example, the other day I had to give a guest lecture at a university, something that I was quite anxious about. So while I prepared for that and thought about what I was going to say, I noticed that sometimes I would get a bit angry about my anxious state and my family that instilled this thing in me - and during those moments, the anxiety was gone completely. I felt much more confident, kind of "enough with all the BS, enough with this nonsense holding me back and making me miserable" - it really just blew the anxiety away.

Maybe, it's because you made it conscious to yourself by finding the cause of this state and decided to actively act against it? I find this technique also useful - not only against anxiety. For example, if I postpone something that can and should be done now, I get angry against my rationalizations, saying myself: "Stop this miserable whining. Go and do it right now". Being ruthless to yourself in this regard is a good thing, I think. Ultimately, what it always boils down to, is doing what IT doesn't want you to do.

 

[Joe]

Maybe, it's because you made it conscious to yourself by finding the cause of this state and decided to actively act against it? I find this technique also useful - not only against anxiety. For example, if I postpone something that can and should be done now, I get angry against my rationalizations, saying myself: "Stop this miserable whining. Go and do it right now". Being ruthless to yourself in this regard is a good thing, I think. Ultimately, what it always boils down to, is doing what IT doesn't want you to do.

I agree. In pretty much every situation where you're 'anxious' about something and are feeling like giving up in the face of it, getting a bit pissed off at it and forcing yourself to go through the physical routine of doing the job is always a very useful experience because it builds up a store of experiences that you CAN push through that kind of thing, that can be used as references for future times when the same anxiety comes back. I think it also lessens each time.

 

[T.C.]

It's like one of the healthy aspects of anger is that it is fuel for beneficial activity. And for a people-pleaser, the ability to feel and express anger is a huge no-no. That would lead to rejection.

So by not allowing ourselves permission to get angry, we cut off an important source of fuel for activity.

Eventually, we become so detached from our anger that we can't experience it anymore, so it manifests as anxiety instead, which can lead to paralysis.

I know that in the past, when I was 'depressed' - that kind of depression where there is no motivation and I couldn't face daily activities - there were times when I was able to shift it by getting angry. Even getting angry in an unhealthy, criminally minded, self-pitying way: "Fine then, you torturous Universe! I don't have a choice, do I?! So I'll be your slave and I'll get up and face you. Ha! Do your worst! Bring on the pain!"

Even though I was still running on thinking errors, it was ultimately anger that got things moving.

 

[Jeffrey of Troy]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned The Mouravieff Technique in this thread.

But first, the electro-biology of the human brain.

There is a finite amount of voltage available to your brain as a whole at any moment. For example, if you have too strong an emotional reaction ("positive" or "negative"), the limbic system is over activated and hogs the voltage away from the prefrontal cortex (where the critical thinking faculty is located).

Fortunately, Boris Mouravieff gave us a great gift: when strong emotion is triggered in you, neither express it nor suppress it; just feel, and breathe. This converts the emotion into fuel to power your process of fusing the shards of the fractured self back into a solitary One.

(Gospel of Thomas saying 16: And they will stand as solitary Ones. )

Laura goes into this a lot more here.