The Forums › Forums › Emotional Journey › I'm Cranky/Arguing/Frustrated › Dealing with Anger / Crankiness
-
AuthorPosts
-
July 30, 2011 at 1:41 am #104640
AnonymousInactiveJuly 30, 2011 at 1:41 amPost count: 14413When I was in therapy my shrink also tried to get me to identify the signs in my body that where triggered when I get really mad so quickly. I still can’t figure out what she was talking about. I get mad so quickly that I explode and then calm down. I really don’t think there is any physical reaction.
REPORT ABUSEAugust 30, 2011 at 4:43 am #104641
AnonymousInactiveAugust 30, 2011 at 4:43 amPost count: 14413I like what Bibliophile said about noticing the physical signs such as my face heating up. Anger is not easy for me to manage, and I probably need to put a little more effort into handling it. Sometimes, getting up can help or even going into my bathroom, leaving the light off and staying there works too.
REPORT ABUSEAugust 30, 2011 at 2:17 pm #104642This is something I haven’t been able to do well without medication. All the techniques I learned were helpful to avoid situations that might lead to blowups, but they seemed to do nothing to improve my ability in the emotional moments. Medication completely changed that.
REPORT ABUSEAugust 30, 2011 at 5:01 pm #104643
AnonymousInactiveAugust 30, 2011 at 5:01 pmPost count: 14413Feeling the physical sensations is good because the sensations are often the same for different emotions. So the next time you do get angry, just try to stop and feel what you feel, get curious. In my case, the first time I did this, the anger subsided in about 30 seconds. But getting rid of the anger is not the point – it’s just to feel it, and not to react to it or dump on other people. My teacher says that emotions are just there to be experienced. They don’t last unless we indulge them in some way.
Avoiding situations that might lead to blowups doesn’t help either, since the emotion is still lurking in the background somewhere just waiting to be triggered. You could try to get familiar with it, even if it means triggering it when you’re not in a blowup situation. It’s possible to practice feeling it and doing nothing to try to change it.
REPORT ABUSEAugust 30, 2011 at 5:18 pm #104644I always thought I ‘never got angry’. I have learnt that when I’m angry, I cry. I realise now that I have been angry a lot more than I’d like to admit. It flashes up inside me in seconds and I don’t know where to ‘put it’, so I cry.
REPORT ABUSEAugust 30, 2011 at 6:20 pm #104645no_dopamine: Avoiding situations was a huge help for me. One example is getting my kids ready for school in the am. Sometimes when they would talk at the same time or ask me for something while I was in the middle of getting something for their sibling I would bark at them. I changed my routine to stagger their wake-up by a few minutes so I could have breakfast ready for one before the next arrived in the kitchen.
REPORT ABUSEAugust 31, 2011 at 12:39 am #104646
AnonymousInactiveAugust 31, 2011 at 12:39 amPost count: 14413Avoidance is certainly an option, but as you’ve said, it doesn’t help you when you’re in that emotional state.
I’ve found that some of the physical aspects of anger are the same as fear, for me. That was a surprise.
REPORT ABUSEAugust 31, 2011 at 1:10 am #104647no_dopamine: I don’t think you get it. Avoidance keeps me from getting in that emotional state. The anger is not ‘lurking’; different situations trigger emotions.
I like Paul Ekman’s “Emotions Revealed” as it gives a thorough explanation of our emotions.
REPORT ABUSEAugust 31, 2011 at 1:29 pm #104648
AnonymousInactiveAugust 31, 2011 at 1:29 pmPost count: 14413Caper wrote: All the techniques I learned were helpful to avoid situations that might lead to blowups, but they seemed to do nothing to improve my ability in the emotional moments.
I do get it. I avoid situations too. But as you’ve mentioned above, avoidance does nothing to help one to deal with these troubling emotions when they do come up. The more they get submerged, the more powerful they are when they do come up. This I know from personal experience with anger and grief. So I have found that the practice of invoking the emotion outside of situations allows one to work with it in a way that makes it far easier to experience when the emotional situations do arise. There are many books that talk about the real nature of our emotions and how to work with them – the Joy of Living is one I would suggest as a starting point.
REPORT ABUSEAugust 31, 2011 at 5:19 pm #104649I”m hoping meds help – nothing else does. I’m VERY well read, know quite a bit about basic psychology from my classes and my desires to learn.
To avoid the situations would mean staying home, locking the doors, never turning on radio or TV and not going to get the mail.
The roads are full of idiots who should not have a license, stores are full of people who don’t prepare for their tasks (waiting in line at the post office for 20 minutes while people finally put their item in a box, write the address on the box, ask the clerk to tape it for them, then discover they don’t have enough money so leave – and then the next person does the same…..or the dopes at work who really should have never been hired as they can’t meet the qualifications of a 1 let a lone a 3, and would be totally lost in any other job or workplace, you name it.
Put the @#$% cell phone down and DRIVE. Telling your BFF about the kiss you got last night can surely wait?
Same at the store – put the @#$% phone down and watch where the #$% you are pushing that cart!- there ARE other people in here, too, ya know??!!
When you go to the post office – make sure you can pay, and have your stuff in a box, or at least be more prepared and step off to the side if you can get by without the clerk for the 30 seconds it will take me to handle my already boxed, taped, labeled and figured package.
PLAN your drive – PAY attention so you don’t have to cut across 4 lanes of us for you to make it over to the right turn lane – and MERGE means just that – don’t crawl into 65 mph traffic going only 30 then signal as if to tell us to shove out of your way, you are coming through.
See, if the world was purged of the nonsense and lack of common sense we see today – there’d be little anger issues.
Time for Darwin’s rules to start applying again – take the hot coffee warning labels off – maybe they won’t reproduce.
REPORT ABUSESeptember 1, 2011 at 2:24 pm #104650
AnonymousInactiveSeptember 1, 2011 at 2:24 pmPost count: 14413LOL, billd, how do you know those #$#^$*$^#& people don’t have ADD?
REPORT ABUSESeptember 1, 2011 at 5:43 pm #104651I’m sure some do………. but ADDers are not THAT large a piece of the population
REPORT ABUSE
September 1, 2011 at 6:06 pm #104652My DH (dear husband) helps me back off my anger at the idiots so well described by billd by laughing and saying, “if everyone would just do it Sally’s way.” My compulsion to tidy up the shopping cart corral at the grocery store is especially amusing to him.
REPORT ABUSESeptember 1, 2011 at 11:16 pm #104653
AnonymousInactiveSeptember 1, 2011 at 11:16 pmPost count: 14413sally, I thought I was the only one who did that!
REPORT ABUSESeptember 6, 2011 at 1:47 pm #104654I even put things back on the shelf that I see have been knocked to the floor………… I can’t just walk by it. (then under my breath curse the people who so deliberately leave such a mess they’ve made for others)
REPORT ABUSE -
AuthorPosts