Anger is an emotion, a feeling and emotions and feelings just come. We have little or no control over them. What we do have control over, however, is how we react to those feelings.
Some of us may stuff our feelings for long periods of time and then explode, sometimes violently. Others of us may exhibit our anger by taking it out on innocent others and some of us are just angry all of the time and don’t quite know why.
Anger for many of us is a survival tool we learned in early childhood and still use. It is a tool that we are conditioned to believe will help us get our needs met. In childhood, when we were told “NO” we could throw an angry tantrum and we would often get our way. Many of us carry this tool and its use with us into adulthood, where it no longer is so successful. We have become hard wired to believe this tool works, and sometimes it does. Often it is our perception of things, not reality, which angers us.
Our anger progresses, sometimes slowly and sometimes very quickly, in a straight line that goes from being in an anger provoking situation to finally acting out our anger. There are several steps in between: trigger thoughts; distorted thinking and obsessive thinking.
In order to control our anger we first must avoid being in those anger provoking situations. If you know you always get into an argument and get angry when you see or talk to your EX for instance, don’t visit or call them. The next step is to recognize your trigger thoughts. These thoughts almost always tell you that someone is doing something wrong, they are doing on purpose, to you, and they must stop. This is blaming others for a problem, which causes two problems. 1. It makes us the victim, and 2. It relinquishes us from doing something about the problem.
Distorted anger thoughts include: Blaming (discussed above); Catastrophizing or Magnifying (making the problem seem as if it will end the world); Labeling (calling others derogatory names); Misattributions (assuming you know others thinking an motivation and then acting as if that is true); Overgeneralization (something ALWAYS, NEVER happens) and Demanding or Commanding (It is my way or the highway).
Then we come to obsessive thinking. This is where our angry thoughts take up most of our brain; we can think of little else. If we get to this stage we almost always end up acting out by getting angry and screaming and yelling, taking out revenge or getting violent against things or people.
Some of the basic coping thoughts in order to deal with this problem are understanding that we really have no control over other people; others are just trying meet their own needs and not thinking about ours; and finally a hard one to understand: others are doing absolutely the best they can everyday given the circumstances they are in.
If you find that your anger or that of another close to you is causing problems in their social or family life, work, play, financial or health you should seek out help. There are anger management classes offered in almost all communities and most therapists offer some type of anger management skill learning.
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