OK. I am new so forgive me if my post is so exceedingly mundane that it doesn’t belong here. I google my issues and a lot of the time it leads me to forums from people with similar issues and this helps. But today I googled my issue and there wasn’t a forum link for it. My question was: How to “Not focus” on the stuff that makes you mad. I ask this because every single other piece of advice I get when I google “life is fucking shitty” or “life sucks” “life’s annoying” etc. seems to be “Try not to focus on it”, “Try to distract yourself by walking or being creative or eating better and exercising”… This is all BULLSHIT advice. If anyone has any real advice for when life is annoying and you are always feeling irritated, aside from “anger management” classes and/or “not focusing” on the anger, and/or “medication”, I would love to hear it! Thanks.
Find something else to focus on. Often accomplished by doing something physical. Pick up a book, instrument, or knitting needles. Contemplate questions like “What made the first person think of shearing a sheep, twisting its hair into long strands and then weaving that into clothing?” Or “if I won a small pot of money in the lottery (aka $20k not $20M) how would I best spend that money”
Or figure out why you think life and people are so shitty and what the common denominator is. Life is shitty because no one likes you, everyone hates you and you are going to eat worms? figure out why and change it. Don’t date assholes, don’t trust the untrustworthy, develop patience… whatever it is.
Here are some suggestions. You’ll have to decide which, if any, are applicable to the particular circumstances that are pissing you off.
(1) Do something about the circumstances that are annoying you; take some positive steps to eliminate the things that are making you mad. For example, if it’s something a particular person is doing, avoid that person, or confront them, or try to work out an agreement with them so that they stop doing the thing that makes you mad.
(2) Change your expectations. If you expect life to be annoying (for example, expect traffic to be lousy, or expect politicians to say stupid things), when it happens you’ll be resigned rather than upset. It’ll just be a regular part of life.
(3) Write down the stuff that’s making you mad. Turn it into a funny story, or maybe a dramatic one where some superhero comes in and kicks the ass of whomever or whatever is making you mad. Use it as raw material for conversation or writing. Figure out how to laugh about it.
(4) Get some more positive things/people/activities into your life.
Try meditations. also affirmations. It is said that whatever we think on will come to be. So if you constantly worry that people won’t like you, they won’t. Decide that everyone loves you. Say it to yourself 100 times a day until you start to feel it inside. Read Myrtle Fillmore’s books. Old stuff from about 100 years ago, but still available some places. But lift up your eyes and view that which is high. Read Psalms in the Bible for inspiration. Set your self mental goals. Really get into it.Try this one “Oh Yes Oh Yes I am the best, If you don’t believe me just ask me. If you want a second opinion ask me again, I’m not bashful.” This is one i used to recommend in some of my classes. Or just go around muttering “I love it I love it!” Somebody is bound to ask what do you love, and the answer is “All of it!” Read the book “The Secret.” It will help in this area of life. Good luck and remember we all love you. Wish I were still doing classes in such, where are you? I could maybe recommend someone if you are in South Florida.
OP, is something in particular about your life bothering you? Context matters.
If your house has been bombed in a recent war, and all your relatives have been murdered, then “don’t focus on it” is not really helpful advice.
If you have an axe stuck in your forehead after a freak logging accident, not focusing on it is probably downright counterproductive.
If you’re just upset because you can never decide whether to drive to your beach house in your Ferrari or your Porsche, then you may just need to lighten up a bit.
As for the OP, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t go around routinely expecting the world to conform to my notion of how it should behave, so I don’t get angry at it all that often. Beyond that, I try to avoid chaotic situations or people (such as the above-mentioned brother) as much as practical.
Sometimes anger is a habit. Or a standard response to someone invading what you think of as your territory. Or it’s a dominance display. Some people also shift from sadness to fear. It’s always a secondary emotion, but the primary emotion isn’t always fear.
I think some folks have a biochemical quirk that makes anger their default state.
I’ve met a few people that I decided were using anger to make up for their lack of awareness of their own emotions. They were really bad at figuring out what, exactly, they were feeling and why. They had no clue what they really wanted, let alone how to go about getting it.
So they decided that they had no responsibility at all for what they were feeling. If they weren’t feeling happy, it was someone else’s fault - and the fault would be assigned randomly. The fault would also be assigned noisily, with the anger level rising so that their happiness became someone else’s problem. Someone else would have to figure out what had really set them off, because they had no clue.
It sort of worked, in that people would work to quell the anger and they could see that happening. But that kind of external problem solving is always sloppy, so although they’d be either appeased or argued with, they usually didn’t get the triggering problem addressed. And it’s such a hassle that people would avoid them as much as possible. Or retaliate.
I’m sort of seeing that being a possibility here - the OP has given us the vaguest possible description of the problem, but expects creative advice on how to resolve it.
Get an axe, a baseball bat, or a big stick. Go behind a Walmart or whatever big discount store there is in your area that has lot of wooden pallets stacked. Destroy the pallets. Works for me.
You have a choice: you can walk around pissed off at anything and everything, or you can set your anger aside and find something else to focus on. And then next time something pisses you off, you can choose to walk around, all pissed off, or you can choose to set your anger aside and find something else to focus on. And the next time. And the time after that. And the time after that. It really is that simple.
Where people mess up is that they confuse simple with easy. It’s not easy. The last thing on earth it is, is easy. Being angry means you have been done wrong, being angry means you’re the victim, the persecuted, the hero. Being angry means you don’t have to take into account the mistakes you’ve made or the people you’ve hurt. Being angry means you don’t have to reconsider your own actions, swallow your pride, or accept something you don’t like.
Being angry all the time is a coping strategy for when the world sucks, and it works, up to a point. The problem is, when you’re walking around angry all the time, you miss out on all the other emotions - sadness, grief, amusement, joy, longing, satisfaction, contentment. You drive people off when you’re angry all the time, because you’re unpleasant to be around. You damage your body when you’re angry all the time.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s biochemical or a learned behavior. Either way, it can be fixed.
existexistence, I would change a letter in your post from “medication” to “meditation” and give that a try. Meditation is really just setting aside a little time where you can be free of interruptions, relax, and quietly be by yourself. You can clear your mind and think of nothing, which is very relaxing. You can also try to introspect and think about why you feel the way you feel, which is very illuminating. Knowing why you’re angry is not as easy as “that car just cut me off and now I want to run it down!” Lots of people get cut off and do not have that reaction. You can learn to stop being so angry, but it will take time and effort. If you don’t want to take the time and effort, then you’ll just keep being angry all the time. That’s not healthy, but only you can change it.
Therapy is also good, because it teaches you to stop in your tracks. Therapy can teach you to redirect a negative emotion (like anger) into something more productive. In therapy, you will also learn to put yourself in someone else’s shoes–it’s harder to be angry at people or situations when you relate to them. But meditation is a good alternative if you’re therapy-resistant and/or just don’t trust another person enough to go through with it.
Yoga. Learning how to calm and center yourself can help you to control anger and aggression. It also helps in martial arts, but that takes longer to learn.
There’s a reason you can’t find the advice you’re looking for.
Distracting yourself may not be easy to do. But it really is the best remedy for the problem you have, short of numbing yourself with drugs. Another piece of advice is to avoid the source of your frustration. If traffic puts you in a bad mood, leave home an hour early. If there’s a person in your life that always makes you mad, limit the amount of time you spend with them as much as possible. Don’t discuss politics with coworkers. Etc.
Generalising the problem as ‘life is shitty’ is part of the problem. Life can be shitty for any number of reasons (quite apart from appearing shitty when it’s not really) - and each of those cases may require a different remedy (if indeed there is one).
Googling ‘life is shitty’ and expecting a coherent solution is like googling “thing not working” when you have some very specific technical problem with your computer.