For sake of simplicity, I will use the term **anger **as the target emotion to overcome. But when I say anger, I also include frustration and a feeling of being treated unfairly.
I can’t find a good way to overcome my anger and feel relaxed back.
At home, I most of the time play video games to forget about my anger. But when I am unable to play any video game, it becomes a huge problem. I sometimes unintentionally damage some stuff and furniture around me out of anger.
What are your ways to overcome these negative feelings? What do you suggest people?
Talk Therapy to find out who you’re REALLY angry at and WHY
Cognitive Therapy to help you change your thoughts and behavior patterns
Medication to compensate for your overabundance of rage (perhaps including pot, NOT including alcohol)
If funds are short, you can get books from the library on the first three items. Dedicating yourself to meditation and exercises in the books will really help.
When you play video games, you’re detaching yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically from here. Which is okay. But being here and also not angry will feel better.
The unfortunate fact is that you may come to understand your anger. You may become better at controlling your anger, and you may even be able to sometimes avoid situations that you know will trigger your anger…
But your anger will never go away. Anger is an emotion, and there is no way of eliminating it. You cannot just will yourself to become calm and peaceful when you are angered. Thinking all the calming thoughts in the world only postpones the eruption.
You can consciously control your behavior when you are angry. This is a good thing. But you will still be angry.
Whenever I’m angry, I go running. When I’m done running, I’m usually not so angry anymore. Instead of playing video games, try taking a long walk. Get an iced coffee and listen to the birds. It doesn’t seem like it would work, but it does.
Start by objectively (ie, leaving out your ego) thinking about why you are angry.
As I often say, Anger comes from Fear, Fear comes from Powerlessness. Anger is a way to attempt to reclaim power.
Frustration and feelings of being treated unfairly. Powerlessness it is.
What are you powerless about?
Why do you feel frustrated or treated unfairly? If you leave out your own pride and ego, are you really being treated unfairly, or are you asking that you be granted exceptions to rules and then whining when you don’t get them? Are you being treated the same as others, and if not, why not? It is history of your own actions and interactions?
Then, what good is all this anger doing? Clearly it is not allowing you to reclaim your power, other than that little ego boost of saying “I’m right and I have a right to be angry about this”. It is not helping you. It is hurting you. It is causing you pain, it is causing you to act out in inappropriate ways.
So stop and ask yourself;
Does it do me any good to be angry right now?
Do I really need to dwell on (issue) and get myself all worked up right now?
What power do I have in this situation?
What can I change about myself so that this stops happening?
How are my own actions contributing to this situation?
Thanks for great suggestions and messages and info.
@Chimera,
First of all, thanks for your suggestion and care.
Sorry, but I hate that. This sounds like “Suck it up. Accept the insults and keep being treated as shit, you son of a whore. Look how I can keep you down and frustrate you even more! BUHAHAHA”
I don’t act angrily around people. I hold myself back. I try to maintain my sanity and I succeed in doing it. But I am angry when I am alone. I release it when there is no one around.
If you were in another country and there was a great of odium towards your ethnicity and people treated you like shit because of something that you are not responsible for, you would be angry as hell I guess. It’s not my fault to be here and I want to get the hell out of here as soon as I can. But it seems like it’s not going to happen in a near future. Please, please don’t ask me where I am or where I come from. I don’t give any detail NOT because I am too proud to share it or it’s oh-my-personal info. Because even the slightest thought of it really maddens me.
How would you deal with people despising you, talking down to you, being snide towards you because of your race, or ethnicity, or nationality, or where you are from? You can say “what others think of me has nothing to do with me, it’s their hang-up and their problem.” Yes, it is kind of their problem but it is also my problem because I am the one who gets shitty treatments.
I feel powerless because I can’t change their mindset and mentality, I know there is almost nothing I can do about it.
Thanks for your message again. Please don’t take what I write above so personal but I am really frustrated and I really want to share what goes through my mind.
That’s not it at all. It’s just that everyone (myself included) tends to have a huge blind spot about their own part in things. Blaming everyone else is Human Nature.
Both are true. When people insult you, they are opening a window to their soul. To their character and their nature. Their insults come out of their context of their Universe. It’s their nightmare fuel, not yours.
Then, as I said, what good is dwelling on the anger? It isn’t giving you power and it is harming you. I’m not saying that you have no right to be unhappy about it. I’m asking you to look at how your own reactions and actions are harming you, and decide what you need to do to stop doing that to yourself.
When people throw poison at you, why do you swallow it? Imagine their anger, their poison, their ill wind washing over and past you. See them for what they are. Don’t make it a part of you. Don’t agree to let them rent space in your head and poison your heart and mind. Leave all that shit right there where it happened, and move on.
He promotes a method of dealing with anger by using mindfulness meditation with the key of not ‘fighting’ against anger, but embracing it with a compassionate mindset and paying attention to the situation that caused the anger to arise and then constructively dealing with those facts. He teaches how to use compassionate listening and loving speech to transform anger from an act of frustration or suffering into positive, constructive energy.
In other words, feeling angry is not a ‘bad’ thing. It is a natural process, but allowing oneself to be overcome by it is harmful. Recognizing how that process works goes a long way to bringing it under control.
I had a horrible temper as a child through my teenage years. An anger management class finally helped me bring the worst of it under control, but it also turned it inward. While I would not get outwardly angry, it would feed my depression and anxiety.
This book and others on mindfulness meditation (anything by Jon Kabat-Zinn) finally helped me deal with that internal anger and depression. It is a continual process, but I feel I finally have the tools to address it constructively.
As someone who has dealt with this issue, the most important thing to do is understand if your anger is normal or pathological.
Yeah. That’s a tough question. Can you really look at yourself honestly and say, ‘OK, I’m fucked up.’ Because that’s what it amounts to in the minds of most people. That’s not true of course, but on some level you might think that even when you understand more and know better. So before you even ask the question, make sure you’re prepared to answer ‘yes’ if that’s where the evidence leads. Otherwise, you’re just jerking yourself off.
I’m not going to try to delineate between normal and abnormal anger, but I think I can probably give you an example of something that is pathological and if you have ever experienced this, it’s a good indication you need to look into the matter more closely.
I call it dissociative anger but really I think they’re just considered dissociative episodes. These have been times when I have been so enraged that my consciousness split into the normal rational part and the “other” part that was directing my actions. The normal part or the part I would consider “me” felt like a passenger that was just along for the ride, a spectator if you will.
However that would be at the extreme end of the pathological spectrum I would guess, at least until you get into criminal psychopathies anyway (none here, relax). Your anger might still be abnormal. I just wanted to give one example.
The importance of making the distinction is that if the problem is pathological, there is a very good chance that it can be treated. There are mood stabilizers I take that have made me a person I so much more enjoy living with that I can’t even begin to say. And that’s the main thing. You don’t realize how much anger takes from you until it’s gone.