Being honest with yourself is the first step to recovery. Frustration, fury, annoyance and irritation – these are all the feelings I get when someone provokes me or angers me. It only takes half a second to trigger all my dormant emotions and to cause an explosive reaction. Why? Because I have an anger problem or rather let me use the common phrase “short- tempered”. According to the dictionary a short tempered person yells at every single thing whether big or small. In my eyes a short tempered person is what I do not want to be.
Now I am not proud of being “short-tempered”, in fact I am always mortified when I overreact at the simplest of things. You know, when you get angry, it feels more or less like a possession – my body starts to shake, there is a rapid increase in the rate of my heart beat, I clench my jaws and tears start falling down. Believe me it’s not a pretty sight. It doesn’t feel like me or at least it does not feel like who I aim to be in life. Whenever one gets angry, I picture it as this: a wave of frustration carrying each and every bottled emotion one has, be it anger or sadness or misery, these bottled emotions are then transformed into irritation, vexation or fury. Now if you have an anger problem, it’s not normal irritation, it’s like irritation linked with the pain you have been feeling for a while or irritation linked with anguish. Basically the emotions one has are so condensed that everything you say out of anger has no filter and 99% of the time the choice of words one uses when one is angry can brutal or cruel.
Now in all this anger one tries to justify himself or herself, I have tried to justify myself so many times. But I have realized and adopted the rule that no matter how much an individual angers you, there no justification for being cruel or for belittling another individual who is human just as you are. Remember no body is perfect.
Now there are two stages that I experience when I am about to have a tantrum.
First stage: basically shout, shout and shout. Someone told me only uneducated people feel the need to shout at someone in order to fix something. One bumps into you – you shout. One does something you don’t like- you shout. It is not necessary to shout all the time and most importantly it is not good for your mental health. People can’t always walk on thin ice around you.
I got to a point in my life when I told myself “I do not want the title short tempered” and I decided to work on my temper which is really hard but you have to condition yourself to be what you want to be, in my case a sane person that doesn’t shout 70% of the time.
In the event you easily get angry and you want to work on your anger problem, these are some tips that have been helping me:
· Don’t hold a grudge- you will suffer greatly if you hold a grudge and your inner peace is important
· Only express your anger when you are calm. How do you get calm? – take a walk, breathe in and out thrice or more if required, count up to 50 if you have to. Different things work for different people. Being calm helps you to think clearly and when you are thinking you are most likely reasoning. Always be mindful because “mindfulness is the opposite of reactivity”.
· Look for a solution- you are angry yes but how best can you solve the issue. Do not always look at the negatives because that does not solve anything.
· Identify problems and accept responsibility – this allows you to have power over your life
Second stage
Regret, pain, shock and sadness- these are the feelings I get after an outburst. Getting feelings of regret and anger continuously can cause you to question yourself and once you start to question yourself you lose inner peace. Remember inner peace is extremely important for your mental health.
PEACE= CONTENTMENT = HEALTHY LIFESTYLE= SUCCESS
I believe control is one of the greatest thing one can have especially control over your own emotions. Always remember suppression is not control. All suppression does is to give room for eruption of anger. Don’t let anger be the obstacle to building successful relationships that might help you later on in life. An interesting and lovely young lady that I know always says “your network is your net worth”, so don’t let anger ruin your network.
If you have anger problems I have a short exercise for you. This exercise is for yourself, to do some reflection. Answer these questions:
· How has anger changed your previous relationships?
· Have most of your relationships ended due to you overreacting?
· Have you fixed the relationships that have been damaged? If yes, are the relationships the same?
Look at your answers and reflect... Are you happy? Are you content? If not some change has to happen so that you get to a point where you can be happy and content in your life.
Like I said in my first line, honesty is the first step to recovery. I have an anger problem and I don’t want that problem and I am going to make the effort to be the best version of myself.
👏👏good read Tana