If you have got this far, you should now see that anger is a habitual reaction to deeper emotions. A therapist that I was working with used to say “there is no rage without impotence.” It is helpful to reflect on this. Anger is an emotion that comes up for us in response to feeling trapped and helpless. It has become our way of reacting to these emotions. An attempt to regain control, and take back our power. It is a fixed way that we have of creating ourselves in the moment in relationship to others. Also, if you have come this far there is a part of yourself that sees that this strategy that we developed, and, practiced for so long is not working for us. It may be fully understandable given the way you were raised and what you have had to go through, still, it is a painful way to live. It has some major drawbacks. In order to get a handle on our emotions we are going to have to be creative, use our ingenuity, and our persistence. Isn’t it odd that as men we have a plan for almost everything, a financial plan, a plan for our health, blueprints, repair manuals, programs, and, playbooks; however, when it comes to our emotions we are often pretty clueless. In order to break the anger habit we are going to need a winning strategy. I have already outlined some of the strategy in my previous posts, and, now we have a place where we can do our work, right in our own hearts and minds. Now, we are going to begin to work in two ways. Preventative strategies and immediate strategies. Preventative strategies are going to be our daily program. Since our actions come from our mind, we need to train our minds and develop some skills. We need a solid place to stand in order to launch our attack because when anger comes up it takes over, and, leaves us holding the bag. As we get worked up and angry our bodies go into a fight or flight type response. Hormones wash through our bodies. Our rational mind starts to shut down, and, survival mode kicks in. We often do not think about the consequences of our actions. My meditation teacher likes to call this “the no karma zone.” If we do not put in the work in the gym so to speak, training our minds, on game day, out in the real world where the rubber hits the road, we are going to find it very hard to use the immediate strategies we are going to learn to deal with anger as it arises.
Many anger management programs will have you reflect on the negative consequences of your anger. This can be helpful but also painful. As I stated in my last post we want to be very careful to not fall into too much remorse, or recrimination over this. We made mistakes, and, now we are willing to learn from them. If we have emotions that come up for us we want to honor them. A good therapist can certainly help us too. For now though, what I want you to do is focus on your “why.” Again, find a comfortable, quiet spot. Maybe have a pen and paper beside you. Sit comfortably and focus your awareness on your breath. Ask yourself some questions about your breathing and get interested in it. Where do you feel it in your body? Is it comfortable? What kind of breathing feels good? What kind of breathing helps work through the tension right now? Think about your breath and let thoughts that pull you away from this just kind of pass by. It’s OK to give yourself a little pep talk and then just get back to focusing on the breath. Then when you have given yourself some time. Ask yourself, what is my why? Why did you decide to work on your anger? Were you tired of being lonely? Tired of fighting with your wife? Losing relationships? Seeing that look in your kids eyes? Maybe you are just tired and want to be happy? Whatever it is, you want to find that goodness within yourself, and, reflect on this. That you really want to be happy and not harm others. When you have something, write down your why. We are going to come back to this every day, just like tending a garden. Finding that seed of goodness within our hearts, and watering it, tending to it, keeping the weeds and pests away …
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photo credit: Kyle Ellefson