Popular 'anger management' experts, today, give advice on how to vent your anger.
I'm going against popular culture - it's NEVER GOOD to vent anger!
Anger is our physical attack. When you vent anger on someone or at someone, you are attacking them. Their response will be to defend themselves, using either 'fight or flight.' Attacking someone, just because you're in a snit, only injures relationships - it doesn't build them.
There is NO GOOD WAY to vent your anger. Get a grip. Your anger is the physical manifestation of your fears - and your preferred way of dealing with your fears is to attack. Basically, regardless of how you word it, when we vent anger at someone else, the underlying message is "You are responsible for my emotions."
I KNOW we've been taught to say things like "When you blah blah, I feel blah blah..." Do you see the blame here? We blame the other person with those words.
I often tell this little story when I'm giving my "Frogs have it easy...they can EAT what BUGS them" training.
"A little girl, only 5 years old, had a fierce temper. When any little thing when wrong, she would throw a world-class temper tantrum. She was visiting her grandma for a whole month, and on the second day, she threw one of her temper tantrums. When she was done her grandma handed her a bag of nails and a hammer and told her, "From now on, when you get angry, I want you to go to the fence over there and hammer nails into the fence until you have calmed down."
That day and the next, grandma heard that hammer almost all day, bang bang bang. Bang Bang Bang... After four days, she heard the hammer but a lot less. Bang........Bang........Bang........Bang.......
After only seven days her granddaughter came to her and said, "Grandma it worked! Every time I got angry this week I hammered nails into the fence. I felt a lot better when I was doing it, and now I hardly get angry at all!"
Her grandmother, very proud, said, "You've done very very well. NOW, whenever you get angry, I want you to pull nails out of the fence until you feel calm."
And so that was what her granddaughter did until there were no nails left in the fence and her granddaughter came running to her and exclaimed, "Grandma I pulled all the nails out of the fence and now I hardly get angry EVER!"
Her grandmother took her by the hand and they walked over to look a the fence and grandma said, "You've done very well. But look at the fence. It's just like our anger. When we get angry with someone and we tell them and show them, it's like we are hammering nails into them. And just like the fence, even if we pull the nails out again, and apologize for our anger and what we said, there will always be little holes. Our friendship with that person will never be the same. Just like the fence, anger changes a friendship forever."
There are so many ways to control your anger. The emotion that triggers anger is fear. The best, and maybe hardest, tactic to control your anger is to find the fear that is triggering your anger in that instant. Deal with the fear instead of avoiding the fear by attacking someone else.
95% of the time, when you are angry with someone, the fear is "you are fighting them for position in the pack." You want to prove that you are stronger, physically, emotionally, mentally, than they are. Let go of that need. You are who you are. They are who they are. Let others be themselves, have their reactions, have their opinions and judgements without you 'knowing better.' When you let go of 'knowing better' how they should act, think, feel - how they should 'BE' you'll find yourself calm so much more of the time.
It just takes practice.
It's far, far better to deal with your own anger, and get to the point where you control your anger as soon as it appears, which will eventually lead to you dealing with your fears that were causing your anger in the first place. At that point, you won't experience anger much at all.
Jeanette Kasper -- Your Anger UnTangler
Defuse (or Delete) difficult people in your life. Neutralize your anger. DON'T smack them upside the head! No more bodies buried under the copier!
Go to http://angerisnotanemotion.com/ for free reports and e-books, podcasts, video series, and webinars to pick up thousands of tips and strategies so you can live in your calm, always!
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