What makes you angry?
If I was to take a view on the amount of enquiries we receive about hypnotherapy, I would have to say that help for anger issues is on the increase and there isn’t necessarily a particular demographic it affects in particular, it could be anyone.
Anger is just a primitive way of increasing our strength so we can fend off wild animals or other wild tribesmen and although you could argue that there are wild tribesmen (and women) around, you might even have a few in your family!, but we’re not really in danger from wild animals these days, so what is that anger about?
Anger is about control, control of ourselves, thing and other people and when we’re not able to control those things, then anger is away of increasing our strength to try and control them even more.
Control of other people
People who struggle with anger are often subconsciously or consciously trying to control the behaviour of other people. Usually not outwardly, but they judge other people’s behaviour against their own values believing that other people ‘should’ act like they do and if that’s not the case, they get angry with the other person . People who get angry with other people have a tendency to live in ‘should land’, they will have a narrative along the lines of ‘she should do it like this’ or ‘he shouldn’t do it that way’ or my favourite ‘they shouldn’t be cruising in the middle lane of the motorway’…
A few years ago, I was travelling on the M3 to Southampton, I wasn’t late for anything and there wasn’t a traffic jam, but it was a bit frustratingly slow and I realised I was getting myself stressed and annoyed at the other drivers in the middle lane, complacently cruising along with the nearside lane empty. I was thinking to myself ‘don’t they know it’s illegal now’ and I was trying to telepathically send them a message to move over; I’m not a particularly angry person and I was cured of road rage by an upsetting incident some years before, so I didn’t go so far as to shout at them from inside my car, but I have to admit that I did glare at them as I slowly passed on the outside lane eventually – Until I realised what I was doing.
When I became aware that I was behaving in this way, I had to laugh at myself and I thought ‘for goodness sake Emma, who made you the traffic police today?’
As soon as I stepped back from my irritation and became aware of my thoughts and actions, the anger dissolved immediately, I relaxed and my mind switched to more cheerful things; the day’s sailing I had to look forward to.
Remembering you can’t control other people, but you can control how you’re dealing with them, puts you back in control of the situation.
Control of things
How many times have you lost it because something hasn’t gone to plan or, for example, technology doesn’t work as it should – and doesn’t it always seem to happen when you’re in a hurry? The internet is my big stresser, something rely on and my day’s work depends on it, so if it goes off or I can’t get on line when I want to, my anxiety levels start to rise. What happens when anxiety rises? We react with worry/anxiety, depression or anger.
The key with inanimate object is not to throw them across the room or swear at the poor customer services rep who is trying to resolve your problem with the resources they have, it’s to adapt and be flexible.
As with trying to control other people, stepping back and being aware of how you’re reacting empowers you to change your reaction. Anger is blind, when the primitive brains steps in, it isn’t able to think logically or rationally, it’s not able to find a solution to the problem, that is not it’s job.
To step out of the anger you need to remove yourself from the situation – go for a walk, take a break, physically walk away from the situation you’ve become trapped in by the anger, it gives you time to calm down, change your perspective and work out another way around the problem.
Control of ourselves
If you have problems controlling your anger, chances are you are someone who has self discipline and you like to achieve what you set out to achieve. Frustration, anger and despair can all result when we can’t do the things we think we should or want to, especially when we’re not in control of the element in the equation that prevents us doing something. However, from time to time, our own lack of control can be the thing that triggers the anger, when we do something we wish we hadn’t or don’t seem to be able to do something we think we should, we get inwardly angry at ourselves for letting go.
Remind yourself you are human and give yourself a break. In the words of Alexander Pope – To Err is Human, meaning everyone makes mistakes (unless you consider yourself super-human of course) . Perhaps the rest of Alexander Pope’s quote is a good reminder “to err is human; to forgive, divine” – maybe you can forgive yourself for being human from time to time.
If you didn’t make any mistakes, you would never learn anything new.
Forgive yourself for your anger and remember it happens to everyone sometimes, even if it’s not an external outburst.
If you struggle with anger remember you can ALWAYS:-
- Move away from whatever is triggering your anger
- Change your attitude towards the trigger
- Take back control by choosing how to deal with it differently
It takes practice and you need to step in early – once you’re in the grips of the anger you become blind and lose control, but with practice you can nip it in the bud even if you’re fuming, remove yourself and give yourself time to calm down, everything can wait for that and you will deal with it quicker by taking the time to stop.
The 7 day video crash course is for people who are suffering from anxiety and/or depression and experiencing symptoms for example: anger, insomnia & sleep disorders, panic attacks, OCD, IBS, eating disorders,addictions or migraine and headaches, who want to learn the truth behind their conditions and learn what they need to do to be ‘normal’ again.
This 6 Week Intensive Hypnotherapy and Coaching Course is for people suffering fromstress, anxiety and/or depression and experiencing symptoms such as anger, insomnia, panic attacks, OCD, IBS, eating disorders, addictions, migraine and headaches.
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Hi Emma 🙂
I found this article on what makes you angry very interesting :-)I understand exactly what you mean about ‘living in should land’, judging other people’s behaviour against your own values. I know I do this. I have very strong principles and morals, but for me, I think it is a bit more than this. And some examples can be much more extreme than you gave in your article, thus much harder to cope with. I can offer three that have happened to me in the last month (if you don’t mind me droning on! But they say writing these things down do help!). My adoptive parents…they never listen to me, they are in their own protective world and they simply don’t care, it is just the way they are. So if I tell them something that has had an emotional impact on me, they simply dismiss it. So, I get angry because I know this isn’t the way I would behave, I think it is a pretty horrible way to react towards your own daughter. Then my natural mother, she doesn’t want to know me. I send her pictures of myself and my daughter and she just ignores them. She never sent us a Christmas card. I have emade lots and lots of effort with heartfelt letters. She is just curt and polite. I get angry again, she gave me away after all, I did not hurt her! Then even more recently, I had to go to hospital for scans (gynaecology) and was told at the time there was nothing sinster going on, it was fibroids causing all my symptoms but that the sonographer would have to examine the results and send them to my doctor. I have been waiting all this time for the results, just to be sure. Then, yesterday, out of the blue,(new year’s eve of all time) I got a letter saying that I have an appointment booked for a week on Tuesday as an outpatient to see a gynaecologist at another hospital. At first I thought, this is a mistake and then the worry set in. What is wrong? Why hasn’t my doctor contacted me? And then the big one…what if she is to tell me I have ovarian cancer (which they check for with this test). Last night (after getting quite upset during the day, talking to my partner) I was confiding in my friend (over very loud music!) expressing my worries and my partner, sat beside as I spoke, was jigging to the music, looking all around, not a care in the world, as I told my friend I was deeply concerned what this gynaecologist had to say (I will try to find out all I can before, this could be ungrounded fears) but it was him that made me mad! How could he be like that while I was telling my friend how very scared I was? So I told him, got angry. And he then kind of looked concerned and listened! But it shouldn’t have taken that. I felt upset, let down. So I think this anger business is a bit more…for me it is based on pain. I feel hurt that people can treat one another so badly; that they would treat me so badly. And yes, indeed I feel I would never behave that way; but they hurt me, often deeply. Anger is just a way of striking out when I feel pain. The only way I cope with it in the end is with sad resignation. Acceptance. I try to move on and look forward and I hope that my future involves coming into contact with like minded people who genuinely care for others. There has to be light at the end of the tunnel…and I will look for it.
Hi Rebecca
Thank you for sharing and for being so honest, its very brave. I’m going to be very honest with you – and direct so bear with me. I think it will help you and I also think you are a stronger person than you think you are.
In all the examples you give above about what is hurting you, you are trying to control what other people should think and do based on your own values and principals. I think you need to make peace with the fact that everyone is different and you don’t know what motivates them and why they do the things they do. I’m certainly not saying you are wrong, but if you continue to inwardly judge people based on your own values, you are going to keep hurting yourself. I don’t want to speculate, but it is rare for people to deliberately hurt other people, so, I may be wrong, but what could be happening is that because they don’t act or behave how you want them to in your mind (they are not mind readers), you are using your imagination to decide why they are not and as a result you are getting hurt. Which boils down to the fact you are creating the hurt but blaming them.
I’m also not saying they are right in how they are behaving, often other people’s actions don’t make any sense, but allowing people to be themselves and not deciding in your own mind they are intentionally trying to hurt you will improve your relationships with people.
That said, neither should you be a doormat and allow people to take advantage of you, personal boundaries are important, however, if particular people are repeatedly hurting your feelings, calmly explaining to them how their behaviour is upsetting, at a time when you are not emotional about it, will help them to understand you, because after all, they can’t read your mind either and may be quite confused about your anger.
I’m explaining this to you because at the end of the day, it is all in your control. If you continue to think and behave in the same way, so will they continue to react in the same way. If you want someone’s behaviour to change towards you, the most effective thing you can do is change they way you are doing things. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. You have the power and control in this case, you can effect change in other people, but not by wishing it, imagining it or getting angry, but by calm communication and changing something you are doing.
I hope that helps Rebecca – I appreciate it was direct, but I hope you appreciate it’s also honest and because I want you to be able to manage happiness in your life instead of anger. Best wishes Emma
Well, I have been thinking about this and I’m not sure I agree 🙂 In fact, rereading what I wrote, I wonder really. When we say we are basing something on our very own morals and principles,are we? Or are we basing it on the average, normal, common decent ways of reacting that we ‘hope’ others would be like? I mean, is that really our own principles, or what we have been taught or a general expectation? Not sure, that is more deeply rooted in psychology, but I think we can all agree of ‘decent’ ways for people to behave to one another and when people don’t, well, all sorts of things have happened as a result, even war! There is simply (and this is very simple in my mind) a difference between what is right and what is wrong.I mean an extreme example would be a rape victim; it would be perfectly normal for her to be very upset and angry at her perpetrator. If she wanted to make peace with what he had done to her (and this has been done with victims) she may well consider why he did it, his own pain, his upbringing, etc. This way she could perhaps come to terms with what he had done to her, leading to a sort of acceptance but I don’t think the pain and anger would go…perhaps diminish, but never entirely leave her. People hurt each other, period. People do things ‘wrong’. And they do. It has been going on for a very long time (though I do like your idea that people don’t intentionally hurt each other). Whether it is intentional or not, it happens, whether there are reasons or not, are sometimes irrelevant dependent on what has happened. It is still wrong. If I kicked your dog (God forbid! I’d rather kick myself…hard!) because I was angry at the world, it doesn’t matter what reason I have to give to you about my ‘terrible upbringing’ making me ‘so angry’, that isn’t based on your principles, but on an overwhelming agreement of the difference between what is right and wrong. What is cruel and what is kind. So, in my own warbled way, is this really about our own principles and morals or is it about what is right and wrong? I don’t agree that I am creating the hurt…they are. It isn’t my reaction, it is theirs. How I deal with my hurt is down to me, but they most certainly are creating it. If a man is having an affair, does the wife judge what he does as wrong because of her own set of values or because it is simply wrong for him to be so selfish and deceitful? It goes against what is ‘right’ in a relationship; that isn’t exactly her own values but more so what is healthy for a relationship to survive. Has she really got to make peace with the fact that everyone is different and she doesn’t yet know what motivates him? I don’t believe so. And I don’t think this is some kind of ‘paranoia’ that people are trying to hurt me. My Mum and Dad aren’t doing it on purpose, nor is my natural mother or my partner. They can’t help how they behave and they certainly aren’t confused. I have explained many many times, over many years, but it still continues. They don’t need to mind read. And I don’t actually react to my Mum and Dad or my natural mother at all anymore (gave up!), so there is no reason based on what you say for them continuing to react that way either. So I also don’t believe calm communication and changing your own reaction will help (with some people). I appreciate all you have said, but sometimes, there are good people and there aren’t such good people! If everyone in the world treated each other the way they would like to be treated, then we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. Always your response will matter and I don’t think the victim mentality, ‘blaming’ others helps, but I think there is a reality here to be bravely faced (and many just can’t), some people just hurt others for inexplicable and sometimes hateful reasons. I don’t think being calm and pleasant to Hitler would have made a jot of difference…he was a bad boy! And that, sadly, is just that. Do your best, respond calmly, be true to who you are…and if others can’t be the same, then it might be time to limit the contact you have with them. You don’t need to change your responses anymore. They do…
Hi Rebecca
Back in 2005 I lived in Nepal which opened my eyes to many different ways of thinking which both humbled me and inspired me. Nepal is a third world or ‘developing’ country stricken by poverty with much deceit, deception and corruption and well as many beautiful people inside and out. Whilst there I became involved in a charity that was rescuing children and girls who had been trafficked, sadly often by family members, but working with them inspired me to do more and I started a fair trade production centre with the intention of helping the teenage girls reintegrate with their families. Many of these girls had not only been sold by their own families, but had also been rejected by them on their return as stigmatised and unfit for marriage because they were no longer virgins. (The reality of their ordeal was that they had been gang raped and forced into prostitution)
The girls I worked with all 16-22 year olds were some of the happiest, funniest, loveliest people I have ever met and I wanted to help them.
In our very English principals and way of thinking we thought ‘give them training in a useful skill, they will be able to get jobs and be financially independent’ Sounds reasonable doesn’t it – but I couldn’t have got it much more wrong.
First of all, no one would let their own families near an ex-prositute, let alone give them a job in a country where if any jobs are available, you give them to your family first. This is why I ended up starting the fair trade production centre, I thought if no one else will do it, I will create jobs for them.
Two significant things happened during the time I had the production centre, firstly, I became furious when, at the end of each month, the brothers or fathers came to the production centre and took the girls wages away from them. I wanted to stop them, the girls should keep the money they have earned I believed. But I was wrong – the intention of the centre was to help them reintegrating with their families and the money was doing that. The girls themselves wanted to help feed their families, they wanted to put food on the table for their younger brothers and sisters and provide for them – it wasn’t my decision what they did with their money, it was theirs.
Secondly, it came to a point in 2008 when the production centre became financially unviable – I was in danger of losing everything including my house in my attempt to keep these girls in work and eventually I had to make the heart breaking decision to close the centre knowing I was putting 32 girls on the street and potentially back into prostitution. Sitting in front of 32 young girls telling them they no longer had a home or a job was probably one of the worst days of my life.
But do you know what? It was the best thing I could have done for them.
You see I had my standards and principals and my beliefs about the standards in which these girls should live and work, but actually unbeknown to me I was creating a false reality for them and instead of helping them reintegrate with their communities, I had been preventing it. Their wages and standards of living were too high for what they could have expected anywhere else, so it would have been crazy for them to go back home. I kept tabs on what they were all doing when I closed the centre and most of the 32 girls returned to their villages, got married and had children – all move of them ever wanted. Some of them did get jobs with other producers (making handbags) and some started their own small business with the money they had save and the sewing machines I gave them.
The reason why I’m telling you this is because, for me, it was a very rude awakening that I didn’t necessarily know ‘right from wrong’ I only knew what I knew and my beliefs and principals came from the influences I had growing up, but they’re not universal, they are mine alone. Judging the world and people around me without accepting that everyone is different and have developed their own unique view of the world based on their own influences gives me a narrow view of the world and I was poorer for it, it doesn’t affect anyone else.
Of course we can site people and instances in the extremes both good and bad and I like to think that I have developed as a good and decent human being, but perhaps the hardest skill I have learned and still have to consciously practice when other people’s actions don’t make sense to me is acceptance that they think in a different way.
If you do have any interest in exploring this any further, I can highly recommend a book called Warriors, Settlers and Nomads by Terence Watts, it will probably help you understand why you react the way you do and throw some light on people around you.
I wish you all the best you’re clearly a strong person and that is obviously to your credit. You must do what you believe is right, but never stop growing and learning. The most valuable investment you can ever make in life is in yourself and your own development. Please do always feel free to get in touch if you want to discuss further, I’m always happy to help wherever I can.
I totally agree with all you say, though judging the world and people around you without accepting that everyone is different and have developed their own unique view of the world based on their own influences gives you a narrow view of the world…it doesn’t make it right for them to hurt others. We do know right from wrong, you do know right from wrong, of course we have been influenced, but we do know. We have a legal system (flawed maybe!) but it is there to try to prevent one person from harming another. A judge isn’t going to accept that people think differently, thus behave badly. I think you have to ask yourself if you would be quite so accepting if something traumatic happened to you due to someone else’s actions, I am not so sure that you would just accept that they think in a different way. It is a normal, human jouney to go through to come to terms with what happens in life. Rick Hanson’s work is good to follow and it is midway between what you and I are saying. Dealing with it is important, seeing things clearly, finding peace in your own heart and eventually being able to let go.
http://www.rickhanson.net/stay-right-when-youre-wronged/
Hi Rebecca
I’m most certainly not saying it makes it right for people to hurt others and of course we live in a democracy not an anarchy or a dictatorship, it’s something that many people who live in the UK and western world completely take for granted, many other countries don’t have that luxury.
My profession is helping people to live happy calm positive lives without anxiety, depression and anger, I’m not a politician and I’m not a law maker. Shit happens in everyone’s lives, it is part of life and finding a way to deal with the shit and traumas that happens makes us stronger, more compassionate and able to grow emotionally. People come to me for help when they’re suffering from anxiety, depression or anger (or all three which is common) I don’t tell them to forgive the other person or the person who harmed them is right or wrong, that’s not what I’m saying. What I help people to understand is that they cannot change what has happened and they cannot change someone else, they may believe the other person should have acted differently and indeed they might be right, but being right and having someone to blame doesn’t take away the hurt, the anger and doesn’t change anything – as you well know. What will help that person come to terms with what’s happening or happened in their life is change their own way of thinking or dealing with it. If you’re still angry or hurting, something needs to change and that change will come from within you.
I don’t particularly want to go down the religious route, I’m not religious and I have no idea about your preferences, but I just want to use this as an example only because it demonstrates my point well.
Say a child dies (for whatever reason, from illness or violence), how do the parents come to terms with that hurt and loss? Who do they blame, there’s no right to a child dying. For those who believe in God find their comfort in their faith and for them it’s Gods will.
Other people who aren’t religious but perhaps spiritual may find their comfort in destiny and everything happens for a reason, they just don’t know the reason yet.
Hanging on to blame and anger keeps the hurt alive and keeps the anger at the surface, deciding to find a different way of dealing with it in your own mind (that doesn’t necessarily mean forgiving the other person or definitely doesn’t mean blaming yourself) will start the healing process so that it doesn’t have a negative impact on the rest of your life. There is a famous quote from Mark Twain that goes “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured”