Anger

Anger about the past and present, what could have been, what should have been, or just anger in general, I find one of the hardest emotions to let go.  I'm hoping to find help in handling anger and my tendency to mentally go back over everything that upsets me past and present.  I hope I am taking a step in the right direction (provided I don't step in a dog ****) lol.

This is my 2nd post here in this community.

[FinelyExecutedLuck]

I was never able to restrain my often-explosive anger when I was growing up, so I have quite a number of memories from between the ages of 7 and 16 where I lashed out in anger and frustration.  I regret nearly all of what I said and did due to emotion like that, and I'm apparently the last person to forgive myself for that stuff.  But I use that regret to distract myself from my anger in the present, letting it water down the incendiary emotion while I get a handle on it and think about why I'm getting worked up in the first place.

The thing is, my explosions always ended up making people aware that I was intensely angry, and forcing a resolution or at least having me let it go.  People I was angry with knew I was angry after that, when they might have had no idea before, though it was embarrassing to face them after losing control like that.  Other times, people around me became aware that I was upset with things out of my control, and talked to me about it.  Talking helped a lot, even if things couldn't change because of it.

I learned to use logic to defeat my anger.  I question it extensively (who, what, where, when, why): why am I getting angry, what do I get out of this emotion?  Anger is good in the right situations - when defending someone or something from harm especially.  But often I'm angry because of seeing/hearing/reading something that wasn't even addressed to me, and usually caused by ignorance or bias.  A lot of times even a calm explanation wouldn't change the mind of the person that irritated me to the point of anger, but being calm is the best way to attempt to convince someone of something, since it's too easy to write off the argument of someone that's emotional.

If someone is making me angry because of what they're saying to me, the first thing I do when the anger starts making my head hot is to start breathing deeply, forcing myself to concentrate on cool air coming in through my nostrils making my head cooler.  Cooler heads prevail, after all.

Then I start thinking why I'm angry.  The why is very important, since there's always a reason for it, and sometimes more than one reason.  The  'why' is easy if someone is accusing me of something I didn't do - it's harder not to respond with a scathing comment in return, and causing anger to escalate on both sides.  Sometimes people just have bad days and are out to irritate other people and cause conflict, and that feeds into it.


I don't know, anger is fluid and there's a lot of reasons to be angry.  But talking about specific situations with people that you know are on your side like friends and family, or talking with a counselor/psychologist about specific triggers can help a lot.  A lot of times, talking about it with someone who has a sympathetic ear is one of the only ways to resolve the anger if you've been sitting on it for years, which it sounds like you have.