Understanding and Overcoming Anger
Hey, hey, hello, and happy July to all of you! Wow, half of the year is already gone? I hope the first six months of this year went well for you. Let's make the second half of 2021 even better!
Welcome to my blog and thank you for taking time out to read this. The topic for today's blog is Understanding and Overcoming Anger. And before I dive into the topic, I want to tell you why I wanted to talk about anger. I chose anger as a topic for my blog because I wanted to talk about something that I have struggled with for a very long time so that my experiences and the recent changes in me can guide you towards better decisions.
Anger is something I have lived with and been in pain because of for almost all my life. And today I can see that 2020-21 have been marvelous years that taught me how to let go of my anger and temperament in the healthiest way possible without taking a guilt ridden, forced path.
Since I talk about self-love, I want you to understand that anger is the exact opposite of self-love. Everything good that we do for ourselves, all the affirmations, meditations, rewards, all our efforts go to waste when we let our anger overpower us. I recently asked my Instagram audience about their journey with anger, and the most common complain was how anger affects their relationships.
Today, I'm not even going to talk about how anger affects your relationships because more than anyone else, it takes a toll on you, your mental health, your physical health and your well-being. I understand how your actions, when you are angry, can lead to disappointments and even disasters in your relationships. But even before that, I want you to understand the fundamentals of respect. When you take actions motivated by anger, you don't respect the people around you and most of all, you disrespect yourself.
My experience with anger has not been kind towards me. Every single time I felt angry and acted based on my anger, it has manifested physically. I have felt the physical pain, the tightening of the muscles and a drastic change in my breathing and just the inability to focus on what's actually good for me.
So now let's understand what exactly anger is. We all get angry. Anger is a natural and mostly an automated response to some form of pain. Anger never occurs in isolation, but is often preceded by pain or hurt. However, pain alone does not trigger anger. It is the thoughts and our interpretation of the situation that actually make us angry in almost all cases. Anger is a substitute emotion. We make ourselves feel angry when we don't want to feel pain, insecurity, vulnerability or just plain grief. Anger distracts us from the emotional or physical pain we feel.
But this distraction comes at a huge cost. Besides the obvious social harm and the harm to your relationships, anger takes a toll on your health. Most physically damaging is the effect on your cardiac health. Along with that, it weakens your immune system, makes your anxiety worse and greatly increases the risk of having a stroke.
As I mentioned earlier, anger is a substitute emotion. A lot of times you must have noticed that your outburst didn't actually have to do anything external but your own fears and insecurities. For me, it's usually the lack of control over the situation or someone else's reaction that causes an outburst. But it's been a few months that I have not felt the overpowering, debilitating anger that used to cost me my day, my mental peace, and, of course, my relationships.
The year 2020 that came with a complete, unpredictable time for almost all of us, also gave us wisdom and strength in ways we don't recognize just yet. Staying socially distant, locked down in my own house 2020 truly gave me the time and space I needed to myself to distance myself from the situations and the people around whom my anger revolved.
I'm never going to tell you to completely disengage and disconnect with your negative emotions because feeling all sorts of emotions is, after all, human. But I want to share with you how I have been able to let go of the need to feel a certain kind of anger that was nothing but harmful for me.
So the first thing that I learned, and I think you can do as well, is distance yourself, step back from situations and people that usually cause an outburst of anger. Look back at every time it has happened and assess the real cause of that anger. Was it a reaction to being hurt or maybe a lack of control? Once you identify what actually ticks you off, you will have more control over your emotions.
The second thing I want you to do is when you actually do feel angry, you need to focus on your breathing first. Someone once told me our breath is all we have. The day that stops, there is nothing more. And that really stayed with me. Focusing on your breath works for many more negative emotions than just anger. Take slow, deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. By voluntarily changing the rate, depth and pattern of breathing, we can change the messages being sent to our brain.
The third and one of the most important lessons I've learned is that whatever happens around you is not because of you. Nothing other people do is because of you. It's because of themselves. Everyone has their own interpretation of the world, of the reality around them. And when we take things personally, we assume that the other people know what's in our world and we try to impose our world onto their world. So once again, step back and do not take everything as if it is meant to attack you. And even if it is, it's someone else's perception of the reality and someone else's understanding of what needs to happen.
So that brings us to the end of this blogpost. I feel like I can go on and on about this topic, but we probably will have to do a part two about it. But I would love to know your take on anger, your take on this particular blog and how you have learned to deal with your anger yourself. I would love to learn more from you. So why don't you drop by on my Instagram and drop me a message and we can start a conversation about anger.
I hope this blog brings the solutions you were looking for to deal with your own anger, and I hope it truly helps you in overcoming it. Don't forget to share this blog with your friends and family. Let's reach more and more people and change the way they think about themselves, change the way they love themselves.
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