anger and how you deal

so this is a topic that I have struggled with the most. Anger is something that i seem to be very quick to go to. I would not say that i am quick to physical anger just emotional anger. the problem is that once anger has taken hold I shut down and am stuck in a state of anger for sometime. recently I have tried to catch myself when I feel myself become enraged and then I try to meditate on it and for the most part it seems to calm me. My question to the TOTJO is how do you deal with anger and what seems to help you calm yourself?

For me the most useful work has been in identifying what it is that makes me angry, and what the underlying reason that I personally find something a cause of anger may be.

For example...

Someone drums their fingers on a desk in a quiet office and it's irritating. It can be irritating without inspiring anger.
Someone lies to me, and it makes me feel "righteous anger" in showing them I know, and judging them... how useful is that anger to me? And how damaging?
I do something stupid, and I criticise and judge myself for it. Whose words are those I'm repeating to myself? Whose anger led me to feel making mistakes was unacceptable?


My study as a Jedi has been tremendously valuable in identifying the causes and triggers of my anger, and in going to understand to some extent what it is which leads me to behave in "angry ways", encouraging my own feelings of agitation and rage. For me the best answer I have is not meditation by itself, but self-reflection, l earning about who you are, what your life looks like and what has caused you to become an "angry person".

I wish you luck and success with it

thank you tzb I did not think to address what was make me angry. In my meditations I was more focused on calming the rage rather then finding out what the root cause of it was. I am going to try and incorporate those questions in.

Keep in mind anger and ways of dealing with it is always a personal perspective. I will say this much though; my career can have days that leave me absolutely enraged by the time the bell rings. So, here are a few things I do.

Meditation (cliche I know)- here is the reason though. It's much harder to hold on to anger as a reflex when you look at the reasoning for the anger and apply it across a broad spectrum of events. The second thing meditation can do is clear the mind it will help you drop it where it sits.

Simple tasks- Sometimes when I get angry I do simple tasks; for example here I have been doing a lot of work around my house recently and only gotten help from 2 of my 3 roommates. Now, obviously spending entire days in the yard in the sun is hard enough; but then the resentment builds when I have gotten no help. Particularly when said roommate gets home sees me working on the yard and chooses to go inside and go to sleep at 4 pm. But, point is, when I feel that anger build I go into an auto mode and focus only on what i am doing. Spreading mulch and digging up roots is simple enough that just paying attention to my actions; I.E. where the shovel is placed, where the mulch is uneven ect. is just enough to sway my mind away.

Journal- It doesn't hurt to journal. I have been able to occasionally leave a feeling of anger behind once I have written it down and gotten it out, this also works with conversation. Putting the feeling outside your mind in any form is incredibly helpful.

Physical activity- When I have a particularly hard time and none of the above the work I tend to try and work it out. I will do some boxing on my heavy bag (though less now as my wrists even wrapped can't take much. Running, dancing, really anything; it's back to the mind off it and focus on something else (mmm sweet sweet endorphin release). Sometimes, I throw reading in too a good scifi book or history (insert anything you are interested in) will take your mind and put it in a different place.

Sorry for the really long reply but these are some of my personal methods and my personal justifications for why I use them. Just remember anger even justified is not something you should hold on to. You can always let it go even if it seems impossible too.

When I become highly stressed, frustrated and angry....I force a physical sensory "Prick"

I keep a lighter in my pocket, the metal part has two little wings that - if you bend up, gives a nice poke to the tips of your tumb and finger tips. It dosn't cause injury or abuse (does not break skin) - Just a nice "Prick" - so whenever I feel myself losing it Ill sit there with my hand in my pocket pricking my fingers on this lighter

The reason for this is two fold.

1) It causes a physical stimuli that draws your attention away from the stressing factors and instead to the present moment of your fingers being pricked.

2) If you believe in Reflexology - your hands are a highly sensitive doorway to the rest of your body. Much like acupuncture and point pressure massages it causes a chain reaction that causes circulation, breaking of stagnate energies and a point of focus.

Anger is a family inheritance for me.

Flash anger: This is the anger that just pops up out of nowhere seemingly, an example would be like someone cutting you off in traffic. This can even happen to you on things that normally do not anger you. This kind of anger, in my experience, is an indication that I have a lot going on elsewhere. This isn't you going postal, but this is your mind unloading negative emotions on the first thing that crosses your path to try and get that off of your shoulders. It's the water bubbling over the side of the pasta pot. This is reduced by removing the greater stressors in your life as this is harder to immediately control.

Burn out anger: This anger is a combination of resentment, ego, and tiredness. You have done something so long without something changing or seeing the end that you just can't anymore and you begin to relate unhappiness with the thing. Example, I used to love a video game until a lot of toxic people came in and my attempts to keep the team together causes me to just get angry at the game. Sometimes we can't avoid the object (like work or school) and that breeds resentment. This is where we need to make changes in our lives or our perspective to better understand why we are angry and how to avoid it building up in the future.

There are many, many forms of anger and the above two are the most commonly unaddressed forms that I see but are the most common. Anger stems from many sources, and as many have said, you need to identify why you are angry. For me, it tends to be a lot of life stress and a desire for something to go right or trying to reassert control over my life. A lot of things piling up also make me angry. As a result, I have identified that I need to work out timelines, focus on biting off only what I can chew, and work slowly sometimes.

The most common techniques I use are as follows:

1. Realize I am not acting in the manner I try to.
2. Step back from the situation
3. Analyze why I am acting as I am.
4. Find a method to fix or sidestep that problem (Sidestep: I.E. If I don't have to do it, why punish myself and do it again?)
5. Try again.

Stepping back can mean many things: A coffee break, a spa day, vacation, meditation, taking a shower, anything that allows you to disassociate with the problem and come at it from a place of impartiality. Some people find peace in a church, a coffee shop, the park, anything. Sometimes, at work, you can't step away, so I get a cup of coffee. It forces me to think about something else for a moment and let the back of my mind process things. People have given plenty of advice on how to free your mind here so I won't go into details.

Another important step: Have someone who is willing to give you a swift kick in the posterior. My fiance/wife is more than willing to call me out when my anger is unjust or harmful. When I become acidic, she tells me to fix myself and that is important because we don't realize when we become angry over little things sometimes because the little things become big things in our minds when we become angry. Having a priest, a friend, a family member, a lover, a child, someone who can tug on your shoulder and say "Hey, you're being a lot more angry lately" can help let you know before it becomes super critical.

Anger maintenance is about self care and maintenance. By properly reducing stressors in your life, anger becomes less strong and if you take care of yourself, it becomes easier to take care of your anger.

One last thing to note: Anger needs you to have a lot going on to take control. The more stressed, the more things go wrong, the more powerful it is. Think of it as weak on it's own (irritations) and that it multiplies instead of adds to itself. A mild irritation becomes a huge deal when you have a lot on your plate or it becomes the trigger to let the font flow freely.

I have more experience working with fear than anger. When I get angry it's usually quick without time to intervene. Well I guess my fear goes that way too haha. ok, so some things that have helped me:

1. Understand why the emotion exists. For me, this understanding helps me have some compassion for myself and my emotions. Knowing fear is an evolutionary response to staying alive, it turns this demon of mine into a dragon that I can work with and even befriend.

2. Finding the root of the emotions lets me do a few things. Answering that WHY lets me become more and more aware of my responses and allows me to either avoid those situations, or set up 'road block' thought processes that let me slow down enough to keep a handle on things. These are for the quick-burning responses. These are very hard to do because many of our emotional responses are so ingrained in us that we don't even realize there's a path. You go from calm to anger on a trigger instead of following reason.

For fear, the reason those pathways exist is it's a safety response. You can either brows your way to this thread by typing in www.templeofthejediorder.org, logging in, going to Forums, then finding the general forum in the index, then open discussions, then this thread, or you can bookmark it if you know you're going to be visiting it often and need it quickly. That's why you go from "aggressive dog" to "OMG RUN" instead of "oh, look! It's a dog, it's bearing its fangs at me and growling, its tail is strait back, hackles up, and now it's snapping at me and drooling, maybe I should get out of here before it hurts me."

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if anger had those same "Favorites" and probably for similar reasons. I feel like it's a preservation response.

BUT once you know how you react to things, you can find the root cause, and by being mindful of those, you can work towards a calmer response.

To help with this there's something called ABCs of thought processes where you'll examine your responses to situations, find the thought fallacies, and examine your feelings afterwards. If that's interesting for you I'll go look it up in more detail.

3. If it's a slow-burning anger that keeps cropping up, what helps me is to really reflect on my feelings, why I made the choices I did, or why the other person might have. What I could do to change the situation, or if I can't, how I could come to terms about it.

4. The other use for anger is to direct it at something constructive. Like working out or actively changing whatever it was that made you angry. For instance my leadership has me very very angry right now. So I went up the chain and tried to get help for me and my troops. I got help, nothing changed for them. Now I'm left with a situation of "I told you so". Now I'm angry that they didn't listen, but at least I did what was in my power...and I'm planning out another talk with leadership to make sure they understand that this is connected.

And to be honest, sometimes the emotion sits there and you just can't seem to get rid of it. No amount of your logical side can convince your emotional one that it doesn't need it. For that I'll turn to the things I love doing if I can. Reading, crafting, talking with friends, playing, shamanic journeys or other meditations, taking a long bath. Something to distract me long enough to let the emotion settle and work it's way out.

I wrote a sermon about something along these lines too for additional reading if you'd like: When your Dragons Roar

thanks kit for that reply you make some really great points and i plan to read the sermon when i get a free moment. Most of the time my anger is very fast to come on and then takes awhile to burn of regardless of the trigger was. it's a very difficult emotion for me to describe and even for me to comprehend sometime because of this. between what you have just given me along with the other members here i feel like i got some new things to try out to try and curb my anger and rain it back in.

When anger hits me I admit that i have a difficult time letting go, at least right away. While I don't revel or enjoy the sensation, I go through it for what it is of why it happened. Riding it to it's destination and diffusion. I have no meditation techniques at this point in my life to rely on, I do employ walking around, alone, to let me mind work through the issue. Anger and rage is something that I try to avoid at all cost.

I have experienced my trip down the dark side once and let me tell you, it was honestly a game changer.

Years ago I was infatuated with one woman, I really wanted her in my life. Problem was is that after initial meeting the feelings I had to her were not reciprocated. Being male and ignorant to female body language I didn't see a problem. When eventually I was told to not bother wanting or pursuing a relationship, well I snapped. At that point in time I had (and still do) have an understanding of magicK, and I was consumed and intoxicated with hate, and I mean real hate. Anger was my ally and what an ally it was. When I mentioned I was intoxicated, I was. I had so much spiritual./magickal energy that I know I could curse her if I wanted to. Instinctively I had a ceremony down. I looked for associations between stones or crystals and parts of the body. Any link between time of day and when to focus all my hate and shatter the stone at just the right time.

The scary part is that this was all working on my instinctive/intuitive level. Given the power behind my desire for revenge, I almost succumbed to the Dark Side.

So what did I do? I wrote a letter stating in her native language that I hate her. That was the introductory line. I found her, gave it to her and walked away. The upside was that I've never felt so pleased with myself and so....drained of emotion that I could grin for now other reason than the letter and the trip down a dark path that would haunt me for a long time.

By no means would I recommend anyone to follow the same path I could have taken. But the experience was worth it. Since then, I judge and grade my feelings of anger towards someone or something and I ask this question: Is it the same as her? I do not remember her name any more, and it is just as well. So I have been to the edge of the Abyss, looked into it and saw what I am capable of, and I was finally aware of what what I can do, with the wrong motivation behind me.

So what am I like now? I have found that talking as fast as possible with a sympathetic ear helps. I blow off steam before it builds up. I do whatever I can to not let my anger find it's mark. In terms of animals, I will be like a turtle to retreat into a shell to protect myself. If pushed further, I'll shift to that of a porcupine to keep loved ones away from my emotions. If pushed beyond that, I'm a scorpion and I fully intend to sting the culprit to death. If pushed further, I don't want that to happen.

Rhircyn

Oh boy, anger is something that comes to me everyday because of work. I work retail and people can light my match QUICK! To be honest, though, I have learned to sim it down quicker than before. For example, I had a gentleman (I'm being nice calling him that word, btw) who called me a "fat b*tch" because I wouldn't charge his phone in my store. Yes, he said "F*ck you, fat b*tch" because I wouldn't charge his phone.....not because I was rude, or gave him bad service, but because I told him that our store policy prevents us from charging phones that are not employee phones.

As he left, my anger got the best of me and I insulted him back by calling him a "bald motherf*cker". About 5 minutes after that happened, I sat in the back and cried in anger. At the time, I didn't regret insulting him back but now that it's been about a week or so, I look back and think I could have handled it better. I should not have let the anger get the best of me and insulted him, I should have just let him walk away and moved on with my work. Just about 2 days ago, I had a lady get mad at me because her daughter bought something that she was not allowed to buy and was trying to return it. I calmly explained that I was not able to do the return for cash because we do not allow cash return. Just like the guy, she insulted me calling me "a fat (WHY DO PEOPLE IMMEDIATELY COMMENT ON MY SIZE?!?!?!) miserable woman that will never be able to get a real job (did I mention I'm an assistant manager at my job????)". My initial thought was to insult her back (I have a short temper, too) and kick her out of the store but decided to take a step back and think hard about what to say. I then said "Ma 'am, I do not know who has or do not has permission to shop in my store. Next time, perhaps you could accompany your daughter as she goes shopping to make sure that she buys only what YOU want her to buy" and with that, she grabbed the item and left while muttering crap about the store policies.

I realized that if I let my emotions get the best of me I'm bound to say or do things that could have dire consequences (like, with the guy, if he called corporate, I would get in trouble....and not him who insulted me first) like losing my job. Since work is really the only place where my anger flares, I usually leave the area that I can feel my anger rising (like when a giant group of kids is destroying my displays) or pass on the insulting customer to another manager. It's about restraint and that is REALLY hard to do. While I cried in the stockroom, one thing that helped me calm down was to say "there is no emotion, there is peace" over and over while controlling my breathing (I was crying hard to the point where you start hiccuping) and it really helped. I took a giant gulp of water and then went back to the floor and finished my day.

Everyone gets angry, it's reacting correctly to that anger that is the important thing.