I never thought I would be that blogger, where I alienated my blog for a week,  but I did.  All I can say is,  adult life is no joke. Where are the days of just passing notes in between classes? Take me back To keep my sanity, I had to limit myself to a few tasks and I didn’t attend to my blog like I should. Do you ever have moments with stress and you really have to sit back and keep life as simple as possible to just make it each day until things pass? Uh yeah guilt as charged

I wanted to touch a bit about the underlying causes that can contribute to our (my) anger.  Since, this was a bit of what I was going through last week. I was stressed out over things I didn’t have much control over and there was a bit of miscommunication with someone. Instead of asking for clarification I chose to stay in a state of anger, but really I was truly hurt.  I realize that in these moments where my emotions can be all over the place, instead of dealing with them in the moment, I can mask them with anger. Do you ever do that?

There are moments of jumping to conclusions (cognitive distortion) and being out of character due to not wanting to deal with the real problem/issue. Overtime, if we don’t handle these slight irritations that can occur, that feeling of anger can reveal itself in different ways. Situations like this can be limited by learning to cope/manage situations in the moment. There’s a tendency to let things build up with all the other things you could have going on and thats where the issue lies.

In the moment of being angry, behaviors and how you express yourself is not automatically thought about because your reactions are fully based on emotions. Logical thinking can get thrown out the window. Being at a 10 and in the moment can be hard to come down from, especially when you’re not aware of triggers to that anger. This goes back to being mindful of your feelings as certain issues arise in your day to day routine and being able to handle things in that moment before you get to a point where it’s hard to come down from.

Some things to consider when anger takes control over what you really feel.

• Be mindful of triggers. Look for symtpoms, recognize how your body feels during these moments, think about any thoughts you were having, think of what emotions you were experiencing. Think about what preceded this anger, what was specifically going on at the time? Keep a note of these things for future reference
• Ask yourself Why? Dig deep and get to why you’re angry? Is there something you need but aren’t getting?
• What did you learn that can help your manage your anger differently in the future?
• Think of things like a traffic light.
  • There’s levels to this anger so please act accordingly.  Green is go, yellow is slow down and red is stop. There are some things that if they occur, don’t bother you (green), then think about what things bring on slight irritations/frustrations (yellow). These things are bearable but are important to pay attention to because continuously getting triggered with this particular thing, you can eventually get to a 10 (red).  Recognize and be aware of what fits in these levels, and how you can manage things for you to take control of your anger.
• Learn to walk it off, breathe it out, ground yourself in some way before reacting. Find the root cause. You can’t do that when you’re a ball full of emotions, so learn to take a step back and reflect.
• Journal as messy and as angrily as you would like. Doing this, gets things out and just by doing that and reading over your entry, hopefully its clear, you can get a good idea of whats making you feel the way that you are.

As I’ve repeated in my other posts, have a plan on ways to cope with how you’re feeling. You’ll never know how effective a technique can be if its never applied. Have a plan, be aware of your triggers, your true feelings and learn to paint a different picture on how you deal with feelings of anger. Your normal way of acting on things can be replaced, but it just starts with being in tune with yourself and taking an active approach on ways to balance out your feelings. Your feelings are valid, its just figuring out a simpler way to manage how you feel to have that control that you need to deal with the underlying issue.