Published on 2024-10-09 by Teagan Pacheco
“Knock it off,” “Watch what you’re doing,” “Do you need something!” I shamefully speak these abrasive phrases all too naturally. These vituperations make up the thin edge of the wedge that pushes my family away from me. My selfishness, entitlement, and arrogance wrongfully empower me to believe I am better, superior, and worthy of my demands when these characteristics reveal that I am undeserving of other people’s compassion, respect, and kindness. Hello, fellow prospectors, and good morning. Today, I want to share something I disgracefully have had much personal experience with anger management. I’m going to share a bit of my struggle, relay critical indicators of chronic anger issues, and treatments toward what the Greeks called “Eudaimonia,” or the good life.
Anger is the intense feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility. I feel anger, particularly by the unexpected, like a car accident, split food, or illness. I must shift course to accommodate when someone nabs my parking spot or gets to the gym equipment before me. My anger congregates almost with the aspiration to bleed into the rest of my day to keep the fire burning with sufficient fuel. Once irritated by the stop light, I think I could have sped through; I’m bothered by the radio. When I forget to oil the pan and my eggs stick, I’m curt with my wife as she vainly tries to speak with me with the bit of time we have together.
This vanity has cost unnecessary and unjustified pain and heartache to the ones who genuinely care for me. My lasting effect on the world is infinitesimal, but little do I know how significant of an imprint I have on my wife’s world, my kids’ world, and my parents’ world. Nobody cares about me as much as they do, and yet I look for the most fault in them, and they become the least forgivable in my antipathetic eyes. If I allowed my anger to drive my family away, I would be ineligible for anybody’s love, kindness, and goodness. That is the result of unrestrained selfishness and isolation. After all, everybody makes you angry anyway, right? Who needs them, huh? They’re only getting in the way. How myopic I had been. Foolish, ignorant, and rash are brilliant monikers to categorize my actions from any part of my emotional developmental history.
I have regulated my anger for the past two years and recognized my gratuitous responses. My wife, the epitome of Eirene, the Greek goddess of patience, lovingly tried to admonish my greedy conduct. I owe our enduring marriage to her as she courageously resuscitated me from the fog of antagonism I finally discovered myself absorbed in. Now, equipped with this self-awareness, I must fight daily to repel my forged habitualized disposition. The first step to getting well is admitting that you have a problem.
My wife encouraged therapy, and reluctantly, I began to attend. At first, I only showed up because I already paid for the first two sessions; however, I started to go for myself after a while. My therapist recommended mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). This type of therapy utilizes journaling, introspection, meditation, and breathing exercises. My anger was driven by interruptions and the thought of unwelcome intrusions, and I was left to govern my reactions and straying speculations.
In addition to the incredibly beneficial habits established in mindfulness, I found Stoicsim to be another buttress with practical guidance on sovereignty through the virtues. These virtues - wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice - are intrinsically good, irrespective of circumstance. Regarding temperance or self-restraint, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius asks himself a profound question, which I repeat with softening regularity: “What good will this anger do you?” Beyond the required introspection to identify your calamitous pet peeves, I recommend purposeful lifestyle adjustments to promote improved thought quality. Such changes include a consistent sleep schedule emphasizing waking up early. I prepare myself for the expectant misfortunes awaiting me to reduce the impact of undesirable unsurprises. For example, children spill drinks and fall. Therefore, being alarmed and pestered when my children spill or fall should be preposterous.
Much of my anger, incidentally, stems from my actions or lack thereof. Consider this: you have competing priorities. However, you procrastinate all day. When you finally sit down to do the work you should have done, you are asked to get up for a favor. Your hotheaded response to this disturbance is compounded by the self-made pressure to complete the overdue task. Who is to blame? We control our actions, thoughts, and reactions, and nothing else. Remove the asinine things that don’t matter and dedicate that time and energy to the things that do. I’m not talking about cooking, helping your family, playing with the pets, or even talking on the phone. I’m referring to the hours we spend comparing, plotting, coveting, worrying, pretending, gambling, and scrolling our happiness away.
My final suggestion to quell anger is to take a walk. What a couple of deep, calming breaths and a short walk outside can do for you in times of bitterness is unbelievable. A sedentary lifestyle is dangerous for fear of atrophy and the unnatural reception to seclusion. This small but necessary rest allows for a break in the tributary of ugly, festering thoughts, groundless anxieties, and noxious information that we fill ourselves with, sometimes unconsciously. Tim Ferriss, the American entrepreneur, said, "If you want to control your outputs, control your inputs. Be very careful about what you put into your mind.”