Coping with Anger?

[CaptinPickAxe]

I have a question about a situation that came to head tonight. I was pushed tonight from the realm of words to that of the physical. I'll be the first to say my anger got the best of me. I crossed the threshold and took it from a heated arguement to me...well...punking physically another person. I was the aggressor, so I'm not at liberty to discuss exactly what transpired tonight. However, I can tell you that a week of apathy on top of constant shit talking, and being called out tonight brought me to a level of physical anger. I was a single breath away from maiming this kid. I went to strike him but at the last second had a lapse of common sense and unballed my hand, slowed the punch, and pushed the **** out of his head. No marks, no strike.

My question is this: When you are in a situation you cannot escape, and the boundry has been crossed and you are ready to get physical, how do you relax? I'm not looking for sitting and meditating, doing Qigong, or alligning my chakras. Is there any insight to help me cool down in a heated situation like this?

[lunghushan]

My question is this: When you are in a situation you cannot escape, and the boundry has been crossed and you are ready to get physical, how do you relax? ... Is there any insight to help me cool down in a heated situation like this?

If you can't control yourself physically in a situation like this, that's really bad. It's one thing to shout and yell insults and stuff, but if you really can't control yourself physically, then that's really bad. That's how people wind up in jail.

Usually though when people lose it like this it seems like it's due to other stress in their lives, like having a hard time paying the bills, work related stress, etc. They're kindof like on hair triggers already.

It sounds like it built up to this situation, so really you were reacting with anger for a while now. It seems like maybe you need to defuse your anger before it reaches critical ... take it out on the punching bag, go out to the garage and break something, consider that the guy is a just a punk, cool down BEFORE it reaches the level where you want to take somebody's head off.

When in doubt, hit the wall or something instead of the person ... it will leave a hole and maybe hurt your hand but at least you didn't hit the person.

Anyways, it sounds like you did control it, so no harm ... I have a friend who is a lot of times on a hair trigger. He tried Prozac but then he gets really moody when he's off. But he seems to be able to recognize when it's happening now, and he goes out and gets away now, goes and splits wood or hits the bag or something instead of taking it out on people.

[djcaldwell]

My question is this: When you are in a situation you cannot escape, and the boundry has been crossed and you are ready to get physical, how do you relax? I'm not looking for sitting and meditating, doing Qigong, or alligning my chakras. Is there any insight to help me cool down in a heated situation like this?

Personally, it takes A LOT to get me that angry but my trick before I do is I laugh. It ****es the other person off tremendously (and that's part of why I do it too) but I will just stand there and laugh at you and walk right past you laughing.

The other thing I have to admit works all by itself is CONSEQUENCES I don't know how old you are but I'm in my 30's with kids so before I do anything these days the first thing I think about is what is it going to cost me. That ususally stops me from smacking someone in the face. It did very recently...

But if you get to the point where you see black then I have no advise there because the few times it's happened in my life I've had to have people hold me back from doing something I may have really been sorry for. But like I said it takes a lot to get me there.

[Pork Chop]

Nobody messes with me like that, i guess i don't get out enough.

the only people i've wanted to get violent with in the last few years have done a lot more than what you described, to the point of me questioning whether or not it's worth sitting in a jail cell the rest of my life or ending it prematurely.

In those instances, I've decided that I'm not about to lose my freedom, my life, over some worthless girl. i'm not going to let a gut reaction to someone else's evil cause me any more pain, if i still hate my life, i'll take it at a later date but i'm not going to do something drastic in response to someone who doesn't deserve any respect.

[Chief Fox]

I've got anger issues.

I've had anger ruin relationships when girls left me because they didn't know how I would react to certain situations. I've never gotten physical but I'm pretty good at scaring the sh!t out of people by yelling and demoralizing them. (nothing to be proud of)

I recently read a book titled Beyond Anger

It's helped me a lot. It talks about how anger is a downward spiral of irrational thought. It helps you to identify the downward spiral and bring you back to rational thought.

Here's an example of irrational thought.
You're driving down the road, a person cuts you off. You automatically think, "what is wrong with that person?", "Do they think that they are more important than me?", "Do they think that where ever they're going is more important then where I'm going?", "Do they think that where I'm going doesn't matter?", "Do they think I'm stupid?". "I'm going to teach that guy a lesson!".

Of course this irrational thought process lasts only about 2 seconds and then you react.

The idea is to catch the irrational thought process and turn it around before it gets out of control.

You, obviously got to the point in your thought process that you thought it was ok to physically harm this person. I'm not judging you but I think you know that this is not a rational thought.

Anyway, I don't want to go on and on but you should check out that book.

If you want to talk about anger at all, feel free to PM me.

[splinter]

Well, you didn't really mention what the person did to **** you off, so it's a little tough to say what you could've done to handle the situation better.

Usually violence is a choice that people use as a last resort when dealing with a conflict. It's the result of not knowing how to solve the situation in a more reasonable manner, and that could be the result of any number of things.

Usually though, it's because the person feels genuinely threatened (possibly not physically), which is rooted in personal insecurities. If you're there's no insecurity, then there is no threat, which means you can resolve the situation calmly.
Either by laughing at them (as was mentioned), ignoring them, or taking some other planned action, like smiling, speaking calmly, and pointing out why what they're doing makes them look like a jerk.

If they're doing it to try and impress someone, all you have to do is convince the people he's trying to impress that he's an idiot, and make sure he knows that's what they think.

The question is, what personal insecurity did this person touch on that drove you to react this way? Did he insult you? Yuu mentioned something about a week of **** talking? Was it this person who was doing this the whole week? Did he threaten your ego? Threaten you physically?

And what can you do to resolve that insecurity?

I'm not a big fan of Tom Cruise, but I think this is a great example of dealing with a situation that could easily have resulted in violence if it had been another person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D7WzCDT_0s

[unkokusai]

This thread is P!SSING ME OFF!

[Chief Fox]

I'm not a big fan of Tom Cruise, but I think this is a great example of dealing with a situation that could easily have resulted in violence if it had been another person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D7WzCDT_0s

Wow! score one point for scientology. Imagine if that was Sean Penn!

[CaptinPickAxe]

I did have tons of stress in my life and I would consider this week to be one of the most stressful on record. Then to set things off, I have a drunken roommate call me, wake me up, talk shit, and trash my room while I'm gone. Then he tells me I'm "all talk" and to "bring it." This is the icing on the shit cake of my boss screwing me on paychecks and disrespecting me, me being the bitch at work, and producing an album where studio time isn't exactly smooth.

I should of hit the bag but I'm lacking one. All I've been doing lately is practicing my BJJ with my group of dustmonkeys. It feels rewarding submiting people but it isn't the stress relief of sparring or heavy bag work. The only thing that didn't turn last night into a case was two of the dustmonkeys standing in between and my girl there keeping me calm.

Now that I look back at last night, I realized it could have been much much worse. I held on to a shred of reason that saved me from a fight, or worse, a court case. This is the first time I have ever been that mad, so I'm not a hotheaded live wire. I just pushed to my limits like Knockout Ned and snapped...well, almost.

I did hit him with a cold blooded line I'm kind of proud of,

"You want to call out the Devil but don't want the hell that comes with it."

[lunghushan]

I should of hit the bag but I'm lacking one. All I've been doing lately is practicing my BJJ with my group of dustmonkeys. It feels rewarding submiting people but it isn't the stress relief of sparring or heavy bag work. The only thing that didn't turn last night into a case was two of the dustmonkeys standing in between and my girl there keeping me calm.

You might try the Y or find some cheap boxing gym someplace. I had a friend in NYC who swore by the Y because they always had a heavy bag and a speed bag.

But yeah, sounds like you are just one majorly stressed out dude.

In college we noticed that people who were long distance runners also seemed to be pretty calm. In college we used to do a lot of mountain biking but one of our friends, Ryan, started doing long distance running because he noticed those guys were always calm. We didn't see him much after that.

That is a pretty good line, though. Roommates are usually a problem in some way.

[djcaldwell]

In college we used to do a lot of mountain biking but one of our friends, Ryan, started doing long distance running because he noticed those guys were always calm. We didn't see him much after that.

HEY I KNOW RYAN!!

I'm sorry, just being a putz. It's just one of those things in social interations that I find amusing when people attempt to validate a story by mentioning someones name as if it reinforces that the story has some factual basis.

It's especially humorous when the person doing so is anonymous. It's a little different if you run in social circles and you're like "Hey my friend Joe told me" because then there is some chance that they may actually know Joe or even one day meet him. But when no one knows who you are and you say my buddy Joe did this...no one will ever meet or know Joe so what's the point for that you can just say - in college a guy ran a lot to relieve stress then he disappeared. Think he fell on a trail somewhere and was eaten by coyotes.

Sorry again just one of those things...

[CaptinPickAxe]

You might try the Y or find some cheap boxing gym someplace. I had a friend in NYC who swore by the Y because they always had a heavy bag and a speed bag.

But yeah, sounds like you are just one majorly stressed out dude.

In college we noticed that people who were long distance runners also seemed to be pretty calm. In college we used to do a lot of mountain biking but one of our friends, Ryan, started doing long distance running because he noticed those guys were always calm. We didn't see him much after that.

That is a pretty good line, though. Roommates are usually a problem in some way.

I agree, but being the broke college kid I am I need a cheap means. Maybe I should pick up running longer distances as I do find me sorting my thoughts while jogging. Thanks for the help

[lunghushan]

HEY I KNOW RYAN!!

I'm sorry, just being a putz. It's just one of those things in social interations that I find amusing when people attempt to validate a story by mentioning someones name as if it reinforces that the story has some factual basis.

Yeah, it's stupid ... I can't remember Ryan's last name anyways. A group of us used to go mountain biking all the time.

As for being anonymous, yeah, I guess I am, not that it matters. If you knew my name you wouldn't know me from Pete anyways.

[Scott R. Brown]

Hi CapitnPickAxe,

If you are feeling that your anger is rising, you will find that if you take control of your breathing it will help you to bring control back to your emotions. Deep, slow, abdominal breathing works to help restore calm. It may sound hokey, but it actually works. You will find that whenever any emotion begins to become overwhelming your breathing becomes rapid and is located high in your chest. Your shoulders will rise rather than your stomach pooch out. There is an unconscious association between this type of breathing and strong emotions. When we take control of our breathing and use deep slower abdominal breathing it helps as an associative device to help lower the intensity of the emotions as well as physically calms us.

It is difficult to remember to do this when our emotions are becoming overwhelming, so it is also beneficial, if possible, to separate yourself from the precipitating circumstance.

Lastly, it is beneficial after the event to evaluate what has occurred and note the processes that occurred leading to the loss of control. There are always early signs that loss of control is impending. If we train ourselves to recognize the early signs of raising emotions before they take control of us we may intervene when the emotions are still within our control and ameliorate our feelings or the circumstance before we behave in a regretful manner.

By the way, a similar circumstance has happened to me in the past so I sympathize with your question and with the predicament in which you found yourself. My circumstance involved some legal consequences and changed the course of my life!

[David Jamieson]

It's the "old yeller" factor.

the lesson is that you gotta do what you gotta do and don't second guess yourself or you will hesitatet etc etc.

think of it in terms of what must be done, then you can look at it as a task and do that task with as few impediments to yourself as possible etc etc.

the meditation and such just helps prepare you for the time when you have to do what must be done.

simplicity of mind is what you want. analysis leads to capitulation, leads to no resolution.

if a loud mouth needs a punch, oblige him. It is not outside the realm of good sense to do so.