Taking Responsibility Pt 2 - Anger Issues

Because I deal with lots of difficult people at work, sometimes I get pretty cranky; in fact, sometimes I get really angry. Lately, I've been questioning the amount of energy I invest in this negative emotion and wondering if there might not be a better way of dealing with it. If like me you have anger issues from time to time, and have a tough time trying to deal with how it makes you feel, maybe this thought can give you a new way of looking at things - "I make myself angry". Nobody makes you angry, you make yourself angry. Now, for some people, a thought such as this is drastically different from their normal mode of thinking. Normally, when someone says or does something we don't like and it upsets us, we want to say, "You make me angry." Perhaps we need to question that assumption rather than taking it for granted: Is it really true that he or she makes me angry or am I making myself angry?

In these situations, I need to sit down and think carefully about what is really going on. Perhaps someone said or did something that was unacceptable to me. Perhaps, it seemed unfair to me. It creates a new problem for me, or makes it difficult for me to get what I want. Naturally, I don't like it. It frustrates me. It upsets all my plans. It denies me what I really wanted. But all the things I mentioned are "I", "me" and "mine." I made myself angry because those are my perceptions, my desires, and my expectations, etc. Those may not at all be the perceptions, desires, or expectations of the person who I mistakenly think makes me angry. Isn't that often the case between two people in conflict, "they don't see eye to eye with each other?" Each one is angry because the other one is not meeting his or her expectations, demands, wishes, and the like. The fact is that each one is making oneself angry, blaming the other for one's own anger, and both become furious and utterly frustrated with each other because neither of them wants to change his or her ways.

I think the reason that we try so hard to prove that the person in front is at fault, is probably not so much to blame the other person but rather has to do with us wanting to protect our own self-esteem. If we don't defend ourselves vigorously and blame the other person with equal vigour, we may have to admit to ourselves that we were at fault. Yikes, fuck that concept !!

All this is of course easier said than done and I'm very sure I won't get through the Christmas with the family period unscathed and without getting bloody angry. But, it is something for me to work on. We'll see......