Tag: angermanagement

  • Raging into oblivion

    Raging into oblivion

    The rage that we hold within us feels like a justified protest or demand for justice or fairness from those around us.

    But rage is a master of distraction.

    It is born in moments of legitimate duress, but continues long after.

    The rage of being unheard in one moment leads to harshness when we feel misunderstood in a totally different moment.

    Rage is the intensity of our demand to be treated with significance or respect, while not realising that rage undermines both, our significance and the respect we need from others.

    Rage only ever achieves compliance from others while they may fear us in our moments of rage.

    The moment those around us no longer fear us, rage becomes a tool that destroys what we’re trying to achieve, and isolates us from the ones who we wish would see us more clearly.

    But we only rage because we don’t see ourselves clearly.

    And that’s the greatest distraction that rage offers us.

    It convinces us that we’re right and that everything that we see is wrong with others is good reason for us to rage.

    And in those moments, we lose our connection with reality and replace it with a focus on who is taking our pain seriously while not realising that we’re causing pain, leaving them to see nothing more than a brute rather than a hurt soul.

    Beyond the release of the anguish we hold within, rage offers no value at all in securing the peace or harmony that we want with those who matter to us.

    Don’t only try to restrain your rage.

    Instead, seek to understand why you feel that rage at all.

    Otherwise your rage will grow to define you while you may think it’s defining your battle cry to the world.

  • Respect is not earned

    Respect is not earned

    The old saying of ‘respect is earned’ robs you of self respect and replaces it with entitlement.

    How we treat others is a reflection of who we are, not who they are.

    Our ability to self regulate our offering of respect to those who may treat us badly is a reflection of how much we need them to treat us well before we feel good about who we are.

    In other words, the less grounded we are in who we are, the more likely it is that others will impact our moods, our temper, and our overall emotional wellbeing.

    Trust, on the other hand, is earned through consistency of effort about what’s important.

    Trust cannot be negotiated or contracted.

    If we have reason to doubt someone showing up for us, we won’t trust that they will.

    That reason is sometimes because of them being unreliable, but is also often because of how someone else in the past may have disappointed us or betrayed our trust when we needed a similar thing from them. Like comfort, support, or just being there for us.

    If we go through life trusting recklessly while withholding respect to those who, in our eyes, don’t deserve it, we will find ourselves reeling from betrayal long after it has passed while disrespecting those who don’t understand our pain.

    Problem is, even we won’t understand our pain, so we’ll never be able to communicate it in ways that will allow those close to us to understand why we’re raging.

    It all starts with self respect and self worth.

    Without that, you will need others to treat you well before you treat yourself well.

    Own your life.

  • Don’t outsource your dignity

    Don’t outsource your dignity

    Dignity is the ultimate social currency.

    With dignity comes accountability and self awareness.

    Or perhaps dignity is only possible through self awareness and accountability.

    But accountability is an outcome of self respect and integrity which in turn demands that we care more about who we are and what we stand for than what we want others to think of us.

    That’s when it gets complicated.

    It gets complicated when we focus on what we are likely to lose from others if we take a stand about what we believe to be important.

    But that complication is not because the issue is complicated.

    It’s because we complicate our lives by contaminating it with what we want others to see in us instead of being true to our values and principles regardless of what they think.

    Dignity demands that we be open to correction because of the shame we feel when we are dishonest.

    It demands that we protect the dignity of others because we must not be able to live with ourselves if we willingly and consciously look away when another is treated poorly.

    What we would want from others in our time of need or vulnerability is what we must offer.

    If not, we sow seeds of hypocrisy in our hearts which eventually contaminate the entirety of our being because dignity is lost and validation from others becomes the only peace we will know.

    Your dignity is yours to claim.

    Don’t outsource it in exchange for popularity or personal gain.

  • Check your entitlement

    Check your entitlement

    Expectations breed entitlement.

    Like the entitlement of privileges that weren’t earned, or a free pass to abdicate responsibility because we’ve got it tough. Or entitlement to a homeland that belongs to someone else.

    Conviction and sincerity are lost when we do things hoping for a good return.

    We should do good because of who we are and what we choose to stand for. Not because we expect a return.

    A return on investment is for business transactions, not for moral positions.

    If you choose to fight for a cause, do it because it resonates with your values.

    You honour your value system when you live by it, especially when it’s inconvenient or unpopular to do so.

    When your values are used as a trading commodity with others, they’re not values, they’re tools for manipulation.

    Accountability is a trigger for too many.

    If you feel triggered when someone calls you to account, you have work to do on yourself.

    Our triggers, frustrations, annoyances, anger, and emotional volatility is ours to own.

    We cannot make others responsible for tiptoeing around it just because they ‘don’t know what we’ve been through’.

    Their empathy or compassion towards us is a reflection of who they are, in the same way that ours is a reflection of who we are.

    Outsourcing that or claiming that someone deserves not to receive it from us is an indulgence of our entitlement mentality, and not a defendable moral position.

    Own your life. It always starts with you.

  • Your rage, your loss

    Your rage, your loss

    If left unchecked, rage eventually clouds our judgement as we seek vengeance from anyone who reminds us of those who treated us badly in the past.

    When you find a reason to rage at every assumed threat, peace becomes elusive and bitterness takes over.

    Feeling enraged may be human, but acting on that rage is a choice.

    Sometimes we get so caught up in our anger at the world that we lose sight of the fact that our anger feeds the very same cycles that we’ve grown to despise.

    No one makes you angry.

    Anger is your choice of response to someone else’s behaviour because of what they mean to you, or because of what their actions trigger within you, or both.

    And that’s because of what you want to mean to them, but are failing at achieving it.

    So your anger is your demand for significance when who you are is insufficient to achieve that significance.

    Your anger and your triggers are your responsibility.

    Making the world responsible for your emotional response to life gives everyone the power to control your behaviour.

    If you can influence a positive change in how someone treats you, do it.

    If not, walk away.

    Insisting on rage after you’ve realised that you are unable to influence positive change is an indulgence of your ego and not a righteous protest.

    Choose carefully who you want to be when someone treats you badly, or else you’ll lose yourself to become just like those whom you despise for treating you badly because your rage will cause you to become a source of oppression against those who have nothing to do with your feelings of inadequacy.

    Don’t get angry.

    It’s not worth it.

  • Burn yourself, why don’t you.

    Burn yourself, why don’t you.

    Anger always claims a higher price from ourselves than it ever will from the people on whom we project it.

    And before you assume that to be false because of the lasting impact that it has on its victims, understand that that lasting impact is because of their anger at the one who was taking out their anger on them.

    When we carry the impact of such anger for long after the incident has passed, it’s because we cannot make peace with what was done to us, while waiting anxiously for our pain or suffering to be acknowledged, and the perpetrator to be given a taste of justice.

    No matter the circumstances, our anger is because of our feelings of insignificance or dry the hands of those who treated us badly.

    What we hold onto them keeps us on high alert for any signs of anyone else treating us in that way.

    That’s why innocent gestures from others will trigger us, because it feels like those experiences that still haunts us.

    Anger is our demand for significance from the world, especially from significant others.

    Anger is always expressed in a space where we have no fear of repercussions, but is kept at bay when we have reason to fear the consequences of our angry expression.

    The one who is angry is the one whose self-worth is low in that moment of anger.

    Therefore, as long as you hold onto anger, you diminish your self-worth.

    For this reason, we must own our anger, and we must recognise the source of the anger from those around us.

    The moment we react in free, we become a willing participant in their war, while believing that we are justified in giving them a taste of their own medicine.

    The question is, at what price do we lose ourselves to anger in our fight for justice or in our efforts to correct the wrongs around us?

    Anger is not needed for firm and resolute action against injustice.

    If anything, it distracts us from our purpose and causes us to become oppressors, just like the ones who oppressed us.

  • Destroying peace to find peace

    Destroying peace to find peace

    Rage is a destructive demand for significance when we believe that who we are is not enough to be important to those we love.

    The anger that spurs on the rage is a defence mechanism to protect ourselves from becoming invisible.

    We try, in our own little futile ways, to be enough without being able to express ourselves the way others may expect, which leaves us feeling unappreciated when they don’t realise how difficult even that little expression was for us.

    That’s when we feel the rage build up, because we’re reduced to love languages, and token gestures that define how we must express ourselves, when all we want is to just be appreciated for who we are.

    But, that feeling of frustration at not being able to express our emotions in a healthier way was instilled in us long before our adult years.

    Therefore, the rage at our partners or children is simply years of bottled up anger at never being enough, or never feeling heard or seen, by those we relied on most to make us feel safe, and whole.

    It is our invisibility in childhood that creates our demands from the world as adults.

    It is our feelings of inadequacy as children, that fans the rage of abuse and marital rape in our adult years.

    It is our obliviousness to the value of who we are, despite the failings of our parent/s, that keeps us raging at innocent ones who had nothing to do with the nurturing of our insecurities in childhood.

    That’s how we end up repeating the very cycles that destroyed our sense of self.

    When you judge your parents harshly for what they didn’t give you, you fail to see their humanness.

    The very same humanness that you fail to see in yourself, that causes you to rage at the world, instead of appreciating the beauty and peace that it offers.

    You cannot give what you don’t have.

    And you cannot grow if you’re waiting for others to treat you right before you let go of the rage.

    It always starts with you.

  • Raging for love

    Raging for love

    Nothing destroys more than ingratitude, and ingratitude for the self is expressed through self-loathing.

    But self-loathing is disguised in many ways, the most common of which is anger.

    Anger is a defence mechanism that distracts attention away from what we feel inadequate about.

    It demands that we be taken seriously when we have no reason to believe that who we are is worthy of being taken seriously.

    But more than this, anger is a profession that in that moment, we believe that we are not good enough for one whose validation we desperately need.

    Hence it being the most common confirmation of self-loathing when all our defence and coping mechanisms are claiming otherwise.

    It also happens when our internal conversation is focused on comparing ourselves to those we think are better than us, or those whose validation we need.

    And then we get married to feel complete, only to hold our partners accountable for how we feel about ourselves.

    And then we have children to fill that void that just doesn’t seem to fill up, and we become ever more threatened with fears of inadequacy when we don’t know how to be enough as parents.

    Thus, innocent lives get destroyed, all because we didn’t learn to be grateful for who we are, while trying to make up for it by raging at those who have nothing to do with how we feel about ourselves.

    It always starts with you.