When I was young, I used to have extreme anger issues as well. But instead of verbal, I was physical ... much worse. Matter of fact, one of my downsides had always been a bad temper problem. To boot, I take testosterone, which aggravates my anger further.
The biggest memory I have relating to anger mitigation was when I was a 21-year old stockbroker. I was extremely aggressive, and I remember one day there was a competing stock-broker sitting next to me watching me ask this investor for a million-dollar order. I was on the phone with this investor for 30 minutes, pitching my azz off, sweating, and finally compromised for a $25,000 trade. I was pissed when I hung up because I knew I left money on the table and could have gotten a bigger trade. When I hung up, that broker sitting next to me called me a fvcken piker. LOL.
I had a real bad temper back then, so I took the phone and cracked him over the head with it. He was knocked to the ground bleeding. The whole floor was shocked. The boss called me in to his office. He was a cool cat, mid 30s, super successful and rich. He said to me:
"Guru, although you disrupted my floor, I'm not angry with you. I like you. You remind me of me when I was in my 20s. You're real aggressive. But you know something, you will never be a big producer with that kind of mentality. If Johnson (the guy I cracked) got you so riled up, how are you going to deal the bigger events in your life?"
"Guru," he tells me, "Would it surprise you to know that my house was robbed yesterday. They stole $400,000 in cash from my safe and over $100,000 of my wife's jewelry."
He showed me the police report. The thing was I would never have known. This boss was walking around the office all day with no emotion, no anger, no temperament. He gave the morning motivational speech as he always did--and it was great. He was dropping big orders from his clients to show the floor--as he always did. He was running the office, as if nothing happened. Hell, I would have been pissed if somebody stole $400 from me.
This was my biggest lesson in anger mitigation. That events themselves are irrelevant; we originate the anger. This was twenty years ago. I'm 41. And I still remember and mentally refer to this event today. This boss, btw, was never arrested as 90% of us brokers were, and today owns many commercial buildings in NYC. I estimate his net worth to be well above 100 mil easily. He was probably the mentor who had the largest impact on my thinking paradigms and life.