I'm in the Mood said:
Rubato, I have an anger problem too. I get annoyed VERY easily around my family, and people I don't like. I'm also seeing a therapist about this because it has turned into very bad relationships with my parents.
You need to learn where your anger is coming from. You must understand EXACTLY what you're angry at and why you're angry. If you don't understand your anger, you can only suppress it, and even if you do successfully suppress it, it will always be there, lurking in your shadow. It's best to face it head on and learn all about it if you want to be able to conquer your anger in the future.
Thank you for the constructive suggestion I'm in the Mood.
I think there are different triggers for my anger but that in many cases, the emotional origination ponit is the same.
Why I get angry:
If I'm really honest with myself, a lot of this probably stems back to my experiences in elementary and high school. I got made fun of/picked on a lot. I was the definition of an AFC. I never had a girlfriend and my "friends" thought I was gay for it and beat me up.
I also noticed while my family pulled out some old home movies around Christmas that I was a really serious kid. People have always told me I'm too smart and analytical for my own good, but I never really saw how that was expressed as a kid. Even at like 3 and 4 years old, I didn't act like a kid. I acted like I was in deep thought about the world around me.
I think what all of this stuff did was put me in a defensive emotional posture. The reasons why I came to the site in the first place derive from my childhood - I sucked with women, I had terrible self esteem, virtually no self confidence, and was super self conscious. I spent my years in school suppressing my anger at the kids around me because they were ruthless. As bad as what having to put up with them was, I know my life would have been worse if I had gotten in a fight and gotten suspended - my parents would have crucified me!
I think it's that defensive posturing I learned that makes me so prone to lash out now whenever I view someone's actions as an affront to myself.
What I'm angry at:
A few things. I think the biggest thing is paradoxically, myself. But firstly, I'm angry at the person correcting me or trying to warn me about a potentially bad decision. I don't like that they don't see me as perfect. And obviously, that's a bad attitude and entirely unrealistic. I was so p*ssed off when I got out of high school though (and driven, as a result) that I wanted to be a United States Senator. I finished up a pre-law degree, got a 175 on my LSAT and accepted to the College of William and Mary's Lawschool in 3 years. I was going to succeed and give the rest of the world the middle finger at the same time because it had obviously failed to see the worth in me. I've driven myself way too hard since high school got out becuase I wanted to be the best.
So while I acknowledge that that is not the best way to conceptualize the world, I can't start to move forward until I've accurately assessed where I am.
Ultimately though, I think I'm angry at myself because I've set a standard too high for myself to achieve and realize that. I'll never be able to go through life absolutely perfectly (and perfect, after all, is boring
). I will always have some level of shortcommings and there will always be someone better than me.
I think what I did was sometime when I was younger I made an association between being flawless and people liking me. It ended up working out for the good, but I didn't get serious about music until 7th grade or so, and the only reason I did was because I thought it would make people like me.
So when I get angry, it's projected at other people, but I think I'm ultimatley angry at myself. What they did was remind me that I'm not perfect and the house of card's image I've constructed of the world, at least in this respect, is nothing but a house of cards.
So maybe that's the first thing I need to address. To give myself real permission to be less than perfect, to make mistakes, and to realize that people will still like me even if I mess up occasionaly. But even more important than that, I need to learn to how love myself despite my imperfections. As I learn how to do that, that may make great strides in helping overcome this issue.
