Let’s talk about Anger.
We all know the feeling.
Someone or something triggers us. Someone doesn’t act or behave the way we want them to. We feel attacked, not respected, frustrated. The situation doesn’t go as planned. We are NOT OK with what’s going on. I was not informed of this! You are not supposed to act that way!
It all boils down to one thing: EXPECTATION
We have high expectations of people, situations and sometimes ourselves.
We expect people to behave a certain way. We expect the situation to go as we planned it. For ourselves, sometimes we expect to be perfect. In essence, we want to control the person and how they behave. We want to control the situation and have it turn out how we planned. We want to control ourselves, meaning our emotions.
When our expectations are not met, we become angry. It starts slow and sometimes, before long we’re boiling mad. And guess what. We go to Crazytown. Imagining all types of scenarios as to “why” this happened. Why why why? And then we play out scenarios in our head. What we could have done differently, what we can do in the future. How we can get back control of the person, the situation, ourselves?
Has this happened to you? Have you gone to Crazytown. If so, you know you can stay there for minutes, hours, days. We literally lose control of ourselves and allow the anger to take over.
How do we take back control of our lives? How do we get out of Crazytown when we are playing that loop in our mind. When we’re on the hamster wheel and we can’t seem to see our way out?
Well, usually I’ll be telling you to go meditate. But sometimes, we can get so frustrated, we’re not ready to sit down and pay attention to our breath. We’re just too heated. Trying to sit down and meditate is just not going to happen when our emotions are flying high.
When that happens, I always recite this quote to myself: “Never in the history of calming down has anyone calmed down by being told to calm down”.
So yes, meditation will definitely help steer us out of Crazytown, but first…we need to bring it down a notch.
Let’s talk about three steps to help us when we’ve detoured into Crazytown and are just spitting angry
1. Phone A friend. Your spiritual running buddy. Someone you’ve been talking to about mindfulness and meditation. That way, they can reiterate all those great learnings to you when you’ve gone to Crazytown and have thrown all your tools out the window. Don’t be afraid to burden them with your problems. Would you help them in times of crisis? Of course you would. They will help you see the big picture, help you realize you’re human with human emotions and help you see another side to the situation. P.S. It helps to call the friend with compassion and tolerance, not the friend who will egg you on and agree with your shenanigans. You need guidance at this time, not your partner in crime. Save that person for another day.
2. Journaling. Get it out! All your thoughts and what you’re going to say, do to rectify the situation. Write it all out and keep going. Don’t worry about who’s going to see it. It’s getting the energy out of you, down your arm and onto the paper. Just keep writing until you feel you’ve said everything you need to say (on paper) If you want, you can burn it when you’re done. Just getting your thoughts and emotions on paper will help you on the road out of Crazytown
3. Read those books. We all have self help books that we’ve read, reread and highlighted. I keep them handy, out in plain view. Not tucked away gathering dust on a hidden bookshelf. Touching them and rereading them will bring you back to the moment they made an impact on you and hopefully changed your life. Don’t worry about finding the perfect passage. Just start perusing. The perfect passage will find you. I have several books that have really changed my life and I treasure them. They’re torn and scribbled on, but I wouldn’t change that for the world.
After you’ve done these three steps, you’ll start to soften. And then, when you’ve calmed your ass down… then you can meditate.
I hope this serves you.
Camille