Taking Your Anger Management to the Next Level

I know I write a lot about anger management, but few things control us as much as anger and frustration. Knowing how to control these feelings and process through them will improve our life. There is a lot of talk about how anger is a secondary emotion, and I myself have said the same, but sometimes it is the primary emotion. Sometimes in life, things are so wrong that anger and frustration are warranted. In August of 2023, I unpacked the difference between frustration and anger and want to expand on that. A brief refresher is that frustration is the feeling of being forced to fail, and anger is when an internal sensitivity is triggered. An example of an internal sensitivity is the existence of a moral wrong of inequality.

Knowing if you are frustrated or angry is a big piece of the anger management puzzle. The second piece is knowing what to do about the reasons that you are frustrated and/or angry. Usually, at the core of both is a sense of helplessness and denial. I say helplessness and denial because I believe that we can always change our level of dependency, thereby reducing our helplessness. It may sound lonely, but it is actually empowering to want the people in your life rather than need the people in your life. As you do the work to need people less and free yourself of your dependencies, you will experience less frustration as you become the arbiter of your success. It will also naturally draw your attention away from what others are doing and refocus you to look at what you are doing and not doing.

Self-sufficiency as the driving force of your life will reduce frustration and internal sensitives because you will expect less from others and gain a deeper understanding of what success takes. You will naturally become more compassionate and develop a more realistic view of what an individual can accomplish. Internal sensitivities usually come from our morality, and when our morality is grounded in personal responsibility, we tend to be more focused on what we are doing rather than what others are not doing. By limiting what we need others to do, we naturally limit our sensitivities because we understand that everyone has different capacities. Accepting our own limitations, we learn to accept others. We are not all equal. We all have our own unique challenges and talents. When we are the centerpiece of our existence, we become more fulfilled. When you are the centerpiece of your life, you become the most cared for person in your life. When we are cared for, we have more energy and resilience for coping with the things in life that do not please us. This increased resilience and patience will reduce our frustration and anger.