Anger seeks the quickest path to release. It sparks, catches flame, and tries to ignite through the closest and quickest channel possible. What makes anger so hard is that it can feel unstoppable. That you are powerless to it. And when you fail over and over to quell it you begin to think that you’re just an angry person and you’ll never figure it out.
I struggle with this. And the channel that my anger gets released through most frequently is fear and catastrophizing. A frustrating situation can quickly go from “this is unfortunate” to “things will never get better.” These cognitive disorders in my thinking open up a grand pathway for anger to blossom. And it can feel overwhelming in the moment, which further compounds this sense of catastrophe.
The key to managing any unwanted emotion or emotional s state is to practice creating roadblocks and disruptions to thought patterns. To create enough time between the immediate emotion and the response to it so you can rationally decide if it’s truly as bad as you think it is. Or if there is a better more productive way to handle the emotions.
I am not great at this. But when I am it feels very good to catch myself before I go from zero to sixty. To acknowledge how I feel but then not let it run my life.
One tactic that has been helpful fairly consistently is the idea of “unwanted passengers.” The idea is that you are the driver of a bus. You have wanted and unwanted passengers. You don’t have a choice that they are there, however you are in charge of the bus and where you go. The process is to acknowledge the unwanted passengers and accept their presence. Not trying to stop them or prevent them from existing. And when they show up and bother you to shift to acknowledging what is real. In this case I am in control of driving the bus. And although I don’t want these passengers there, they don’t have to get in the way of my driving. I am still in control.
I use this tactic with intrusive harm thoughts. As a parent these are things like worrying about my kids getting hurt or injured. Thoughts that are painful to think but inevitable when you are responsible for another life. I acknowledge and accept the thought but then try to shift focus to the reality of the moment. For example I might have a sudden painful thought of one of my boys falling and getting really hurt. I accept that the thought occurred but then run through a set of confirmations of what is real. Such as, my boys are safe and warm in their beds. I am safe in my bed. Everyone is ok in this moment. And it really helps to shift away from the scary painful thought and brings me back to a calm centered reality.
Again the idea is not to try to stop the thoughts from ever happening. But rather to accept their presence and then shift focus to what is real.
Practice is key to ingraining these tactics. And you need to keep up with it every day just like brushing your teeth or getting exercise.
And there are many other valuable tactics like these that can be practiced and employed to improve your mental health. We can’t always control our thoughts but we can control the process of dealing with them and shifting our focus to more reality based and productive ones instead.
What do you do with unwanted thoughts or emotions?
