More Anger

by Kaleb Montgomery, Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine

More Anger If you remember last time we talked about walking away from a situation before it gets out of hand. The advantage of walking away is that you avoid big ugly, nasty, blow ups. However the disadvantage of walking away is that we can end up with a whole basket full of unexpressed anger.
Walking away and not expressing the anger might be good for our relationships in the short term, but it is certainly not good for us if that anger just gets buried away in the closet. As I discussed in earlier articles, any emotion that remains unexpressed will eventually cause us illness. Our bodies will find away to express the emotion somatically through tension in the neck, depression, acne, stomach aches etc. . Today I offer an option to walking away that let us express our anger and can prevent the escalation of the argument into unnecessarily hurtful words or actions.

My suggestion is to act like a child. Throw a tantrum. Flop on the floor, bang your fists on the carpet and scream “It’s Not Fair!”. Throw your food on the kitchen floor. Act like the angry child you feel like and say “naa naa naa naa naa naa, I don’t like you, I’m not going to be your friend, I’m not going to let you ride my bike!” The sillier the better.

As I mentioned last week, nothing valuable comes out of a vicious fight, only pain and hurt. You are both going to have to cool off before you can solve anything anyway , so why not take advantage of the opportunity to release some of that pent up anger your are feeling. This is especially important if you are the type of person who tends to not express anger well. No lasting damage will happen from your tantrum except maybe you looking foolish and having to clean some food off the floor. The best part is that it feels really good to do. Releasing your anger in silliness also has the benefit of lightening up the situation. When I have done this the person I’m arguing with often laughs at my stupid behaviour and the tension level drops down a notch too. Releasing anger is just like forest fires, it is better to have a bunch of little ones that one massive one.

One of the things I do when I’m angry is that I try and solve whatever the problem at hand is. With my fiancee this only makes things worse. When she gets angry all she is doing is releasing emotion. The only problem she is solving with her anger outburst is the one of her having too much pent up frustration. Many people are like that when they are angry. They can only solve the problem later after they have let off the steam and cooled down. If you know you or the person you are arguing with's anger style is like that then solving things when you are angry is pointless. When I try and do that with her I only get more frustrated and more angry because she isn’t listening to the “reasonable” solutions that I am proposing at the time. Then the anger level escalates in both of us. Why would she listen to me then anyway, she is steaming mad. As stubborn as I am, I have learned to try and solve things after we cool down. As I mentioned earlier the silly mad technique works great when I remember to use it. Try it our the next time you find yourself angry and arguing. Remember to do something so ridiculous that the other person will have no choice but to see your actions as outrageously silly. If nothing else it will give you both something to laugh about later on.