8. Tell Them How You Feel Without Expecting Anything
This is a follow up to the last section. I never want you to think that managing your anger means letting people walk all over you. The problem is that when anger takes hold of us, we're running off of our emotions and without logic. That's why we need to turn to the three foundations as well as meditation. Meditation helps us pause, and asking ourselves about our expectations and fears helps us work on ourselves rather than trying to change other people.
If you want a more scientific explanation for this, when the emotional part of the brain takes over, the logical part of the brain shuts down.
Controlling our anger isn't going to happen immediately, so don't be afraid to tell someone you can't discuss the topic at that moment. You can be as open with them as you want. You can either tell them the truth (which I recommend if it's a close friend or family member), and simply say, "I'm really upset right now and need to take a break, but I'm happy to talk about this later." If you'd like, feel free to make up an excuse why you can't talk about it at that moment. Pretend your phone rang and it's an emergency and that you have to go if you have to. I do believe you should be honest as much as possible, but that's a whole different book. Right now, people would rather you lie about a phone call and taking a break instead of screaming in their face.
Once you're calmed down, it's important to talk to them about how you feel. Whether it's your spouse, family member, co-worker or boss, you should always talk about it. The trick to this is not expecting anything in return. What trips a lot of people up is that they talk to someone about their frustrations and forget about foundation #2. You might expect an apology or for them to see your point of view. Expecting these things are going to set yourself up for failure and only make you more upset.
Recently I stopped a contracted job to focus more on The Rewired Soul. The couple who owned the business got far more upset than I thought they would, and they sent me a lengthy email saying how I let them down and didn't live up to expectations etc. One of the fears I have is people judging me incorrectly, so I felt the need to explain more in detail why I was ending my contract with them because there were a lot of issues, and I was trying to spare their feelings by saying I was doing it to focus more on The Rewired Soul.
The thing is, when I sent that email explaining more in detail about how I just wasn't happy working with them and had quite a few other issues, I didn't expect anything from them. I didn't expect them to understand. I didn't expect them to apologize for their previous email. I just said my peace and left it at that.
Some science for you: When you criticize another person and let them know how they wronged you, their belief system is telling them they're just as right as you. By criticizing a person for what they did to you, their amygdala activates, and they get into fight or flight mode. This is why it's so difficult for anyone to "win" in an argument because you keep triggering each others' anger over and over again.
