Welcome to Rewire Your Anger, and I guess the first tip I'll offer is that anger is going to happen, but we need to figure out how to turn it into something useful. This book idea came to me at a time in my life when I was struggling with a lot of anger. My anger issues are under control these days, but as I used a variety of different methods, I decided to turn this anger into something useful by writing this short book.
Many people who meet me today would have no idea that I used to struggle with massive anger issues. I wasn't a pleasant person to be around because I had so much anger built up inside of me throughout my entire life. We all have different root causes for this anger, and you may figure out some of them by reading this book. I do want you to keep in mind though that this book is meant to provide useful tips and suggestions that have worked for myself and many clients that I have worked with, but if you have the resources, you should find a mental health professional to work with individually as well.
Before we get started, it's important to understand why we have anger in the first place on a neurological level and from the point of evolutionary psychology. Some of us don't fully want to get rid of our anger because it feels good in a way, and that's actually part of the way we evolved. We needed anger back in the hunter-gatherer days because it helped us stay alive, and the way the brain reinforces behaviors and emotions is by making them feel good. Back in the day, if someone from another tribe or within your own tribe stole from you or challenged you in any way, if you didn't do something, others may take advantage of you as well.
Could you imagine everyone in the tribe and from other tribes thinking it was alright to steal from you and push you around?
We needed anger to motivate us to do something about being challenged. This helped show the person as well as others not to mess with us. The problem with the brain is that we're no longer hunter-gatherers, but the evolution of our minds hasn't caught up. What I mean by this is that if you get cut off on the freeway, it doesn't mean everyone else is going to think it's okay to get cut off, so the anger we feel isn't as useful as it was thousands of years ago.
Today, anger has the power to ruin our lives, which is why we need to get it under control. It can make us fight with the people who love us the most as well as the people we love the most. It can make us walk out of a job impulsively without bringing to mind the fact that we have bills to pay or kids to feed. Worst of all, in this day and age, if our anger gets the best of us, there's a chance somebody records us freaking out on an innocent employee, it goes viral and our freak out is on the Internet forever.
One of the biggest "a-ha" moments I had was when someone asked me, "How much time have you spent being angry when you could have been doing something worth while instead?" This made me think of how many nights that I couldn't sleep because I was staying angry at someone who probably wasn't even thinking about me. It made me think of how many times I shut down and isolated, neglecting my friends, family or son because I was so angry about something that was ridiculous. Worst of all, if I sat down and roughly quantified how much time I spent being angry, it would probably add up to years of my life being wasted by being angry about a lot of silly things.
Again, anger gets stuff done and can inspire us to do great things. You're never going to fully get rid of your anger, but with this book, you'll hopefully figure out better ways to manage it by causing minimal wreckage in your life as well as to the lives of the people around you.
This section is about how to use this book so it can be effective in your life. My goal is that with this book, you can understand a bit more about the root causes of your anger and have some foundational tools to come back to any time to figure out how to manage the situation.
In this book, I'm going to introduce you to three primary foundations of anger management that have been extremely affective for myself and others. If you can remember these three foundations, managing your anger will be much simpler.
One of the major issues that I found is that we think each person or situation makes us angry for a different reason. If I'm sitting in a room of people who all made me angry, I think each one set me off for a different reason. The reality is that we're not nearly as complicated as we think we are. When we figure out the root of our issues and remember a few things to check within ourselves, we realize that there are really only a few reasons we get upset.
This is extremely important because many of us think that "everything makes us mad", and it can seem overwhelming. Some people didn't even get this book because they thought that dealing with their anger was going to be too large of a task because there are so many people and situations that upset them. The reality is that once you figure out what your primary triggers are, it's a lot easier to manage and overcome your anger. In my experience, most people (including myself) have about 5 main reasons they get angry.
With that being said, I'm glad you got this book. It means you've acknowledged that there's a problem, but even better, you have the willingness to do something about it. So, let's get started by discussing one of the biggest problems most of us have.
This first foundation is by far the most important. This isn't just important for managing anger either, but for your mental health as a whole. We must always remember that it's a lot easier to fix ourselves than it is to fix others. Now, this doesn't mean we need to allow toxic people in our lives, but we'll come back to that later. What this means is that we have a false idea that we can control and change people. I don't know if this is the ego or what, but it's kind of crazy if you think about it.
I wasted so much time and energy just wishing other people would change. If my boss would just be nicer, or if my friend would have done this for me, or if my parents were proud of me, then I would be okay. This is not a healthy way to live. The reason is because we're allowing circumstances that we have no control over to depict how we feel is a waste of mental and emotional energy. Think about how much time you've spent waiting for someone to change or hoping that they'd change.
If you're someone with a parent or both parents who trigger your anger, think about it logically for a minute. What is the likelihood that they will change? They've been this way since before you were born, so do you really think that now they're going to change just because you want them to? That'd be a little ridiculous.
Sorry, but did I forget to mention that there's going to be some tough love in this book? Don't worry though because I'll give you some tips so you don't get angry at me.
I know this from personal experience. My mom was an alcoholic for the first 20 years of my life, and she was my biggest trigger. I despised her because I blamed her for how messed up my life was and how messed up I turned out (this is one of the roots of my anger). When I was 20 years old she got sober, and when I was 26 she saved my life by helping me get sober. The problem was that I had over 20 years of unresolved anger built up towards her. Even though she was now sober, I still couldn't forgive her for my awful life, and there were a lot of things about her that I didn't like. One of those things is that she struggles with her own mental issues and can be somewhat unreliable...and I hate when people are unreliable.
For years, I spent so much time and energy yelling and fighting with her trying to get her to change, and she never did. Sometimes she'd say she was going to work on it, but she'd fall back into old habits, and it'd make me extremely angry again.
But how much time was I wasting trying to change her? How many hours had I spent trying to change this woman who wasn't going to be changed.
This first foundation was repeated to me constantly by the man who initially helped me get back on the right track with my mental health. I would call him extremely frustrated because I was working so hard to change and become a better person, but she wasn't. He'd always say, "Chris, it's a lot easier to fix you than it is the rest of the world." But I'm a stubborn a-hole, so I kept thinking I could fix the rest of the world.
As most of us eventually find out, our way of doing things doesn't work and we must try something new. So, I considered what he said and began working on it. If my mom couldn't change, maybe I could change how I deal with my mom?
See, we don't have control over other people. Some say that the only person we can control is ourselves, but if you're like me, you can't even control your own emotions and actions sometimes. What we can always control is our effort though. We can put forth an effort to learning how to deal with the things in our lives that anger us whether it's people or situations.
Today, my mom and I are best friends, but the funny thing is that she hasn't changed at all.
I want you to think about that for a minute...
How are my mother and I like best friends now if she hasn't changed at all?
Because I realized that it was a lot easier for me to fix me than it was to fix her. I now know how to deal with her because I took all of that wasted energy that I was using trying to fix her and focused it on myself. One of the best ways that I learned how to do this is through foundation number 2, which is our expectations.
This second foundation of expectations is probably going to be the longest part of the book. For some of you, this may sound familiar, but I never want to give you the impression that what I've learned just came from the void of my mind and I figured this stuff out. I was taught in the same way that I'm trying to teach you, and I hope you can pass this knowledge along to someone you care about as well.
Not only is this going to be the longest part, but it's the most important part as well. I'll probably revisit this part of the book in just about every book I write because that's how important it is. I do entire 3-hour groups on expectations in treatment centers and tell my clients that if they haven't paid attention throughout treatment, this is the one thing they need to pay attention to.
I'm going to give you the same advice. Bookmark this page as the most useful tool you can use to manage your anger and mental health as a whole. Take different quotes from this section and write them on post-it notes and put them around your house if you have to because I guarantee if you can figure out how to manage your expectations, your life is going to become amazing.
So what do I mean by managing expectations?
Well, first lets all take a second to acknowledge that we're all major control freaks. How often do we think these things like:
If everyone just did what I thought they should do, everyone would be satisfied including myself! Life would be so amazing if everyone just did exactly what I thought they should do. This world would be such a better place if people would think and act the way I think they should because I know what's best.
What's crazy is that I discuss this in groups of 60-70 people, and I ask by a show of hands, "How many people can relate to this?" Typically, you see about 75% of the hands go up, and I always assume another 20% aren't raising their hand because they're full of crap or didn't hear the question.
But think about this for a second. If I think the world would be great if everyone did what I thought they should do...and if you think the world would be great if everyone did what you thought they should do, we're automatically going to bump heads.
This is an insane expectation. We expect everyone to act how we think they should act. What are the chances of that happening? (and don't forget foundation #1) Not only do we expect everyone to act and think how we want, but we expect people to know what we want. How many times have you been mad at someone because you expected them to know how you felt or what you were thinking like they're a mind reader? Pretty silly expectation isn't it?
Now, this is the only first part of the problem. Because we're so selfish and self-centered wanting everyone to do what we want them to do, we try to manipulate situations. A great word for this is "self-seeking". Self-seeking is when we do something expecting something in return.
So when we're trying to get something in return, we might be nice, kind, self-sacrificing and all of those great qualities. Here are some examples:
1. We might be nice to our parents to borrow some money from them.
2. We may clean the house so our significant other thanks us.
3. We may be the perfect gentleman on a first date expecting to get something in return at the end of the night.
4. We might work extra hours so our boss notices and we get a raise.
5. We may help a friend move so they help us at a later date.
This all sounds fine and dandy until we don't get our way. What happens when our parents don't loan us the money? What happens when our significant other doesn't show us the thanks we feel we deserve? What happens when our date doesn't invite us inside? What happens when our boss doesn't give us that raise? What happens when we help our friend, but then they don't help us in return?
We get pissed.
Why do we get upset? Because we set the expectation of "If I do ______ , they will do _____." That is not only an unrealistic expectation, but it's also a selfish and self-centered one. The issue is that many of us think we're great people, but most of the time we're just trying to take from the world and not truly being altruistic. Since we're not self-aware enough to realize this, it fuels our anger.
On the other hand, we might not be kind and generous when we're trying to get our way. Sometimes we can be real jerks. This is another from of self-seeking, but in the opposite direction. Here are some more examples:
1. We might purposely be a jerk to someone we're dating to get them to break up with us.
2. We may be mean to an employee to get something for free.
3. We might scream at our bank to get an overdraft fee reversed like it's their fault that we're not great with money management.
And guess what happens when we try to do this and don't get our way? We get pissed again.
Now, expecting people to do what we want is only one type of expectation that messes us up. We also put expectations on others who have different roles in our lives, and a great way to figure this out is to look at how much you use the word "should" when you get upset.
A great writing exercise is to list 7 people in your life who you have issues with, and make a list of your expectations of them. Here's an example:
Mom:
1. A good mom should loan me money
2. A good mom should be there for me when I need her
3. A good mom should be proud of mine
Friend:
1. A good friend should never lie to me
2. A good friend should help me move when I'm moving
3. A good friend should respect my opinions
Partner:
1. A good partner should talk to me 24/7
2. A good partner should only want to spend time with me
3. A good partner should do what I want to do
Boss:
1. A good boss should give me a raise
2. A good boss should give me time off whenever I request it
3. A good boss should acknowledge how amazing I am
These are just some examples, and I highly recommend you take some time to do this. There's something about sitting down and writing all of your expectations of other people that really gives you some clarity.
When I do this exercise, not only do I see how many expectations I put on other people, but I also see how many expectations that even I can't live up to. For example, we can have an expectation of our partner to only want to spend time with us, but we also expect them to know when to give us space. That's a little silly isn't it?
I also realized as a parent that I put so many expectations on my parents that I wasn't living up to. I remember writing about how my mom should have got sober for me, but I didn't get sober for my son. I remember thinking my friends should never lie to me, but I was lying to my friends. I remember thinking that my partner should always do what I want to do, but I wasn't ever wanting to do what they wanted to do.
If you're nodding your head because you relate to what I'm saying, I hope you're beginning to understand what I mean when I say we're selfish by default.
The biggest problem with all of this is that our expectations set us up for failure. Because we expect so much from this world and its people, we're constantly putting ourselves in a position to be primed for anger.
Now, this doesn't mean that you should be a pessimist and never expect anything good to happen. What I've found is the most useful is thinking of expectations as being a on a scale that goes has +10 and -10 on opposite sides with 0 in the middle. I'm in a much better place when my expectations are closer to that 0. This means that I'm not expecting too much, but I'm not expecting something terrible to happen either. I'm simply going into a situation without an expectation.
Allow me to give you the perfect example of how changing my expectations in one small way changed my life.
From a young age, my dad always taught me good manners. One thing that he always taught me was to hold the door open for people and to say "Thank you" when someone holds the door open for me. Because I was taught this from a young age, I figure this is common courtesy and everyone should both hold a door open for me and thank me when I hold the door open for them. Unfortunately, this isn't how the world works and I'd get pissed.
This was such a small, trivial thing in my day, but it'd fill me with rage. I'd get especially angry when someone was far away, I'd hold the door open way longer than I should have, and then they still didn't thank me. This type of thing would get me so upset that I'd be so close to yanking them by the shirt collar back outside since they didn't have manners.
Right now you might be agreeing with me because you know that feel. But can we please take a moment to think about how silly it is to get that upset about this situation?
So, how did I fix this? Well, I changed my expectations. I no longer expect anyone to thank me when I hold the door open for them. Yes, that's right. I don't expect anyone to thank me. This is a great way to start working on your expectations because it's such a small thing you can do. This small change in perception changed my life because rather than getting furious every time someone didn't thank me, I'm now pleasantly surprised every time someone did thank me.
