I currently have a anger problem. It has 2 major components.

1) I am unable to see whether I myself am just asserting myself or actually being agressive. I'd like to think I'm just being assertive. But if I was agressive, I would be decieving myself into believing various assumptions about the 'enemy' to placate my ego. how can I myself check whether I'm subconciously fooling myself or not.

2) it is nigh impossible to curb the emotion of anger with rationalisations. Even if I tell myself that I'm actually far too uninformed to make a judgement on others that I'm frustrated with, this will not stop me from doing so. and currently the outcome of that judgement is not positive causing stress because I have to stop myself from acting out really agressively

some suggestions on how to deal with these problems would be appreciated.

I'll write down some background info on my current frustrations to allow anyone that would feel like trying to help to get better insight into the situation. if you don't feel like reading this entire piece of text, feel free to just comment on what I wrote above.

I'm currently at the end stage of a school project that would get my my BSc. if it wasn't for the fact that I don't think I'll pass it with a sufficient grade. luckily the content of this project was actually really enjoyable so I have no real quarrel in having to do it over.

The preceding project had frustrated me completely however, It did so because I was essentially not doing what I wanted to do. I had to work in a team, and had to sacrifice, what I considered to be, too many of my own desires regarding the direction of the project, leaving me very unsatisfied with where it was going and where it ended up. This had a very significant impact on the amount of effort I was willing to put into that project.

At the start of the current project, not having registered in a specific group I and a group of 2 other fellows were suggested to team up for a specific project. We were warned that it would entail a lot of hard work, which caused one of them to jump out immediatly. Seeing my chance to work in an group as small as possible I convinced the other guy to take on this 4 man project with the 2 of us.

Now, on the other guy, not being native to my country, communication proved a pretty big problem. he speaks dutch and english, but at the utter minimum required to get things done. On countless occasions I didn't know what he meant. This caused minor frustrations which I would've had little problem in dealing with were they single, but added later ones made me unable to cope.

One of the people that oversaw the project was a professor doctor from a medical university. I experienced him as a very pushy man, who didn't really advise us on the project, but ordered us to take this and thus direction. Because of my experience with the earlier project, I felt uncompelled to take his orders if I didn't see their merit. I was aware that this would cause some frustration on his part, but didn't think things would get out of hand as much as they eventually did.

Over the course of the project I became increasingly frustrated with the work my companion delivered. It was often a copy-and-paste job from memory of ideas, computations and material properties, earlier mentioned by others, either in meetings or in books. This meant they were old ideas expressed in a broken hard-to-understand way. Even worse was that they were often not applicable to the problem at hand. I had to explain various things we should be aware of already from the ground up, as opposed to just reminding him of them, in order to get him to understand that. Beyond that I grew rather annoyed at his lack of trying to assert himself into the project, in trying to give it something of himself. I felt that all he did was ask me, or one of the overseers what we wanted to have done, and than he did that, incompetently. Considering there were mitigating circumstances, his not knowing my language very well and just being a naturally unassertive person, I was willing to let this go, although it did not rub of well on the impression we made on the overseers of the project.

I do not know exactly why, probably because of one of the earlier mentioned factors, but the pushy professor at some point started to become more and more agressive. He systematically started to throw covered insults our way (saying things that implied we were incompetent, lazy etc.), as well as making straight out threats that if we didn't do what he wanted he would fail us. (he does have an impact on our grade, but not large enough to be able to back up such a threat) Those are kinds of things I DO NOT RESPOND WELL TO. Despite that, he was a lot older then me, a lot more educated, so out of respect I didn't stand up to him on this as soon as I would've any normal person.

however, at a certain point, my limit was reached, and I made a critical remark, which in turn caused him to become very upset with me, which caused me to become even more upset. He sent us away from that meeting, and I didn't feel any motivation to get back in touch with the guy whatsoever, so we didn't speak for 2 weeks or so. My comerade became rather worried about whether we would pass this project, so eventually he actually called the prof. himself. (which made me happy, as he actually took some initiative for the first time) during the next meeting we actually got along pretty well. Although he did make some remarks that made me cringe, I threw them off as just being part of his personality, and not a malevolent attempt at getting me upset. At the meeting after that, we were looking through a minipaper about the project, and when he made a remark that we should basicly lie to get a better grade, I tried to express my moral issues with this. He shut me up however, saying that I had made enough comments, and he would only listen to anything my comerade had to say. I tried to get to say something three more times or so, getting more polite as I went on, but he just repeated the same thing, which started to sound a lot like 'shut the %#@&#! up kid'. at a certain point I had had it, told him my comerade was a 'doormat' (which is more or less true in my opinion) and tried to continue to make my point regardless, but he interupted me(I think I can count the amount of times the guy actually let me finish a sentence on one hand) and told me to leave the room, at which point I considered the guy a lost cause and left.

At first I wasn't so upset with the guy, merely disappointed, but as time grew on, and I recycled what happened time and time again in my mind, trying to figure out where exactly things went wrong, I became more and more angry with that professor, to the point of me now having fantasies killing him. Still the safe kind though, where I do it in a way not physically possible, like turning into a dragon and eating him, opening the gates to hell and throwing him in or firing beams of wanton destruction from my hands. (since it's not physically possible I'm less worried about trying to do it in real life, but all this still this worries me.)

anyway, despite realising there have been some generalisations in my train of thought, and assumptions which may not be valid during this whole thing. I feel I've been most patient with those involved, so I don't really know to what point my actions have been agression, and to what point they were just assertiveness. at most I feel I shouldn't have been so complacent with both the prof and my teammate from the start, but I'm worried that if I apply that in the future it will just lead to more agression faster.

worse still, as much as I try to tell myself that something just went wrong in the whole socializing process, that it couldn't be helped by any of us, that noone's to blame, and that I shouldn't hate them, the hate just keeps flaring up. keeping these emotions in check is proving to be quite hard.

so anyway, that's more or less what happened. any ideas on how I can calm myself, on what went wrong, on how it should best be fixed and on how I should prevent this from happening in the future (without turning into a doormat myself) would be appreciated.

thanks in advance.