when you get angry, what thoughts help you feel better?

subject says it all

when you get angry, what thoughts help you feel better?. what do you like thinking about?
1. I like thinking about my teachers in diapers as punnishment for doing such a **** job of teaching me (I mean who in their right mind thinks sherlock holmes goes to hogwarts, yep I was told that by a teacher) along with other stuff too, cat starts with a kicking K and not a curly c

2. that somewhere, in the world, at this second, their is a cat, sat on a mat doing absolutely nothing and feeling care free

3. that all the hospital staff who have ever treated me like **** now work on broadway

4. at a cafe somewhere, an employee got a customer's order wrong and they are cussing and throwing things

5. you can't eat yellow snow, even if you wanted to

6. that perhaps one day in the near future, someone will re-work the charlie bit my finger video and change the charlie to something like david or andrew..

7. you can't get sausages or bacon from a cow, and if you could, it would taste so strange

8. if you ate fish on a pig farm, it's not going to smell any less like fish or pigs.

9. that somewhere in the world, am om has given birth to a baby, and called it, " baby."

10. if empty stomachs could talk, would mine leave me for someone else

these are 10 random thoughts that make me feel calm when I'm angry. I have others, but these are my top 10.

This is a good idea. I usually seem to think I can't get angry. But recently I have expressed anger at "the voices". It doesn't do me any good. So maybe I could pretend they are trying to swim in a bowl of soup? Or that they are all lost in a house of mirrors, & their own voices keep echoing back at them. I don't know what to do about the pain, though. I think the parietal lobes have something to do with that.

raging vortex, I love your creativity!

Here is a question: how do you even get to thoughts?

In other words, how do you prevent yourself from instantly saying or doing something that you might later regret, so that your mind can actually get to these thoughts and defuse the anger?

I love this, raging vortex! This is a really good idea.


I personally have a hard time thinking of things on my own to calm myself when I'm angry. Though I'm not sure I've tried the creative route. Perhaps I could give it a try sometime.

My tools for when I am angry that get me into a better frame of mind are as follows (and really, I need to use them more because sometimes I forget and don't know what to do with myself)...


-read something light and engaging, like a good novel.

-I exercise, take a freaking walk, or just get moving, even doing dishes.

-Change my environment, if possible, like if I'm home, leave my house.

-Talk to someone. I'm a big caller of the warm lines. I know not everyone is a fan though.

-Breathe. Just breathe.


-Crossword puzzles, wordle!

-I write down how pissed I am.

There's something else I'm forgetting. Oh well. Good thread rv.

I love the whole mirror idea myself.

let me know how it goes

as crazy as it sounds, some of the thoughts on my list jus make me laugh so hard that I don't have time to do what ever is I want to, because I am laughing too hard at something which is, well, isn't really that funny to most people.

Easy, I don't want to get in my own way to make myself just more frustrated with that or look bad or humiliate myself etc etc depends on situation as to what the disadvantage would be.

It simply isn't worth it to me to impulsively act on anger when there's a serious disadvantage. This doesn't require much thinking from my part

I'm also in general proud of having satisfying control over my anger, which means I value this control, and that fact helps further control it better too. It requires practice I'm sure. It does require awareness of your state. (I've read but didn't try this: you can use meditation practice specifically for the purpose of install a "circuit breaker" in the way of impulsive emotion, including anger.)

It doesn't mean that I don't express anger, I actually am a temperamental person but it's not like I express it without control. Or I will not express it at all if I don't think it's the right time, in this case I will channel it into an action plan for later, or into achieving a goal that I find more worthwhile than randomly impulsively acting on anger in the moment.

Another part to all this is that if I do decide to act on it, I don't mind having to deal with some consequences. The point is that I make a conscious decision to act on it, it's not a thoughtless impulsive act.

If I do - rarely - lose my head then I don't like that, sure, but I find it's over smaller things, not the big, important things. The important things is where I get really focused.

I am sure it would help me to use humour too like OP does. I would need a LOT of practice there as it is now, lol.

Great thread, vortex!

Honestly, the thoughts I think that help my rage in the short term make in worse in the long term, so I do what WovenGalaxy wrote, I read, I bike, I change my environment or do whatever to stop thinking. I also like baking and listening to audio books, or puzzle while listening to music. Activities in which my mind can roam while having something structured to process are great. Somehow that enables me to put a distance between those negative thoughts and me and thus am better able to control them/ push them away.

Now when I get angry I step back & think about the REAL CAUSE of my anger, analyze that & then figure out what steps I need to take to deal with what is actually the cause (may not even be related to what caused that feeling of anger). Then I take action needed to resolve the cause & not respond in anger to what had just brought up that emotion. Have found anger is like an ice berg. What is under the surface is the REAL problem to deal with cause that is what will really sink your ship

To add to this anger is a secondary emotion that generally masks whatever emotion you don't want to feel at the time. Could be anything. Fear, anxiety, abandonment, frustration, sadness, etc.

I'm quick to anger because I'm more comfortable with it than other emotions. It's easier to get angry and punch holes in the wall than sit and think about how no one is answering my texts or how incompetent in certain areas I am (common things that happen to me).

That being said, I typically don't try and control my thoughts when I'm angry. I just try to physically get it out. I used to get violent, but now I'm more a "punch the mattress and scream into the pillow gal."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sapien To add to this anger is a secondary emotion that generally masks whatever emotion you don't want to feel at the time. Could be anything. Fear, anxiety, abandonment, frustration, sadness, etc. I'm quick to anger because I'm more comfortable with it than other emotions. It's easier to get angry and punch holes in the wall than sit and think about how no one is answering my texts or how incompetent in certain areas I am (common things that happen to me). That being said, I typically don't try and control my thoughts when I'm angry. I just try to physically get it out. I used to get violent, but now I'm more a "punch the mattress and scream into the pillow gal."

I get the becoming comfortable with the anger response. After 33 years in a bad marriage, my cup was full soon after the wedding & anything would set me off....but my parents had been the same irritating personality as my H ended up being.

Wasn't until my parents had died & I left my H that I could sit down with my new wonderful T & go through a list of emotions I was feeling but what was most important in that exercise was adding the "why" to the emotion I was experiencing. 2 pages later it was like wow, now I understand why I was feeling that way. Gave me words that I needed to express what I was going through instead of just "ugh"

Actually no. Anger is as much a primary emotion as other primary emotions i.e. the direct reactions to the original cause. Secondary emotions are the reactions on top of the primary emotions. The point is that anger is just as often a primary emotion as any other emotion can be a primary emotion. It's a common misconception that anger can be a secondary emotion only. Any emotion can mask any other emotion, anger is not special in this regard.

Naturally, anyone would feel better letting some anger out than having to think really degrading, and of course, untrue thoughts as in Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs, check out CBT).

Frankly, what's the point of thinking about how lonely you are with "no one" ever answering your texts, or about how incompetent you are. No point. Process the feelings, then be ready to find a solution and move on. Don't let yourself get tricked with these ANTs.

pictures of bears....

I have another one to add.

thoughts of me being a baby again with a passifier and a baby bottle

My house becomes very clean. I tend to jump right into chores, because when I get genuinely angry, which is fairly rare these days, I kind of vibrate with a sort of crackling energy. I have to burn it off somehow. Otherwise, it might be mis-spent or misdirected at someone who DOES NOT deserve my desire to exercise my wrath.

Once my anger has been turned to something useful, I can calm down and analyze what contributed to it, and why I responded as emotionally as I did.

I like your way of thinking, though, raging. I'll bet you're very funny, in person.