2020 May Be the Year of Anger, but Gary Chapman Has the Solution

Do not let Cortisol destroy your relationships.

If you went through this year working as an event producer, personal trainer, travel office consultant, DJ, MC, showbiz agent, flight attendant, waiter, children’s party entertainer, tour guide, concierge, roadie, wedding cake confectioner, or bartender — among many other professionals —I have two things to tell you.

The first is that you have my respect for playing the game of life in the Hard Mode.

The second that you probably experienced frustration turning into irritation. At least I had.

My main source of income is my touristic hostel in Warsaw. Few times in my life I experienced frustration turning to anger as much as this year. Until I read a certain book that took care of the problem.

This book is Anger: Taming a Powerful Emotion, from Gary Chapman. In this article, I will tell you how it can help you because it helped me.

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry. WINSTON CHURCHILL

Revenge? Why?

Revenge is often an unconscious impulse. To give up the self-imposed obligation to pay back, you are doing a conscious choice.

Unfortunately, to override impulses with rationalizations is not an easy thing to do. It is difficult, but when done, brings an acute relief. As Dr. Gary Chapman writes, You are choosing not to be an emotional captive to the wrong that was perpetrated against you.

Vengeance is intrinsically unhealthy. It has a psychological and physical price to be paid for those that turn obsessive over it. Not rarely this price is higher than the damage that triggered the vengeful impulse in the first place.

It also does not brings relief. Paying back in a moment of anger can turn into an out-of-proportion reaction. Later comes remorse, and more damage to your mental health.

Revenge also spawns an endless cycle of retaliation. Those familiar with middle-eastern conflicts may know very well how it ends, or worse, how it never ends. The constant violent retributions on an international scale are nothing more than map-sized replicas of the frequently seen familiar feuds.

I will not even mention when, blurred by anger, we seek a non-justified vengeance against a person that did not made any wrong to us. Avoid being consumed by vengeance, or at least do not take any vengeful action in a moment of anger.

Implosive anger is as destructive as explosive anger, maybe even more.

There are two types of anger.

The explosive one is the most common. It is what we see daily, in the road traffic or the lines of slow-moving public offices. It reacts quickly to whatever triggers it, and with the same speed it arrives, it also fades out.

Implosive anger, on the other hand, it is similar to a boiling liquid in a sealed pan. You do not hear it, you do not see it, but the pressure is there. Sometimes people with severe implosive anger give us an appearance of calm, stable individuals.

Until a minor, minuscule trigger explodes the pan and throws all the spicy, red, hot chili in the whole kitchen, making it look like a murder scene. Did I go too far with the cooking analogy?

If you remember the movie Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas as William Foster, it is easy to picture what I mean. In this 1993 movie, an apparently harmless engineer suffers a series of small but numerous annoyances, until he explodes and goes berserk, to the point of turning into a criminal.

The best way to fight internalized anger is to first of all, admit it and understand it, way before giving any external response like William Foster gave when he decided to pick a gun and shoot people.

The five steps suggested by Gary Chapman offer a systematic approach to deal with internalized anger.

The five-step process to deal with anger.

1 — Consciously acknowledge to yourself that you are angry

The act of suppressing anger does not hide it only from external observers but may deceive the own person to think that he or she is not angry. That is when the individual will say that he is only tired or needing some holidays, or any other excuse to not admit his anger.

Acknowledge that you are angry, this is a sine qua non condition to overcome it.

2 — Restrain your immediate response

“Fools vent their anger, but the wise quietly hold it back” (Proverbs 29:11).

Remember the old advice to count until ten before giving any answer when you feel angry? This grandma-style wiseness is valid. When we are on what is called the fight or flight mode, we are looking for our self-preservation and our reactions do not measure the impacts on other beings.

Adrenaline and Cortisol influence brain areas that process memory.

This is why you often forget who really harmed you during an outburst and inflicts damage on innocent people.

Wait until you put your hormones down, your heart rate goes back to normal levels, and your forehead veins are not visible. Only after that, think about reacting.

People will see you as a much more stable individual, and you even may become a role model.

3 — Locate the focus of your anger

After you calm down, ask questions. First for yourself, later to anyone that is involved.

Understand if the problem that is making angry is controllable or uncontrollable.

If it is out of control, then why you are angry about it?

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” — Seneca

But if the reason for your anger can be controlled, go to the next step.

4 and 5 — Analyze your options and take constructive action.

As we complete each step, we move toward making our anger productive. In the previous points, you acknowledged your anger, restrained your immediate response, and located the focus of your anger. In the last two steps — which I put together in here for the sake of simplicity — you will analyze your options.

If you are angry because someone caused you harm, you want the situation to not be repeated in the future. So you take measures against someone else. But remember: constructive measure, not irrational vengeance. Do not take it at a hurried pace or with a disproportionate impact.

If your anger is resulted by your own flaws, it is time to some self-analysis, and to correct your own problems. Often I was angry because I had bad nights of sleep. I was not treating other people good, but it was my fault. Fortunately, after analyzing my options, I realized that all was the fruit of a very stupid habit: drinking coffee and exercising too late. My body was not in sleeping mode when it should be.

Another source of anger that I identified, and started to manage better was the procrastination due to excessive Whatsapp or Facebook usage, and the frustration-powered anger of not understanding completely the culture around me (since I am a foreigner). All that could be solved, or at least better managed — not completely though, since this is a continuous work of self-improvement.

With changed habits, anger dissipates.

The same I hope happens with you if you follow the steps above, or read the book from Dr. Gary Chapman.

Have a good and calm day!

Levi Borba, best-selling author. You can check his books here.