Hi there OnetoWander
Welcome to beyondblue, and welcome to the warmer side of Zero degrees Celsius 🙂
Having a short or long fuse on our anger is a learned behavior. For some of us it is what our parents were like, and for others that's how people treated us when we did something wrong. What taught us this helps only in recognizing that we were taught the behavior.Here is some important facts:
- Only one person has the ability to make you angry, and that person is you.
- Only you can control how you react to any situation.
- Only you can control when you react to any situation.
If you seriously want to change, then fix the above three facts one fact at a time. First, let's change when.
** whenever something happens, good, bad or otherwise, you are to wholly exhale, and then wholly inhale, BEFORE you allow yourself to react or respond. You can ask family members and friends to help you with this by whenever they notice you getting angry about something to tell you to "breathe" (which is your queue to exhale and inhale; first).
This breathing is crucial. It allows the brain a sufficient amount of time to "think" about the best way to react/respond to the situation. It also allows time for the initial shock to pass, and empowers you to respond/react more rationally than if you were not to breathe.
Because you are breathing, you naturally and automatically start to change the how. And, if you actively think about passive and calm reaction, on a regular basis, you will become that which you want to be.
Lastly, because we are controlling both when and how we react, we then and only then get angry when we allow ourselves to get angry.
SB
ps: I found that having poster notes that said "BREATHE" around the house and office helped constantly remind me to do just that.
pps; to my fellow BB regulars, yes this is a re-post from another thread apologies but I could find an easy way to link or reference or search for this particular post -- so I repeated it.
