this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2023
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I'm often seen as calm even though I have my frustrated outbursts. The one thing I make sure to do is not direct that frustration towards other living things.
As you mentioned in the dog analogy, I'll outwardly vocalize what I could have done to avoid the situation and own the blame. I have a couple dogs as well. If I'm upset enough that I notice a change in their behavior I'll play with them to show its okay. Now that I think about it, they started bringing me toys when I'm upset which has a calming effect on its own.
I want other people witnessing my tantrum to understand I'm frustrated with myself. There is always something I could have done to improve/avoid the situation. On the rare occasion I'm unable to self regulate I'll remove myself and take time to reflect. Sometimes it takes a night of sleep.
I've lived with a number of narcissistic and borderline personality types throughout my life. Seeing and experiencing the damage one can do with anger, I've made it a core principal to never project my own shortcomings onto another living thing.
For situations where one could not have done anything, I'll resort to assertiveness principals if I'm not okay with another's behavior or accept the the situation and go into "fix it" mode to mitigate what's in my control.
Key point I suppose is to remove anger, shaming, eluded ignorance, and other forms of manipulative behaviors as a means to control others and to see every frustration as a test of my principals.
To maybe build on this a little, as someone who grew up in a household with a parent with anger issues who would take their own frustrations out on the family, it definitely helps as something to avoid, but I've found that my inward reactions have gotten better as well once I realized that anger being my immediate reaction was due to growing up in an environment where that was normalized. Even if at the time it could be frightening and I knew even then that it was bad, the human brain is funny and children are impressionable.
I was in my 30s before I came to terms with the fact that my anger issues, however well controlled the outbursts were and no matter how much I avoided letting other people know it was happening, they were still there and I was still following in the steps of my father emotionally. And recognizing that it's not how everyone feels and it's not just "how my brain works," but conditioning, and conditioning that can be broken. Similarly, I would remove myself and reflect, but I'd start to focus less on me and my reactions and force more empathy by thinking about the person or thing or situation and what led to me being upset. Eventually it got to the point where now my immediate reaction is to rationalize the situation before I emotionally respond. If I think through it and I feel I should actually still be upset, then I can confront it, but in calmer and more rational state, confident that I'm probably justified.
It still happens sometimes. Mostly it's the normal irritability that everyone feels when they're stressed or tired. And sometimes that old habit comes back and I react a little more hotly than I should for no reason. I have cats that, like your dogs, even if the anger is not directed anywhere near them, they get scared. Seeing that pulls me out real quick and I'll calm down if only just to calm them, then give then scritches and pats to let them know it's okay and they're safe. So I'd probably say that even just having them around has given me a little accountability to help as well and made it easier to avoid. Say I'm having one of those days where I'm just clumsy and uncoordinated and keep dropping or breaking things. I get real close, but my reaction will immediately be to think about making sure they don't get upset. I think it helps over-wright that anger conditioning with conditioning myself to focus on something else.
So the conclusion I've come to, literally just now while typing all this since I haven't given it a ton of active thought before, is that the conditioning to that reaction has to be broken, and that's usually easier by replacing it so you don't even go to anger, but to something else every time. As every therapist I've ever been to says, you also can't feel shame or upset with yourself for the anger. It's a thing that you want to work on and the bet way to fix it is to dispassionately view it and work on it. Beating yourself up will only make it worse.