ANGER THREAD - How do YOU deal with it???

[labug]

My anger comes from way back of course, but in my M it was kindled by my drive to be perfect both at home and on the job and then when I had kids, it really got crazy. I allowed my resentment to grow because I was working so hard to keep all the balls in the air and he was, in my opinion, doing nothing. Or at least not enough. Read my thread for the specifics but we were hand-in-glove.

The perfect storm of dysfunction although we looked good on the outside. (I'm smiling 'cause I know y'all get that)

I love the term live-wire cause it so describes how I felt much of the time.

Counseling, meditation, exercise, yoga all have helped me learn more about my body, my emotions, my reacting. I know that I get tension in my upper body, inc heart rate, and my breathing gets shallow. If I don't slow things down, I get tunnel vision, I can't see anything outside my forward field of vision. Then I know the adrenaline has really dumped and it's hard to come back from there.

But I can, unless I'm being attacked by a saber-toothed tiger.;)

Just dealing with little things on a day to day basis has helped me slow down and ask questions like "How important is this?" "Is this about me?" "What's really upsetting me in this situation?"

And a phrase I learned in AlAnon Q-TIP Quit Taking It Personally has helped immensely. Everything is not about me.

I still have moments but they are at looooooong intervals. I had a minor melt-down at work this week, which in retrospect I could have prevented. I was carrying some stress from a conversation with S19 from the night before and even shed a few tears on my way to work.

I should have know to take a few minutes and deal with that but I didn't.

So I got to work and before 8 am, about 5 frustrating things happened, which all stemmed from long-standing system issues that know one has corrected. I started to unload on my supervisor (a saint) and at one point said "I'm hot!" (meaning angry) At that point I knew I had to back off and get out of the conflict so I said "I need to go outside for a walk" and I did and came back and apologized. From there we were able to have a constructive conversation.

My mistake was not dealing with my stress/internal conflict before.

Thanks for this thread, kg.