What can we do about anger?
Anger can be triggered by an underlying emotion such as fear, frustration, disgust, sadness, grief, the list seems endless. We are all familiar with anger being a part of the grief cycle, a very vital part of losing a loved one. Anger often occurs as part of our automatic fight-flight-freeze response, being more closely associated with fight.
The good news is that we can learn to control our anger and the more that we do so the better that we feel and the less frequent anger will be used. Here are three steps to take to control our immediate reaction in a situation if anger is our go-to emotion;
Plan for it - Think ahead to situations that are likely to cause you to become angry - shopping, a customer service inquiry, going to meet with your boss - and have a pre-planned reply to what they might say that would anger you. Have a new sentence such as - "I hear what you are saying" followed by your planned reply that is joined with the word "and", not the word "but". "I hear what you are saying and ..."
Breathe out, not in - When we are angered, our breathing becomes short and shallow therefore we have too much oxygen which causes us to hyperventilate thus increasing our brain activity and increasing our anger. Breathe out completely and hold for 3 seconds before resuming regular breathing. Breathing out reduces our heart rate and a low heart rate decreases our brain activity.
Never say the first thing that comes into your head - When we are angered we go immediately go to our patterned learned reply that is often harsh and hurtful because we feel as though we are under attack. Think about your reply when you pause your breathing and soften the words.
Once you have dealt with the immediate situation then introduce a second strategy to relieve any pent-up anger;
Exercise - Go for a fast walk or run, hit the punch bag, lift some heavy weights, or any form of intense exercise that releases your energy.
Write - Write out how you feel and then destroy what you have written by burning, ripping, crushing, and completely obliterating the piece of paper.
Communicate - Celebrate your success of not getting angry by telling someone about what happened and how well you handled it. We learn by reward, dopamine, and we need to introduce dopamine if we want to reinforce the positive and continue with our new pattern of behaviour.
Emotions must come out, and doing so in a positive way will have a far greater benefit for everyone, particularly you.
Let's talk!
Why Don't They Just Ask For Help?
Why don't they just ask for help?
In a single word, fear.
We often hear, "If you are struggling, please reach out to someone for help" The sentiment is well-meaning and will work if the person is in a lucid period or in the early stages of the mire. However, it can fall on deaf ears if the person is deep in the mire, or completely overwhelmed with 'life'.
Why deaf ears, because when people are all consumed with life, the only voice they hear is their own, and that voice is telling them to ignore the world. That voice, the one that comforted us as a child whenever we were struggling or afraid, has now become our enemy.
So why don't we ask for help, and why does that voice try in vain to comfort us as it did when we were a child? Fear is the answer for most of us.
Fear of burdening you with our issues, fear of what you might say to us, fear that you may scold or scorn us, fear that what you suggest may make things worse, fear of the repercussions of our actions, fear that you may view us as a failure, fear that we will never be seen the same way again, fear that we will never recover, fear of what the future holds if any future at all, fear of the unknown, fear of... The list is endless.
Yes, these fears are irrational, illogical, and often unfounded. But we don't know that, because we aren't thinking rationally or logically.
When overwhelmed, we are unable to think like you, to rationalise like you, to bring clarity to what you are saying. We can't work out why you don't get it, why you can't see what we see, why you aren't listening to us, why you don't understand that we can't simply "snap out of it".
So what should you do to help us when we are overwhelmed?
Take us to get some help if we readily want to go, encourage us to get some help if we won't go for help, listen to us without judging us or trying to fix us, ask us what we are thinking and feeling, or just be there for us.
A warm smile, a kind word, a hug from a loved one can be enough to keep us going. Remind us that we are loved, that we won't be scorned or scolded, that you don't care what we've done. Just be there for us when we need you.
Let's talk!
What Makes A Great Employer?
We've all seen the memes about pizza parties and improving company culture. Although a pizza shout can still be part of that, what makes a great employer? We have been fortunate enough to have worked in many organisations. Here's a few things that we have noticed about the truly great companies;
Ownership - Have clear direction; know where you are going, and how you will get there and communicate this effectively. Provide the tools to allow your staff to do their work and leave them to get on with it. Continue with plenty of informal feedback but try to avoid micro-managing.
Career - Give people something meaningful to work on outside of their day-to-day work. Ideas on work practices and change processes (the way change is implemented) should be from the bottom-up, not the top-down. Vary training practices & encourage movement within your organisation.
Environment - No one likes working in a cramped dark cold cupboard. Have plenty of natural light, provide places to relax and make these places feel like 'home'.
Happiness - happiness keeps people motivated. Value each person; celebrating birthdays and festive events, perhaps this is where the pizza parties do actually play a part.
Fantastic Managers - They genuinely care for their people. They don't refer to them as employees, workers, or staff, they always refer to their 'people'. Regardless of how busy they are with their own work, they are curious and engaged with their team members.
He aha te mea nui? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.
Brain Physio!
Why did that happen to me? What a stupid thing to do. It's all your fault.
I'm sure you know how it goes.
When something negative happens to us, the brain goes through a process of replaying the event so that we will learn from what occurred.
It's designed to help us avoid a future incident or to know what to do should the same incident occur again. This process can be uncomfortable and if left unchecked; can lead to Acute Stress Diagnosis (I dislike the word ‘disorder’ so have changed it to diagnosis) and at the extreme end, post-traumatic stress.
Physio is a necessary part of healing the body. It can be painful, intense, emotional, and exhausting. Why is it then that we struggle to tell others that we require mind (brain) therapy despite both treatments being similar?
A physiotherapist will identify the cause of the injury by getting us to talk about what occurred and will generally push the hardest on the part that hurts the most to release the blockage to get the blood flowing and reduce the pain. In a similar way, so does a psychotherapist or psychologist, they push hardest on the emotion that is the most painful to release the built-up energy, thus reducing the pain.
As we have discussed in previous posts, emotions will come out, they must. They have to come out otherwise they will fester and grow and make it more difficult to repair the memory (injury) in the same way that we must get physiotherapy sooner rather than later.
The main difference between the two therapies is that repairing emotional pain requires more effort from the client rather than the specialist. It can be very difficult to go back and relive an incident because the accompanying emotion will be refreshed and become real. However, it is a very necessary part of the healing process.
Talking about our emotions isn’t about moaning or complaining about what happened, it's acknowledging our true self. Expressing an emotion significantly reduces it and if the person we are talking with acknowledges that expression, it disarms the emotion so that is no longer as harmful as it might have been.
Talking about mind health should be no different to talking about body health for they are interconnected. Both make us who we are, and I may suggest that the mind is more important.
Visiting a counsellor, psychologist, psychotherapist, or psychiatrist should be no different than visiting a GP or physiotherapist. They are all necessary in our recovery.
Adaptability!
As someone messaged me recently, 'You said to me that this feeling will pass, and it did.'
There are many terms used to describe our ability to get through difficult times - resilience, grit, flexibility, perseverance, determination, adaptability - the list is considerable. Our preference at WARN is to use the word adaptability; providing coping skills to enable people to adapt to our busy world.
As research has shown, our resilience - the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties - is founded early in life, generally within the first 1000 days. Nevertheless, we can all tap into our resilience reservoir by changing certain thoughts and behaviours.
It is necessary to have stressors in our lives, it helps us to build the range of tools that we are required when adversity hits. The greatest tool we can have is the ability to manage our emotions.
The thing about emotions is that they do not fully develop until our mid-twenties, some even say as late as our thirties. Moreover, if we experience too many emotional experiences at an early age it can have a long-lasting impact on our ability to cope later in life.
What does not kill us doesn't necessarily make us stronger, not if we aren't equipped or haven't used the tools necessary to process our emotions as we go through the challenge. And we know that the impact left in our memory is difficult to forget for it will now be a reference marker on our timeline for any future similar event.
To support this latter point, during a presentation I gave to a cancer support network, a person burst into tears when he described how hard it was to go through his new treatment following a second diagnosis of cancer. His emotional response was heightened further by having already been through the experience before. He was therefore more fragile this time because of his earlier experience.
A helpful way to learn how to cope with 'life' is to expose ourselves to situations that take us out of our comfort zone, to stretch us to do things that we never imagined we could, to possibly frighten us a little. Something to get us to feel our emotional response and learn how to process the feeling and reduce it.
The best time to start learning about managing our stress responses is as early as possible, beyond the first 1000 days when we have grown fully into our limbic system where our emotions are regulated.
There is a balance between empowering our young to prepare them for life's challenges and putting them under too much pressure. Maturity is an important aspect of managing emotions. As discussed, too much pressure at too early an age where the brain hasn't developed adequately may reduce their ability to cope.
Hopefully, this is helpful for you as an adult if you believe you aren't as resilient as others appear to be - it may have been something that was outside of your control. It's not necessarily our fault.
Let's talk!