Monthly Archives: August 2012

Beast Whispering 101

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Lately I’ve become quite fascinated with anger. I find myself reading and re-reading any and all information that comes across my path on the topic. I haven’t been intentionally seeking out literature or information on anger… not just yet anyway, but am finding the more I learn the more I want to know.

Anger is one of those funny emotions. Not really funny ‘ha ha’, but more ‘ha, that’s curious, what’s this all about?.’  Many of us fear anger. For women, most of us were taught as children that good girls don’t show, let along feel, anger. As a result, many of us have this sort of shame and guilt when it comes to both experiencing or, heaven forbid, expressing our anger. For men, it’s kind of the opposite story. While growing up, and even as adults, it seems like the ONLY acceptable emotion for a man to feel and share is his anger. This then leaves men with the understanding that any and every emotion he experiences is anger simply because that’s the only emotion that real men are allowed to feel… however, they know and we know that how they’ve learned to express said anger is rarely productive for any of us. Oy! What a mess we’ve made. The point here is that many of us fear anger… it’s kind of a taboo emotion in our culture, but we’re still human, and we still experience anger. So now what? When we don’t know how to understand it, handle it, or express it in a healthy way we cope with it by turning it back into an attack on ourselves. That’s not so helpful.

What is helpful is to use a much healthier and much more productive strategy for dealing with our anger. One such way is to learn to say what we want and negotiate for the change we’re after (aka being assertive). Anger is quite often a side-effect of feeling helpless and powerless because we don’t express our needs or we express them infectively. We all have needs and preference and we all have the right to ask for what we want, and although we may not always get it because others have the right to say no, we can still ask.  So one of the keys to learning how to tame the beast as opposed to pretending like he’s not there, feeling guilty when he rears his head in a destructive way, or just plain jaw clenching and hoping he goes away on his own is to learn to be okay with both giving and receiving no. Believe it or not this strategy in and of itself has a huge effect on our feelings of anger – both toward others and toward ourselves.

Earning Our Keep.

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Many of us believe that our worth depends on our behaviour… ‘The more I do, accomplish, achieve, the more worthwhile, valuable, significant I am.’ That sometimes bugger of an internal voice is relentless in telling us that in order for me to be of any value I must do something worthwhile and important.

I know you might not buy it for a second, but if you’ll humour me, the truth is that our value is found in the clear fact that we are conscious, and we can see, and we can experience. We are sophisticated, complex, and intricate miracles of creation.

The value of the human life is that it exists. C’est tout. There is really nothing we can do to earn our worth: I am therefore I am.

You are someone who is trying to live which makes you just as valuable as every other person who is trying to do the very same thing.

Not to say contributing to society and accomplishing things for ourselves and others is unimportant – quite the contrary! This is all very important, but not as a means to prove our value and worth, rather, as part of our life journey, our flow. What we do is an expression of living as opposed to a fight to justify our existence.

Chose Your Words Carefully.

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So further to last week’s perhaps somewhat unsanitary discussion, dealing with a shouldy mess can often be as straightforward as changing the words we chose to express our thoughts and feelings. This might sound too ridiculously simple to be true, but to that I say perhaps not, seeing as we interpret, process, and then respond to pretty much everything in the world based on the specific word choices we use, either aloud or in our heads. Ah the philosophy of language…. And there’s my undergraduate minor leaking through…

Anyway, we do have a few of said alternate word choices to choose from. These are words like prefer, would like, or would be nice. I’m sure there are more, but let’s start with those.

Putting this into practice looks a little something like this:

Preference #1- Preferences of Self: I prefer to succeed, do well, and get approval and affirmation, but even if I don’t I am still worthwhile and I will treat myself with kindness and compassion and accept myself for who I am.

Preference #2 – Preferences of Others: I prefer that you treat me reasonably, kindly, respectfully, and lovingly, but since I don’t, and will never, be able to control you (no matter how hard I might try), I will accept that you too are an imperfect human being whose nature, like mine, is to err.

Preference #3 – Preferences of Life: I prefer that life be easy, fair, and free from difficulty or challenge, and although sometimes it’s quite upsetting and frustrating that, in fact, it is not, I know I can handle and endure frustration and still find significant joy and fulfillment in life.

Let’s assume you take the above suggestions to heart, and thus greatly reduce your anxiety, depression, anger, hostility, and frustration. What’s next? Well, without all of those shoulds getting in the way you will more easily experience love, joy, connection, and fulfillment in life.  Is there such thing as a quadruple word score?

Shoulding All Over Ouselves.

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It might not be immediately obvious, but we are all guilty of shoulding on ourselves and others… some of us more so than we might want to admit.

There are 3 types of shoulds that most of us regularly employ that really aren’t doing us much good.

Should #1 – Shoulding on the Self:
“I SHOULD do well at everything and be approved of, liked, and admired by everyone or else I am no good and do not deserve to be happy.” This demand on the self results in anxiety, depression, and often allowing others to take advantage of us – none of which feel very good.

Should #2 – Shoulding on Others:
“Other people SHOULD treat me with kindness and fairness or else they are no good, rotten people who deserve misery and punishment.” This demand on others leads to resentment, isolation, hostility, and violence.

Should #3 – Shoulding on Life
“Life SHOULD be fair, easy, painless, and free of difficulties or else it’s terrible, I won’t stand it, and it’s hardly worth living.” This demand is associated with hopelessness, procrastination, and unhealthy or destructive coping methods.

We need to start giving these shoulds a run for their money. They need to be challenged because they don’t deserve to have the final say. They might persist, but we don’t need to agree with them – we can confront them head on with questions like: “What makes this should a load of…?” “Where are the flaws in this should?” “Who says it should be this way?” and “How do I know this should is being difficult, unreasonable, and just plain not nice?”

Shoulds often sneakily creep up in our thoughts more often than we might think: “I should do this,” or “they should do that” etc… They are nasty little buggers.

Take some time over this next week to catch yourself shoulding on yourself, and then see if you can change that should to a simple “I would prefer” or “it would be nice if”… Give it a try and see what you notice.