Dealing with inner-conflict
Dealing with conflict inside yourself
How to maintain your inner peace and inner balance

How does it feel to yell at someone you love? Most people hate it and most people do it. It becomes even worse when you later on decide that the topic wasn’t even worth the fight. Or maybe you are one of those rare people who can honestly admit that you were wrong.

What to do when you feel the bubbling up inside yourself and you know you are going to regret giving into it? No, one deserves to be yelled at, no matter what they did. What do you do when the anger is there and you feel this strong urge to let-it-out?

First you need to understand something about anger. Anger is an emotion, meant to protect us from harm coming to us. In the animal world where things are not talked out, things are solved with a fight. The strongest wins (regardless of who was “right”).
We, human decided to be more civilized. We want things to be done “right”. Everyone should follow the rules of what is fair.
When someone in our surrounding breaks those rules, we tend to fall back to our animal-nature: We want to fight-it-out. Usually we do not use our hands and nails for this fight anymore. To ease the urge to fight-it-out and wherever possible hit the other, we use our words.

Our body however, prepares for that physical fight. Chemicals are released and your blood starts rushing to supply your muscles with the energy needed for a strong punch. Your body screams for action and you might use all that energy into choosing the words that will hurt the most.
The other broke the rules! The other has violated your rights and should be punished.

In your anger this might all feel very right to you. But is “right” what you want to be?
Why did this fight start?
What was your goal?
What are the different ways to achieve it? (The angry way is only one of the options).
What does it cost you when you choose the angry way?

Don’t lose sight of your goal. Initially your goal might have been that, for example, your friend shows up in time for your date. While you were waiting the anger started bubbling. By the time he shows up, your goal has become to make him feel bad about what he did. He should suffer for what he has done to you.
Your anger has made you believe that making him suffer will prevent him from coming late next time. While this might work for some time (unless he decides to break up with you), there might be other ways to make him come in time.

Perhaps a good talk would help. Perhaps he is more sensitive to helping you out, than to being forced and threatened into order by your anger.
Perhaps an agreement can be made for him to show up 20 minutes earlier next time for every 10 minutes that he is late on a date - creativity might solve your problem.
Perhaps, you need to hear his story to then understand that it was really not in his power to be in time. To understand is to accept is to forgive.

From a peaceful mind you can understand what your goal exactly is. From that same peaceful mind you can objectively choose which of your options will generate the best results, without costing you much.
And do realize: The angry way is the most expensive way.
As proven by Professor Gates: An extract of the breath of an angry person contains a poison strong enough to kill a guinea pig. ( Source: http://tinyurl.com/anger-poison )
The simple act of being angry poisons your own body and does more harm to your health than eating a cheese pie (and I know which one I would prefer
After and while feeling angry you do not feel good. As long as the anger or even resentment still resides you are not able to be happy and have enjoyable, peaceful thoughts.

Besides the effect to your own body, anger can also chase away people who are most dear to you. No one will respect you for getting angry, at best they might fear you, but is that how you want to be treated? That people treat you well out of fear? Behind your back the fear is gone and their honest feeling towards you will not be one of love. Love and fear do not go together.

So, enough reasons to refuse choosing anger as your tool for achieving your goal. You might feel that I spoke a bit much on this topic, but it is of essential importance that you decide to not let anger into your life. The urge to get angry will sneak up on you again and you have to be strong enough and convinced enough to know, without a doubt, that anger is NOT YOUR WAY.

Make this decision as strong as a rock inside yourself. Anger is not your way. Anger is no solution for any of your problems. As long as you give yourself approval to use anger “just sometimes”, you will be tempted when the anger shows up. With anger bubbling inside your vision gets clouded and the situation suddenly seems very justified for some good aggression.

When anger comes up immediately deny yourself the rights to have an opinion. Take a time-out from the decision making process. Realize that you simply cannot trust your own opinion when anger is influencing you.

This is a perfect weapon against anger. The anger is calling you to be so right and loud and strong. And you give the opposite. You become non-judgmental, silent and humble.
Take care of your breathing, let it stay calm. Take care of your muscle tension, keep all the muscles relaxed. Give no attention to what caused the initial anger to come up. Just focus on breathing and relaxation. You can look at positive things around you, you can do something to distract yourself. Only when the anger is gone, trust yourself to have an opinion on the topic again and work towards a non-angry solution.

Try it some time when you feel anger is taking over:
Preparation:
-Make a strong conviction that you will no longer let anger have a place inside you.
-Use books, internet and other information as a tool on making clear to yourself why you want this.
-Make a list of reasons why you want anger to dissolve from your life.
When the situation shows up:
-Recognize the anger.
-Decide that there is no situation in the world that justifies your anger.
-Take your focus away from the topic that caused the anger. You are not allowed to think of it for as long as there is anger inside of you.
-Focus on your breathing, relaxation and positive things and thoughts.
-Do something that distracts you from the anger-provoking-topic.
-Remain doing these steps till the anger fades away.
-Carefully look at the anger-provoking-topic again and be ready to return to the earlier mentioned steps the moment anger starts appearing again.

You can see your anger as a little kid, yelling and screaming for what it wants. Keep ignoring the kid as long as it screams and yells. Be kind and loving when it stops and give sweet attention to what it is that the kid wants. The moment the kid feels like yelling again, turn away, only to turn back when it speaks to you in a normal or even loving way again.

Elisa ( Twitter-alias: Elisa_507)

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