Keeping a Lid on Anger Without Flipping Yours

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase. - Epictetus

When angry, the wisest thing to do is to go off by yourself until the storm passes. It’s NEVER the easiest thing to do, but it’s ALWAYS the smartest.

Think of Anger as a trunk full of regret and remorse waiting to be opened. If you open it in front of others, they’ll see you at your worst and the trunk’s ugly contents will spew out so fast and so furiously that you won’t be able to corral them. The damage will be done and, once done, it can never be undone.

On the other hand (you know, the more mature and sensible hand), if you go off, cool off, and open the trunk when you’re the only one around, you’ll be able to sort through its contents and see what needs to be said and what needs to be left unsaid.

By doing so, you can find a way to handle what made you angry in the first place. Another benefit from opening the trunk in private is that others will see you at your best rather than your worst. We all want other people to take us seriously and we want their respect whether we admit it to ourselves or not. Hot heads, sarcastic Sams, and screamers don’t get other people’s respect. They get their ridicule, their wrath, and their avoidance. Need yet another benefit? How about this: You won’t create an ugly pile of regrets in the corner of your psyche. Clean corners in one’s psyche are all kinds of cool.

One more thing - when you get your trunk off in private and you’re pilfering through its contents, very often you’ll find that nothing is there of any substance. One of two things will occur to you:

1. There really isn’t even a good reason to be angry!  Whew, what a relief, you can go back to being happy again.  Take your good mood back around humanity and let them enjoy it.
2. What you THOUGHT was making you angry isn’t even at the source of your bad mood.  Your son’s messy room isn’t even in the trunk - instead you find an unresolved problem from work.  Cause for another sigh of relief… you didn’t take it out on junior.

***The approach above works just as well for a Sack of Sadness as it does a Trunk of Temper.  The key is to get to the root of the emotion, yourself.  We should confront and deal with our emotions in as much privacy as possible.  I’m all for asking for help from loved ones when it’s called for, and sometimes a good old-fashioned confrontation is is order.  But we’ll have a much better chance of holding our ground if that ground isn’t shaking.