Replace Anger With Compassion

Compassion and Tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of Strength - Dalai Lama

When we let it, anger can take us over and change the person we are. The worst part about this is, the fact that anger is a normal part of life and a natural emotion that every person experiences. We may not be able to avoid anger, however we can replace it. The next time you feel yourself becoming angry or frustrated with a person, try defeating anger with compassion.

We seem to live in an angry world. Presidential candidates appeal to our displeasure with the way our country is and incite us to view it with angry eyes. We do not think of anger as a state we enjoy. Would you want to be angry if you had the choice to be at peace? The problem is that we do not always see peace as the alternative to anger.

Many people feel hopeless about their lives and helpless to change the things they do not like. They feel crushed by the burden of their unhappy existence. Anger seems to bring them to life. At least they can feel something even if they do not like what they feel. There is some satisfaction in knowing they can at least arouse themselves from dissatisfaction through anger all the way to rage.

The problem with a constant diet of anger is that it turns you inward to focus on your own troubles. It encourages you to feel sorry for yourself, jealous of what others have and angry at those whom you see as keeping you from attaining what you want from life. The angrier you get, the more stuck you feel. Do you recall the Uncle Remus tale about Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby? You might rage at others but nothing changes for you, at least not for the better.

What is the alternative? Anger keeps you focused on your inner torments regardless of how much you blame others for them. How about compassion as an alternative? Maybe this never occurred to you. At first glance, the relationship between anger and compassion might appear puzzling. What could these two states of mind and emotion possibly have to do with each other?

First, they have nothing in common. however, try being angry at someone and feeling compassion at the same time. We just saw what anger looks like and how it feels. How about compassion? To feel compassionate, you first need to put aside your own feelings, especially negative ones. Next, you need to open yourself to understanding what another person is feeling. You see, hear and maybe touch this person without judgment.

You are only interested in what he or she experiences. You learn a little about what it might be like to be that person. You might never have felt what this person feels or had the experiences he or she had. You listen gently to find out how it feels to be that person or what the world looks like from his or her perspective. Now you will start to understand the meaning of compassion.

It is surely time to build a global community where people can live together in mutual respect!

With thanks to Langen - 

http://www.thedailynewsonline.com/bdn06/langen-how-to-replace-your-anger-with-compassion-20151113

Learn to speak the language of the Universe - http://www.goalsandsuccess.co.uk

Learn Not To Lash Out

Rumination, a destructive habit,  that can lead us to lash out at innocent people or pets.
 

Your boss chews you out over something inconsequential, and hours later, on the drive home, you find yourself replaying her comments over and over again. And you have got plenty of time: The traffic has you inching along the motorway for 45 minutes. By the time you get home, you are seething - at your boss, at the traffic, at the world. As you stomp up the driveway, your little Cocker Spaniel Brownie trips you up, and you snap. You shout at her and smack her on the rump—and immediately feel like a class A jerk.

What just happened? Psychologists call it displaced aggression, but most of us recognize it as the kick-the-dog effect. Anger and frustration in one part of life can lead us to lash out at innocent people (or pets) in another.

The key is rumination, a destructive and common mental habit. Rumination is what you do when you repeatedly relive an experience in your mind, replaying it, reviewing it, and reinterpreting it. It plays a major role in depression - pushing people over the edge from a temporary sad mood into a major, lasting sadness. The habit can also turn a nervous person into someone truly suffering from anxiety.

Psychologists have evidence that rumination also plays a significant role in postponed and redirected anger. As you mull over the details of an enraging episode, you may think you are trying to get more information out of it - a new understanding. But you are not really learning anything new. As you continue to 

replay the action, you keep the frustration and anger fresh and etch the incident into your mind.

Hours later, even though you might no longer feel physically angry, these painful thoughts are still in the back of your mind. You cannot retaliate against your boss, since he would fire you. You cannot take it out on the traffic, since there is nothing to be done about it. So when faced with a trivial annoyance - like a clumsy dog - you go ballistic.

Psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, who has studied rumination, theorises that as you continue to focus on anger-provoking situations, you form new angry associations, setting up a vicious circle of anger and rumination. Because part of anger involves self-justification (i.e, the feeling that you are right to be angry), the anger only grows as you continue to think of reasons why you were right and the other person wrong.

Research led by psychologist Fred Bushman from the University of Michigan shows how likely people are to overreact to a minor annoyance after ruminating over a previous insult. In his study, participants were interrupted and humiliated while doing a difficult task. Some were asked to think about the experience, and some were distracted from mulling it over. When all of them were later given a chance to retaliate against a hapless research assistant, those who had been ruminating were much more apt to do so.

The hostile attribution bias, which kicks in when you are seething with anger, makes matters worse. The term describes the fact that when you are preoccupied with angry thoughts, you are much more likely to see in other people's ambiguous behavior a negative, personal slight.

That person who barged into you while chattering on her cell phone? If you were in a calmer state of mind, you would just assume she was not paying attention. But if your mind is churning with angry thoughts, you are going to assume she did it on purpose. Rumination makes it much more likely that you will jump to such an antagonistic conclusion.

Anger fueled by rumination can be especially hard to halt. Pay attention to how long you allow yourself to replay an infuriating scenario in your head. After 10 to 20 minutes, the initial burst of anger usually wears off. If you are still thinking about it, that is a good sign that you are probably not getting any new insights.

Trying to short-circuit the cycle by squelching your angry thoughts usually is not very effective. Research suggests that a better technique is to distract yourself.

Other tactics: exercising or finding something funny to entertain yourself with. It is almost impossible to laugh and be angry at the same time.

 Copyright Kat McGowan  https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200509/learning-not-lash-out

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