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final_identity · 04-28-2004, 05:21 PM

Health, nutrition, and less violence, more defusing.

I am a great advocate of the right lifestyle. I'm less annoyed at the world, the less nitrates I eat, and the better my heart and lungs are doing on a 5K run at the moment. If I let my jogging lapse, my attitude falls with it.

But the biggest "cognitive therapy" for me was learning a NEW anger-management technique. People talk about "venting" their anger a lot, or about "being more in control of their feelings." That is a fairly common way to talk about management of many feelings, anger included.

For me, both of those statements were basically misleading. They suggested to me that I needed to "clamp down" or "get really overblown." That was not a good suggestion. It likened me to either a pressure-cooker (which was accurate) that needed its lid to be screwed down even tighter (which was inaccurate); or to a fire hose (which was accurate) that needed to be let loose to completely exhaust its supply of water (which was inaccurate).

I found that BOTH of those metaphors actually INCREASED my sense of anger. Either I was suppressing it, thus focusing on how much work and effort I had to put into the idea of controlling it, thus all the time focusing on exactly that which made me angry in the first place; or I was venting it, thus focusing on how much work and effort I had to put into the idea of expressing it, thus all the time focusing on exactly that which made me angry in the first place. Get the problem?

So, what I learned to do, was not so much VENT, as DEFUSE.

I find the term "defuse" very useful. For me, anger is like a mounting obsession. It feeds off of itself. (There is some veracity to the idea that all bad emotions are vicious, self-fulfilling cycles; whereas all good ones are virtuous, self-regulating cycles. Cf. Gaia Hypothesis, by Lovelock.) Anyway, by letting it BE and acknowledging its right to occupy my mental space, the anger becomes an entity that can feed off itself all the more. Instead, I needed to very gently, almost flippantly and rather silly-like, comically, nip it in the bud. Treat it like it hadn't started yet. Get dismissive about it. Allow it to fizzle out withOUT much energy involved in it.

So, in that sense, a sense of humor was the best medicine. If you go in for kick-boxing, or some other violent pastime, you may find, as I did, that the act of anger-management through sport doesn't so much reduce your lifetime of anger, as increase it. You may only ever take that anger out on a kick-boxing bag, or an opponent, but you may exacerbate your own angry tendencies more and more. By allowing the anger to exist, and to drive you, even if it's only to the gym, you're validating it, and thereby giving it the opportunity to feed off itself and grow more and more violent.

Instead, I recommend you don't validate it with kick-boxing lessons. You get out there and run, or ride a bike, or swim, or something else NON-violent, and yet physical. And do that BEFORE you feel some kind of suppressed anger welling up. That way, the testosterone and the energy that would have gone to feeding the vicious cycle are instead used up in advance. And the vicious cycle never gets started. And the physical fitness is an added benefit, too.

I am not an expert practicioner at this craft I call anger-management. I haven't been running much lately, for example, and I carry a lifetime of hatred for the manipulative young women who used my heart like a tennis ball, just for kicks, and taught me a lot of (rather false and dysfunctional) lessons about how to interact with the opposite gender. It's an ongoing struggle, a lifeSTYLE rather than a SOLUTION. Maybe I need a little bit of kick-boxing, but I suspect that if I pasted one of those princess'es faces on a punching bag and pounded away, I wouldn't gain some kind of catharsis that eliminated my fervor. Rather, I suspect I would simply re-ignite some old embers that are slowly dying away.

D'ya get the metaphor? Interesting discussion ...

04-28-2004, 05:21 PM	#21 (permalink)
final_identity Tilted Location: Jackson, MS	Health, nutrition, and less violence, more defusing. I am a great advocate of the right lifestyle. I'm less annoyed at the world, the less nitrates I eat, and the better my heart and lungs are doing on a 5K run at the moment. If I let my jogging lapse, my attitude falls with it. But the biggest "cognitive therapy" for me was learning a NEW anger-management technique. People talk about "venting" their anger a lot, or about "being more in control of their feelings." That is a fairly common way to talk about management of many feelings, anger included. For me, both of those statements were basically misleading. They suggested to me that I needed to "clamp down" or "get really overblown." That was not a good suggestion. It likened me to either a pressure-cooker (which was accurate) that needed its lid to be screwed down even tighter (which was inaccurate); or to a fire hose (which was accurate) that needed to be let loose to completely exhaust its supply of water (which was inaccurate). I found that BOTH of those metaphors actually INCREASED my sense of anger. Either I was suppressing it, thus focusing on how much work and effort I had to put into the idea of controlling it, thus all the time focusing on exactly that which made me angry in the first place; or I was venting it, thus focusing on how much work and effort I had to put into the idea of expressing it, thus all the time focusing on exactly that which made me angry in the first place. Get the problem? So, what I learned to do, was not so much VENT, as DEFUSE. I find the term "defuse" very useful. For me, anger is like a mounting obsession. It feeds off of itself. (There is some veracity to the idea that all bad emotions are vicious, self-fulfilling cycles; whereas all good ones are virtuous, self-regulating cycles. Cf. Gaia Hypothesis, by Lovelock.) Anyway, by letting it BE and acknowledging its right to occupy my mental space, the anger becomes an entity that can feed off itself all the more. Instead, I needed to very gently, almost flippantly and rather silly-like, comically, nip it in the bud. Treat it like it hadn't started yet. Get dismissive about it. Allow it to fizzle out withOUT much energy involved in it. So, in that sense, a sense of humor was the best medicine. If you go in for kick-boxing, or some other violent pastime, you may find, as I did, that the act of anger-management through sport doesn't so much reduce your lifetime of anger, as increase it. You may only ever take that anger out on a kick-boxing bag, or an opponent, but you may exacerbate your own angry tendencies more and more. By allowing the anger to exist, and to drive you, even if it's only to the gym, you're validating it, and thereby giving it the opportunity to feed off itself and grow more and more violent. Instead, I recommend you don't validate it with kick-boxing lessons. You get out there and run, or ride a bike, or swim, or something else NON-violent, and yet physical. And do that BEFORE you feel some kind of suppressed anger welling up. That way, the testosterone and the energy that would have gone to feeding the vicious cycle are instead used up in advance. And the vicious cycle never gets started. And the physical fitness is an added benefit, too. I am not an expert practicioner at this craft I call anger-management. I haven't been running much lately, for example, and I carry a lifetime of hatred for the manipulative young women who used my heart like a tennis ball, just for kicks, and taught me a lot of (rather false and dysfunctional) lessons about how to interact with the opposite gender. It's an ongoing struggle, a lifeSTYLE rather than a SOLUTION. Maybe I need a little bit of kick-boxing, but I suspect that if I pasted one of those princess'es faces on a punching bag and pounded away, I wouldn't gain some kind of catharsis that eliminated my fervor. Rather, I suspect I would simply re-ignite some old embers that are slowly dying away. D'ya get the metaphor? Interesting discussion ... __________________ The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche