Author Topic: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?  (Read 2776 times)

dandarc

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How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« on: February 26, 2020, 02:19:21 PM »
My wife did something really just, ugh, today. She took our Nissan Leaf to work, then had to go ~30 miles away also for work, and took the Leaf which was maybe showing 65 miles of range when she left. On the expressway - apparently it is not as common knowledge as I thought that you get significantly less range than advertised when you're doing 70+ for long stretches in a Leaf. The Leaf did not make it all the way back to the office, and even if it had, she'd have been SOL for making it to an appointment later today and then home. She had a co-worker with her.

She calls me and the plan is that another co-worker is picking them up. They are leaving the car where it is - in a turn lane just off the expressway and figuring out what to do later. It took me a while to realize where the car actually was, as I wasn't familiar with the cross-street she kept telling me, but after looking it up, they at least made it back to our city, if not the exit they were shooting for.

What I should have said / done: "Call AAA. You're only a few miles from a Nissan dealership where you can charge the car - have them tow it there - you'll be on your way in under 30 minutes once you've got it charging".

What I actually did:

1. Took the whole "leave the car in the road" thing as gospel.
2. Got into our other car, dialed AAA, started driving out there.
3. Managed to get there just as this other co-worker was arriving. Not sure how that happened - they had a head start and were closer, but I mean they were only 1 or 2 cars ahead of me when I got to the turn lane where our Leaf was sitting dead-center with the flashers on.

Now, here's another opportunity to think about the situation and come up with a better plan. I could have done any of the following things:

1. Ask wife to stay - AAA is on the way, she could have dealt with getting it charged and I could get back to my work and we'd both have cars to get to other things / home later.
2. Given wife other car - she then has a vehicle, and I wait on AAA.
3. Asked one of them to steer the car more to the side of the road as I pushed it. At least it would have been less of a hazard / more out of the way while I was waiting.

But, I was just so angry by this point that I couldn't think. Then the tow truck driver called, wife knocked on my window as I was talking to the guy (I hate it when she does that, and it was the worst possible timing to boot) and I bruskly told her to just leave. For all I know, she was about to suggest one of the above things, or even just say "hello - thanks - love you", and I was a jerk about it.

So now, I'm waiting for tow truck driver. He arrives and tows the car over to the Nissan dealer while I drive over there. Plug it in. Took a couple of tries as the car was still on somehow, and I didn't realize that or correct it properly initially, but eventually the car started charging. Paced around for 25 minutes or so, realizing towards the beginning "shit, I've got 2 cars and only 1 driver". Called wife, who of course did not answer. Texted her and she also did not answer. Got in touch with a friend who happens to live nearby, but he's working downtown today, so I figured that wasn't worth the hassle / extra time for either of us.

Finally made a good decision - called wife as I was driving the now 70% charged Leaf back to my office and left a message telling her to take a Lyft over to the dealership and pick up the car that is still there. Then she texted me back . . .

I needed to get past the initial shock / anger at how ridiculous this whole situation was and I could have thought more clearly and come to a better solution.  When I say "ridiculous", I'm also including the fact that she never ever takes the ~1 minute to put the charger back in the car when she takes it and the car was charging. Just unplugs the car and leaves the cord in the driveway - doesn't even set it on the covered porch, so today the business end of the cord was being rained on until I noticed and put it up. Every single time. So even if she found herself at her destination thinking "shit, I might not be able to get back home" and finds an outlet, she can't charge the car because she left the charger at home. Guess I should have sprung for the level 2 charger to account for her absent mindedness so we could leave the level 1 charger in the car at all times, but the thing charges to 100% overnight no problem on level 1, and we only charge it once or twice per week with our normal driving. I usually plug it in if it is under about 30 miles of range, which it happened to be last night. Suppose I could have not charged it last night - a normal day is 10-15 miles at the high end, so would have been fine for normal use. Anyway, she probably wouldn't have noticed she was short on range so that whole line of thinking is just my anger again.

So getting to my question - how do you do that?  Get over something like this quickly so you can think clearly? Honestly, I'm still pretty angry about it, and the whole thing was resolved within about 2 hours, and we can certainly afford the $30 in Lyft fares - not a big deal at all objectively, and yet here I am writing a detailed account about it.

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2020, 02:33:00 PM »
Three things to start with:

1. Take a deep breath. Take another one. This is a major annoyance but not a big deal in the grand scheme.
2. Call and apologize to your wife. Sure, this situation is partially her fault but your anger and the actions you took in anger is on you. Your relationship with your wife going forward is way more important than $30 and a wasted couple of hours. From your long account, and your feelings during it, I'm guessing you realize this but it doesn't hurt to be reminded. For mitigating this problem in the future, ask what you can do to help her avoid this scenario. You and her vs the problem.
3. Meditation. I'd suggest giving it a try. You can start to put a little bit of distance between your anger/stress and your response to it. Sometimes that's all you need to avoid doing things you'll regret later.

BNgarden

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2020, 02:40:17 PM »
Mindfulness (as above, also include an apology, but below may help you see it more clearly).

Can you perhaps, in future (and even for this situation):
1) say you'll call back in 3 minutes?
2) breathe deeply for one minute
3) take another minute to write out four short bullet point lists: what I resent about this situation (include acknowledging how you feel if other than resentful, say fearful or some such, and what got interrupted?); what I COULD do in this situation; what I WANT to do in this situation; what I WILL do in this situation.

Would that help / suit your personality / analytical skills?

Kris

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2020, 02:41:05 PM »
I think baw88's suggestions are all very good.

This is maybe a weird one. But as an older (over 50) person with an even older (over 60) husband whom I love dearly, whenever I find myself getting frustrated or angry by something he does... I imagine him dying.

Okay, that probably sounds awful. But what I mean is, I am never, ever so angry with him that the thought of him suddenly dying and me being without him fails to stop me in my tracks and make me viscerally realize how precious he is to me, how much I love him, and as a result, how insignificant whatever this problem is.

That might help you. It might not. But to me, it makes every disagreement seem trivial. And makes me want to immediately hug him and tell him I love him more than anything.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2020, 03:43:25 PM by Kris »

SunnyDays

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #4 on: February 26, 2020, 03:31:17 PM »
Perhaps your anger was based on the frustration you feel over the issue of (ir)responsibility.  If she can't be bothered to take the cord with her or to check on the charge level or participate in keeping the car charged and not relying on you to do it, then getting angry is understandable.  If it's an occasional thing, okay, we're all human, but if it's a pattern, then she is setting herself up for problems.  So maybe apologize, but address the cause of your anger.

seemsright

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #5 on: February 26, 2020, 03:37:04 PM »
I am female. My hubby is a tech guy. I am not into tech at all...it just needs to work. I do not want to put any damn effort into anything tech wise. It just needs to work.

My suggestion is to make charging the car stupid simple. Have multiple charging things for the car. Make it so that it is so easy and fail proof that it will be done the way you want it done.

If your wife is not able to pay attention to how charged the car is, you are going to have to take care of that for her. Or get a different car.

I do not know how those types of cars work, but does a light come on when low on charge? if so does the light color change depending on the miles left? or do you have to push this button, turn this knob and jump up and down to figure out how many more miles are on the charge?

To get over the anger I suggest going to the gym and lifting heavy things with 80's hair bands in the headphones.

Metalcat

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #6 on: February 26, 2020, 04:05:06 PM »
That's a big question with too many unknowns to be able to answer all that well.

On one end, you might have an irrational anger response.
On the other end, you might be married to someone who is chronically irresponsible in a way that emotionally injures you and you are at the end of your rope with her.

The truth is somewhere in the middle, and how you should address it depends a lot on which end of the spectrum you are closer to.

If you have anger issues, you need to work on yourself.
If you have marital issues, you need to work on your marriage.
If it's both, then you need to work on both.

Reflect deeply on why you reacted the way that you did, and then deal with what you find underneath it.

The anger isn't the problem to solve, it's a symptom of whatever the actual problem is. Anger isn't ever a primary emotion, it's always a reaction to something.


Laura33

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #7 on: February 26, 2020, 04:13:06 PM »
I'd suggest starting with "is this my problem"?  I understand, you don't want to leave your wife hanging, and there's a natural urge to "fix" stuff.  But it seems to me that you are so angry -- disproportionately angry given the level of the perceived offense -- because (i) she was irresponsible with something that has been bugging you for a long time, and (ii) that issue caused you to have to drop everything and ruin your own plans to fix the very foreseeable and preventable problem she created.  Right?

The way you combat that kind of anger is to really, really closely scrutinize both of those assumptions.  Starting with #2:  the car thing messed with your day only because you let it:  because you decided -- without even asking her if she needed help! -- that you needed to run to the rescue.  And as you did so, you had time to stew over how this was all her fault, and start to resent the effect on your day, so by the time you got there, you were a bomb waiting to go off at the first provocation.*  But the reality is that it was entirely your choice to go run out to take charge of the situation.  She didn't ask you!  She had a plan!  Sure, it was a questionable plan, but it was her plan, and she was entirely capable of implementing it and dealing with the consequences.  You were the one who chose to interject yourself into the situation -- and then you got mad at her for your own decision.

Same thing with #1:  her irresponsibility with the charger bothers you because you know -- just know -- that she's going to run out of juice as a result.  Right?  But, again, that's something to worry about only if the second assumption is also true, and it's your responsibility to come fix it when it happens.  If that's her problem to deal with, then you don't need to worry about it, right?

What it looks like to me is that you have a little bit of the parent-child thing going on.  She's irresponsible, she can't take care of your nice things, so you have to nag and get frustrated and figure out how to get her to do it; and then when the inevitable happens, you have to rush in and fix everything, because she's incapable of managing the situation herself.  That's the assumption you need to challenge.  Sure, maybe your wife is careless about plugging in the charger.  So what?  What's the worst that can happen?  Gee, maybe she'll run out of charge and have to deal with getting the car towed.  Well, guess what?  That's how people learn.  But you've now saved her from that consequence by rushing in and taking over.

Why don't you start from the assumption that she is a competent adult who is capable of -- and responsible for -- managing her own shit?  And if she does something stupid again and something bad happens,** and she calls you to tell you what's going on, you can respond with, "oh, gee, I'm so sorry, honey.  So what are you going to do about it?" 

And yes, you are completely entitled to say in your head, as many times as you want, "I fucking told you so!!!"  As long as it stays in your head.

Finally:  if it's a shared car and her irresponsibility runs the risk that you will run out of power, then you need to figure out a bigger solution.  And by that I don't mean "nag her into plugging the damn thing in."  I mean maybe you explain that it really bothers you that she leaves you to deal with the plugging in and running the risk that you get stuck somewhere, and you guys decide that only you drive that vehicle.  Or you decide it's not worth it and trade in the Leaf and get a hybrid.  Either she's going to learn from her mistake and start plugging the car in, or she's not -- and you don't control which one of those it is.  So all you can do is decide if you really want to double down on forcing her to take care of the car the way you want her to, vs. giving up on the idea of something that she's either not willing to or capable of doing.

Oh, and finally-finally:  the way you "get over it" is by not trying to get over it.  You can't just tamp down that sort of anger through sheer willpower and expect to go on with life as normal.  You get over it by figuring out what, exactly, is setting you off (e.g., the lack of consideration for you that your wife shows by leaving you holding the bag with all of the car stuff), finding a calm way to tell her how you feel, and then figuring out a solution (e.g., "when you do X, I hear it as you not caring enough about me to be bothered to take care of the car, and that hurts me and makes me feel like I don't matter.  I realize that's probably not what's going on in your head, so I'd really like to hear what you're thinking, and what changes we can make to get out of this cycle, because I really don't like who I was today and how I treated you.").

*I do this too.  So I know exactly how you feel, and exactly how overpowering that kind of irrational rage can be -- and exactly how stupid you feel because you know you're madder than you should be but can't figure out how to rein it back in.

**Assuming it's "annoyance" bad, not "immediate threat to life and limb" bad, of course.

Metalcat

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #8 on: February 26, 2020, 04:30:39 PM »
I'd suggest starting with "is this my problem"?  I understand, you don't want to leave your wife hanging, and there's a natural urge to "fix" stuff.  But it seems to me that you are so angry -- disproportionately angry given the level of the perceived offense -- because (i) she was irresponsible with something that has been bugging you for a long time, and (ii) that issue caused you to have to drop everything and ruin your own plans to fix the very foreseeable and preventable problem she created.  Right?

The way you combat that kind of anger is to really, really closely scrutinize both of those assumptions.  Starting with #2:  the car thing messed with your day only because you let it:  because you decided -- without even asking her if she needed help! -- that you needed to run to the rescue.  And as you did so, you had time to stew over how this was all her fault, and start to resent the effect on your day, so by the time you got there, you were a bomb waiting to go off at the first provocation.*  But the reality is that it was entirely your choice to go run out to take charge of the situation.  She didn't ask you!  She had a plan!  Sure, it was a questionable plan, but it was her plan, and she was entirely capable of implementing it and dealing with the consequences.  You were the one who chose to interject yourself into the situation -- and then you got mad at her for your own decision.

Same thing with #1:  her irresponsibility with the charger bothers you because you know -- just know -- that she's going to run out of juice as a result.  Right?  But, again, that's something to worry about only if the second assumption is also true, and it's your responsibility to come fix it when it happens.  If that's her problem to deal with, then you don't need to worry about it, right?

What it looks like to me is that you have a little bit of the parent-child thing going on.  She's irresponsible, she can't take care of your nice things, so you have to nag and get frustrated and figure out how to get her to do it; and then when the inevitable happens, you have to rush in and fix everything, because she's incapable of managing the situation herself.  That's the assumption you need to challenge.  Sure, maybe your wife is careless about plugging in the charger.  So what?  What's the worst that can happen?  Gee, maybe she'll run out of charge and have to deal with getting the car towed.  Well, guess what?  That's how people learn.  But you've now saved her from that consequence by rushing in and taking over.

Why don't you start from the assumption that she is a competent adult who is capable of -- and responsible for -- managing her own shit?  And if she does something stupid again and something bad happens,** and she calls you to tell you what's going on, you can respond with, "oh, gee, I'm so sorry, honey.  So what are you going to do about it?" 

And yes, you are completely entitled to say in your head, as many times as you want, "I fucking told you so!!!"  As long as it stays in your head.

Finally:  if it's a shared car and her irresponsibility runs the risk that you will run out of power, then you need to figure out a bigger solution.  And by that I don't mean "nag her into plugging the damn thing in."  I mean maybe you explain that it really bothers you that she leaves you to deal with the plugging in and running the risk that you get stuck somewhere, and you guys decide that only you drive that vehicle.  Or you decide it's not worth it and trade in the Leaf and get a hybrid.  Either she's going to learn from her mistake and start plugging the car in, or she's not -- and you don't control which one of those it is.  So all you can do is decide if you really want to double down on forcing her to take care of the car the way you want her to, vs. giving up on the idea of something that she's either not willing to or capable of doing.

Oh, and finally-finally:  the way you "get over it" is by not trying to get over it.  You can't just tamp down that sort of anger through sheer willpower and expect to go on with life as normal.  You get over it by figuring out what, exactly, is setting you off (e.g., the lack of consideration for you that your wife shows by leaving you holding the bag with all of the car stuff), finding a calm way to tell her how you feel, and then figuring out a solution (e.g., "when you do X, I hear it as you not caring enough about me to be bothered to take care of the car, and that hurts me and makes me feel like I don't matter.  I realize that's probably not what's going on in your head, so I'd really like to hear what you're thinking, and what changes we can make to get out of this cycle, because I really don't like who I was today and how I treated you.").

*I do this too.  So I know exactly how you feel, and exactly how overpowering that kind of irrational rage can be -- and exactly how stupid you feel because you know you're madder than you should be but can't figure out how to rein it back in.

**Assuming it's "annoyance" bad, not "immediate threat to life and limb" bad, of course.

You are suuuuuuuuuuch a lawyer. O.M.G.

BNgarden

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #9 on: February 26, 2020, 04:43:47 PM »
...

Oh, and finally-finally:  the way you "get over it" is by not trying to get over it.  You can't just tamp down that sort of anger through sheer willpower and expect to go on with life as normal.  You get over it by figuring out what, exactly, is setting you off ...

Agree also that you may have rushed in to 'fix' something when that was unneeded, but that too could be a 'pattern' or assumption based on your prior history.  One more opportunity of getting this angry (or having any too 'something' reaction) can be exploring "How is this emotionally familiar" to something I felt (often) when I was a child.  I know this sounds a bit 'woo-woo' but it can help point out where your response / reaction may be coming from, if it is out of proportion and you know it.  So yes, figure out what, exactly, is setting you off, per Laura33's post.

Finding and understanding your own currently 'hidden' triggers / patterns can be invaluable in relationships of all kinds.

Laura33

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #10 on: February 26, 2020, 04:51:53 PM »
You are suuuuuuuuuuch a lawyer. O.M.G.
[/quote]

LOL.  Was there ever any doubt?

Reader

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #11 on: February 26, 2020, 05:11:42 PM »
something simple i've learnt on youtube and used successfully to cut short the spiral of anger.
count to 10 loudly in your mind. i think the premise of this hack is that you can't tell angry stories to yourself as you're counting, so that disrupts the build up enough to help you pause and think. you need to catch yourself as you're starting to get angry though. it took me a while to get the hang of it, and it works for me.

Psychstache

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #12 on: February 27, 2020, 08:35:49 AM »
So, I am going to offer some ideas in a slightly different vein.

There are some great tactics covered in dealing with anger, but I think spending some time working on an overall strategy for your emotions can also be of great benefit.

It starts with doing some good work on interrogating and labeling your emotions and expanding your emotional vocabulary. I am assuming from the info you provided that you are, like me, a male raised in America with typical gender constructs around appropriate emotional displays expected of men. A consequence of that is that we are taught to limit our emotion range to the basic -ads (glad, sad, and mad) which is unhealthy and not functional.

You can start this by spending some time on a regular basis of self-reflecting on how you are thinking and behaving as a way to understand and connect with your emotional state better. When you experience a change in your behavior, take a minute to reflect on yourself and what that means for your emotional state. how are you feeling? What emotion is it? What is it doing to you physiologically (change in heart rate, body temp, etc)?

Another big key is to start to expand the range of emotional labels and clearly define their utility. As I said above, the -ads are not sufficient to explain our emotional state. Are you really happy, or content, or stioc? Are you angry/furious or are you frustrated or agitated? We have a rich language with powerful words that can help frame this understanding of our emotional state.

Once you have some practice with self-assessing and labeling emotional patterns, you can begin to construct some framework with how to work with them. In this kind of situation, our thoughts, feelings, and actions have a great interdependency. I am assuming you have a fairly strong understanding of your thought and behavior patterns, but that the understanding of the emotion patterns is less structured. This kind of work can move you towards having this understanding.

So, using your example, here are some of the above might come into play if it were me. When I am first informed of the situation, i need to think about my feelings. For me, this situation would not evoke anger, because I reserve 'anger' for when something is intentionally causing me harm. So on this basis, my wife has not (and hopefully will not) do anything to make me angry. So, I need to understand where this emotion falls. I would be more likely to construct this as frustration. I feel frustrated when there are problems outside of my control that are impacting me. In order resolve frustration and return to my base state, I need to look for ways to address the problem. These first steps help to calibrate me to the level of reaction I need have (frustration vs. anger) and to how to resolve the feelings (implement strategies that help address the source of the emotion). With that frame, maybe it gets a little easier to come up with a variety of solutions or ask your wife what she thinks next steps might be, maybe it increases the chances that you ask the tow guy to hold on while you check to see if you wife has thought, maybe it gives you a few additional moments of clarity that allow you to see the 2 cars/1 driver problem coming.

This is by no means a magic solution that can be implemented overnight, and it doesn't mean you won't still waste time and energy on reactive behaviors that don't serve to your interests from time to time. But, as someone who struggled with emotional maturity and anger management for years, these kind of dedicated work and rethinking my understanding and relationship with my emotions has really helped me address some of the unhelpful reflexes I had around emotional reactions.

dandarc

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #13 on: February 27, 2020, 09:40:38 AM »
Thanks for all the feedback.  Going to try the count to ten thing. Breathing - in my brain, I know that helps, so I've just gotta actually do it. Last night, I apologized and it was clear she wasn't actually upset by anything around this. She also apologized. So not a big deal. Both of us clearly more upset with ourselves / how we handled things than the other person.

I am approaching this as a 'me' problem - I do get frustrated when these random things happen, and they happen fairly regulary. I'm more upset with my reaction, because I know random stuff is going to pop up from time to time, so it isn't truly unexpected and I should be able to deal with them better.

@Laura33 - I get what you're saying, and like I said, more examining my reaction and how to handle things better in the future. I do view this particular thing as a safety issue. One thing to leave a disabled vehicle well off onto the shoulder, but the place the car was this time was not good; had we not gotten it moved in short order, I fully expect the authorities would have moved the car for us.

I really don't think the underlying problem for me has anything to do with the car. She's been dealing with anxiety / depression since before we even met. Then a few years ago, she decided she wanted a career change that required going back to school, and things have been pretty bad since then. Then she took another job and decided to stop taking the medication she was on at the time. Job - I supported at the time, although in hind sight, that was a bad idea for a lot of reasons. I remember thinking "things have been increasingly rough since she started taking the classes - maybe she'll like this one enough to stop the whole go into a medical field that requires more formal education thing  . . ." On stopping the medicine - I should have said "you know, I notice a positive difference since you've been taking this", but I didn't at the time. Things were already kind of rough, and I had no idea how much worse the transition to the new job was going to make it. The first 5 months of that job was really hard - she was crying basically all the time. I think the change from "been here long enough to be the expert on how we do things" to "new person who knows nothing about how we do things" was harder for her than either of us expected.

All of that is getting better - she started taking an anti-depressant a while back and that really helps. She got some good advice and switched gears from trying to become a PA or RN to 'Health Educator' - I do have some lingering resentment over not figuring this out before getting to where "apply to PA school" was the next step, but long term, this is going to be much better for her. While she was doing things like "taking organic chemistry", she was working part time as a CNA and learned she doesn't like clinical work; certainly not in a nursing-home facility anyway. She loves this new job - part time health educator. She goes and teaches classes on diet and exercise to people who have diabetes, mostly in rural areas. She's in an MPH program, which I sort of wish she had not done, as she is already in a job / field she likes, but she really needs something structured to do every day and this fills some time. Our temporary "move to California" experiment for my job is over and we're back home, which is good - stress of moving across the country twice in about 18 months was not good in any way, but we are both happier being here than in California.

Things are on the upswing, but I think maybe I've been so unhappy for so long that I'm still on edge and I spiral mentally pretty easily. Whether or not "moving to California" was a good thing, I definitely needed a different job - wife actually said "I don't think I've ever heard you say anything positive about the job back in Florida, but you do seem to like this new one".

I continue to ramble. Maybe I should dust off the journal or start a new one or something.

dandarc

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #14 on: February 27, 2020, 09:51:01 AM »
@Psychstache - thanks for the strategy. Your post came in while I was re-writing mine (took me over an hour to write that post apparently). I sort of feel like I did some examinations of the emotions thing after the fact. Need to work on doing that more in real-time. I have more thoughts, but need to jump on a phone call, so I'll have to wait on writing them out.

Laura33

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #15 on: February 27, 2020, 11:17:04 AM »
@dandarc -- wow, that's a whole lotta backstory there.  Do you have a therapist for you?  In my own experience, the partner of the one who is struggling often deals with their own unrecognized struggle:  you're spending a lot of time and effort supporting your partner and picking up the slack, which takes away from your own energy and limits your ability to do your normal de-stressing activities; meanwhile, you're dealing with your own reaction to the same events that are stressing out your partner (on top of all your normal daily stressors of course); but you also don't even have your normal outlet for venting those concerns (your partner), because you know they're already dealing with so much stuff, and so you don't feel like you can really add on more.  You are basically asking more from yourself than ever before, with fewer outlets available to you. 

Which you can of course handle; you just go into crisis mode, put your head down, and bull through it, ignoring your own stuff to serve those more pressing needs.  But then when things start to look like they're easing up or settling down with your partner -- or when you just run out of the mental energy to keep them tamped down -- all that crap that you haven't been dealing with comes bubbling to the surface and breaks through, usually at highly inconvenient times and in very inappropriate ways.  And that can often be very confusing, because you're thinking that XYZ happened a year ago, so I should be over it by now, so it can't possibly be that.  But the passage of time doesn't do jack; you have to deal with your shit for that to get better.  And unless/until you do, you will have this little festering sore down there that will keep popping its head back up periodically to remind you that all is not well.

tl;dr:  sounds like your over-the-top reaction is telling you that you have an inner Mt. Vesuvius of crap bubbling away there from the past couple of years.  So go get yourself some help, too.  You can't support your wife if your own resources are exhausted.

(But still, challenge your assumptions:  sure, it's a safety issue -- but did you need to be the one to solve it?  Couldn't your wife have flagged down someone trying to get past to help push the car out of the driving lane?  Or "the authorities would have moved the car for us"? -- ok, problem solved, no more safety hazard.  Based on your recent post, I get the sense that you're now so used to supporting your wife because of her struggles that you are trained to automatically assume responsibility for fixing her problems, because she really needed you to for so long.  But if she is getting better, then that's a thought pattern worth challenging, because she may not need you to do that any more.)

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #16 on: February 27, 2020, 11:21:17 AM »
dandarc, I think you've gotten some really good advice here. One more point that I want to add is specifically related to your wife's mental health. And rereading what I wrote, I'm not saying it the way I want to, so please forgive the clumsy and hopefully my point comes across.

I do not, and have never had, serious mental health challenges. And the people close to me are generally pretty ok too. Even when I'm highly stressed/anxious there is a baseline of mental stability that I rest on. Which means for me, I fundamentally do not understand why people can't just throw a load of dirty clothes into the washer. Or take dirty dishes to the kitchen and wash them. Or can't leave the house to do something fun that they really want to do. I can intellectually understand it. But emotionally, it's foreign to me. I have over time learned to have empathy and compassion for people who are dealing with these illnesses and in large part I've done it by very consciously thinking about it as a brain illness. Once I started doing that, it still took time to really figure out how to be a decent person when dealing with or just existing around those who have mental illnesses.

I wonder if you are somewhat in that same boat. In which case, you may be struggling beneath the surface with how to deal with the effects of your wife's mental illness.

But even if not, when you have someone in your life who IS struggling with mental illness, that puts a huge strain on the aspects of life you share with them. When its your spouse, that's everything. You may have spent the past several years picking up the slack when she just couldn't manage. You have endured the emotional effects of her illness. It's distressing when your wife is crying for weeks or months at a time. It's distressing to know that if you falter, she probably can't catch what you might drop. And all this will build up and cause a lot of emotion. It can be very deeply buried, but its often quite strong. Depending on your personality, it can result in a withdrawal, or it could contribute to emotional outbursts.

So, consider what the effects of your wife's mental illness may have been on you, both in the specific incidents and in the accumulation. It is ok to take care of yourself. And you may need to redistribute household tasks between the two of you as she is doing better.

Addition: Laura33's post is probably saying what I'm trying to say, but better.

wellactually

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #17 on: February 27, 2020, 12:06:19 PM »
I am someone who has dealt with anxiety and depression and a really terrible, stressful job on top of that. If my husband had expressed the amount of blame and bitterness about my struggles as you laid out in your last post, I'd be so completely hurt.

Correct me if I'm wrong on the timeline here, but she was taking courses and was about to apply for PA school when she decided that wasn't the right decision and switched to the health educator route, right? And you're still holding on to anger that she was about to apply for PA school, even though she didn't get that far? Meanwhile she moved across the country to support your career exploration?

I think it would be a helpful exercise for you to put yourself in your wife's shoes and write down how she would tell her story of the past few years. How would she have told the story of her day when she ran out of juice on the highway and didn't know what to do? How would she tell the story of struggling to find a career that fulfilled her? How would she tell the story of trying to get mental health treatment and trying to find a medication that worked?

Thinking through her perspective could really help you to stop blaming her so much. And maybe now that things are in a somewhat better place, you can even say something like, "it seems like the medication your on is helping now. I'm proud of you for seeking help, was that hard? what made you go off of it last time and is there anything I can do to support you with it?"

My only knowledge about your relationship is what you've put here, so maybe you are just feeling negativity still from the other day (which was understandably frustrating!). But you sound SO bitter about several years worth of choices. When you're already that close to boiling over all the time, you aren't going to be able to do enough deep breaths to handle acute frustrations.

dandarc

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #18 on: February 27, 2020, 12:29:01 PM »
I was talking to a therapist for a while before we moved to California. I was basically paying $100 once a week to complain for an hour. Which was actually helpful at the time, and I think it helped me get to "I need to get another job for my own good . . .". But I stopped when things were better for a while. Maybe time to start doing that again.

lutorm

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #19 on: February 27, 2020, 01:27:36 PM »
You've got a lot of good advice here, but wrt not getting worked up about other people, I keep thinking about this money quote from Marcus Aurelius "Meditations"
Quote
Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil...
I find that after becoming a parent, I think of other people doing stuff that used to make me angry more like I do with children: it's not their fault, they just don't know any better, so there's no point in getting angry at them about it. I find this significantly increases the amount of crap I can take without letting it upset me.

Psychstache

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #20 on: February 27, 2020, 01:51:31 PM »
I was talking to a therapist for a while before we moved to California. I was basically paying $100 once a week to complain for an hour. Which was actually helpful at the time, and I think it helped me get to "I need to get another job for my own good . . .". But I stopped when things were better for a while. Maybe time to start doing that again.

Pro tip: Avoid practitioners who want to engage in psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. Find someone who specializes in either solution-focused counseling or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

researcher1

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #21 on: February 27, 2020, 01:59:30 PM »
the car thing messed with your day only because you let it:  because you decided -- without even asking her if she needed help! -- that you needed to run to the rescue.
But the reality is that it was entirely your choice to go run out to take charge of the situation.  She didn't ask you!  She had a plan! 
What's the worst that can happen? 
Why don't you start from the assumption that she is a competent adult who is capable of -- and responsible for -- managing her own shit?
I don't agree with this at all.

The wife's "plan" was to simply abandon the vehicle in the middle of an expressway off ramp and deal with the issue at some point in the future.

That is NOT a plan.  The OP had no choice but to take action. 
She clearly is not capable of "managing her own shit" in a responsible way.

And the worst that can happen include...
- The car being towed to an impound lot.
- Being cited by the police for abandoning a vehicle in the middle of a roadway.
- Pedestrians/passengers being injured/killed in an accident caused by a vehicle left in the road.
- The car being hit/sideswiped by another driver who leaves the scene, footing you with the bill.

frugalfoothills

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #22 on: February 27, 2020, 03:07:49 PM »
OP, add me to the chorus of folks who think your anger is stemming from some deeper resentments toward your wife and her general lack of responsibility and care when it comes to the car.

I'm someone who also tends to fall into patterns of picking up the slack for others because it seems easier than confronting them about something trivial and potentially causing an argument, making them feel bad, etc. It starts small (like you repeatedly plugging the cord in), and eventually you find yourself thinking "can you do NOTHING yourself!??!" or "well you deserved that to happen!!!" when it finally catches up to them. Little things like that piled on top of each other over a period of time shape the way you view the other person on the whole and eventually breed resentment if they go unchecked for too long.

I think you probably need to have a deeper conversation with your wife about how her behavior leading up to that incident had created a volcano ready to blow. Own up to the fact that you should have discussed with her before now that it bothers you when she relies on you to do very simple things, and that you feel she takes for granted that you will do these things. It didn't surprise you when she broke down because she has an established pattern of behavior that would surely, in the end, lead to that exact scenario playing out. You needing to come bail her out was just one more example in a line of examples of you stepping in and dealing with the car stuff.

The reason you can't get over it quickly is because it's not something that angered you quickly. When you've been lowkey escalating for months (or years!) it's going to take more than some simple breathing exercises to deescalate when it finally does boil over.

Own up to the fact that you handled this poorly. You should have addressed this before it got to this point, and from her perspective, your lashing out was probably ridiculous and unexpected over something that wasn't that big of a deal. Definitely apologize for that. But also discuss why you avoided talking to her about this, and discuss how her behavioral patterns impact you in ways she may not realize.

This doesn't need to be one conversation where you word-vomit everything all at once... the best way is to start small and open the channels and let the communication improve over time. The fact that you described your therapy sessions as you just ranting and complaining for an hour indicates that you have more grievances to air than just the car. If you don't fix the communication issues there will undoubtedly be more blow-ups in the future.

AnnaGrowsAMustache

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #23 on: February 27, 2020, 07:30:09 PM »
If you're getting regular hot rages, like an almost overwhelming rage, you could possibly look at anti anxiety medication. That's helped me for many years. I used to get so angry that I'd be struggling to breath normally and I felt like I was just a split second away from losing it completely. I was so bad at talking myself down. I tried all the usual techniques, therapy, etc etc but actually I'd just wind myself up. I never ACTUALLY acted on my anger, ok I broke a few of my own things..... The real cost was that I sometimes felt like I was pinballing around and ruled by negative emotions. It was exhausting. I finally went on anti anxiety meds and that has been incredible. It seems to give me a tiny distance from the actual emotional response, and that's enough for perspective to kick in. Before I was living right in the middle of the emotional cloud. If this sounds like you, go and talk to your GP. Anxiety is expressed in different ways for different people. And if you do suffer like this, no amount of counting to 10 or therapy is going to help. It's a chemical response in your brain, kind of like having a panic attack. That's my experience, anyway.

AccidentialMustache

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #24 on: February 27, 2020, 09:31:22 PM »
Sometimes the right solution is to automate. Does the leaf consistently go to a single (fairly precise) location? Could you install wireless charging in the leaf and that location?

Pursue the other stuff too, but...

Metalcat

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #25 on: February 28, 2020, 04:23:54 AM »
Thanks for all the feedback.  Going to try the count to ten thing. Breathing - in my brain, I know that helps, so I've just gotta actually do it. Last night, I apologized and it was clear she wasn't actually upset by anything around this. She also apologized. So not a big deal. Both of us clearly more upset with ourselves / how we handled things than the other person.

I am approaching this as a 'me' problem - I do get frustrated when these random things happen, and they happen fairly regulary. I'm more upset with my reaction, because I know random stuff is going to pop up from time to time, so it isn't truly unexpected and I should be able to deal with them better.

@Laura33 - I get what you're saying, and like I said, more examining my reaction and how to handle things better in the future. I do view this particular thing as a safety issue. One thing to leave a disabled vehicle well off onto the shoulder, but the place the car was this time was not good; had we not gotten it moved in short order, I fully expect the authorities would have moved the car for us.

I really don't think the underlying problem for me has anything to do with the car. She's been dealing with anxiety / depression since before we even met. Then a few years ago, she decided she wanted a career change that required going back to school, and things have been pretty bad since then. Then she took another job and decided to stop taking the medication she was on at the time. Job - I supported at the time, although in hind sight, that was a bad idea for a lot of reasons. I remember thinking "things have been increasingly rough since she started taking the classes - maybe she'll like this one enough to stop the whole go into a medical field that requires more formal education thing  . . ." On stopping the medicine - I should have said "you know, I notice a positive difference since you've been taking this", but I didn't at the time. Things were already kind of rough, and I had no idea how much worse the transition to the new job was going to make it. The first 5 months of that job was really hard - she was crying basically all the time. I think the change from "been here long enough to be the expert on how we do things" to "new person who knows nothing about how we do things" was harder for her than either of us expected.

All of that is getting better - she started taking an anti-depressant a while back and that really helps. She got some good advice and switched gears from trying to become a PA or RN to 'Health Educator' - I do have some lingering resentment over not figuring this out before getting to where "apply to PA school" was the next step, but long term, this is going to be much better for her. While she was doing things like "taking organic chemistry", she was working part time as a CNA and learned she doesn't like clinical work; certainly not in a nursing-home facility anyway. She loves this new job - part time health educator. She goes and teaches classes on diet and exercise to people who have diabetes, mostly in rural areas. She's in an MPH program, which I sort of wish she had not done, as she is already in a job / field she likes, but she really needs something structured to do every day and this fills some time. Our temporary "move to California" experiment for my job is over and we're back home, which is good - stress of moving across the country twice in about 18 months was not good in any way, but we are both happier being here than in California.

Things are on the upswing, but I think maybe I've been so unhappy for so long that I'm still on edge and I spiral mentally pretty easily. Whether or not "moving to California" was a good thing, I definitely needed a different job - wife actually said "I don't think I've ever heard you say anything positive about the job back in Florida, but you do seem to like this new one".

I continue to ramble. Maybe I should dust off the journal or start a new one or something.

Yep, that's pretty much what I figured was going on: a longstanding history of recurrent challenges, which have taxed your coping mechanisms to a point that they are shorting out on you when under too much strain.

Do you recognize that you have been through a lot and that you need support?

I repeat my point from before, anger is never a primary response, it's always a byproduct of something else. It's really important that you find support for whatever that something else is.
« Last Edit: February 28, 2020, 04:25:29 AM by Malkynn »

ChpBstrd

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #26 on: February 28, 2020, 08:03:07 AM »
We all have leadership avatars - real or imagined people we act like when the pressure hits, decisions must be made, and relationships must be maintained despite it all.

Some leadership avatars are more dysfunctional than others. For example, some people act like a drill sergeant when put in a leadership role, but the only reason soldiers tolerate drill sergeants is because they only need to tolerate them for a few months and then they’ll get a calmer, more personable leader. In a business environment, people quit when their bosses act like drill sergeants.

Some people are one-trick-ponies. They have one avatar (often the drill sergeant) they apply all the time, regardless of circumstances. More accomplished leaders switch from avatar to avatar as the situation requires. They build trust and confidence in the downtime so they don’t have to throw a tantrum when the pressure hits.

If you want to learn a calmer, more cerebral leadership and decision making style, spend some time exposing yourself to mentors who behave in high-functioning ways under pressure. These could be real or fictional people. 20th century films often explored the theme of the calm, collected, decisive protagonist. You see this in everything from Star Trek, James Bond, and Saving Private Ryan, to John Wayne playing the military hero. More recent media, such as The Apprentice, Jim Cramer’s show, and various HGTV house buying / remod shows display dysfunctional and emotional decision making for entertainment value. You are what you eat and you think like the mentors you observe.

“Decisive” by Chip and Dan Heath is a good starter book/audiobook on the subject of logical decision making under pressure. Your local library will allow you to dive much deeper on the subject. For example, there is lots of literature on fallacies and psychological biases. Merely being aware of these will improve your ability to make good decisions.

mistymoney

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #27 on: February 28, 2020, 08:35:59 AM »
oh - frustrating all around. Sorry OP!

I think you both need to apologize and work through this. It is thoughtless that she would dump the problem she created on you to deal with. You were also at the end of a rope here it seems.....for what reasons?.....and you lashed out. You two need to figure out how you got to that point.

Good luck!

Duke03

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Re: How to get past anger quickly so you can make smarter decisions?
« Reply #28 on: February 28, 2020, 12:03:56 PM »
My biggest issue is it seems like you tried to be her white in shining armor.   Sometimes you have to make them eat the shit sand which they made themselves and let them figure life out.  In my early marriage days I had to remind my wife a lot that I married an adult and not a child.  Therefor I expect her to solve most if not all her problems.  Especially ones she caused her self. 

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!