Angry All My Life

Danacovert82 wrote:I'm not angry at all. I just needed to get all I said off my chest.

And I do want to know what other people have to say about this. But I don't feel right now, I need counseling.

Fair and well, but i was referring to this:

I don't think there's really anymore advice you guys can give me about my anger issues.

So then all traces of your anger have fully disappeared?

I honestly don't think so. Why? Cause we're going off track here, and that tells me no one is willing to give me advice.

Dear Dana,

Yes, I agree fully with my esteemed, honored and respected colleague, Intropectah, if he is being a bit suspicious of your ‘I’m perfectly okay now and don’t need anymore help’ declaration. Now, please don’t get mad at me and shut me off, because I am working toward something that might help you. So, please keep reading and bear with me… this is meant to be helpful. That being said, well, it seems rather clear from your history of recent posts, that you still seem to find things that you can act annoyed about. Did being annoyed really make you feel any better?

Well, in fact, YES, I think that being annoyed DID make you feel better.

There is the kind of Anger that manifests when people are extremely upset over circumstances in which it would be far preferable to remain calm, and in which there is no life threatening reason to kick into the whole adrenaline charged life-and-death frenzied kind of behavior and speech patterns, which we know as Anger. So we work with that kind of Anger by encouraging people to monitor the way the think and then to change their thinking so that the they can respond to the ordinary mildly unpleasant situations of life more appropriately.

But there is another type of Anger. That is anger for effect. Anger for the sake of the Drama. Anger for the excitement of Anger. Anger to get attention. When the lime-light shines upon another, well, some people will shout and bang their fists on the table to bring the Light back upon themselves.

Is this what you are doing? The popular books on Anger Management call this the ‘Drama Queen’ syndrome. This is a difficult kind of Anger to work with. It involves urges and motivations that really aren’t a part of the usual anger scenarios. Yes, these type of Angry People use Anger put themselves forward and to get attention, but they are very likely to use many methods to take Front Stage… anything that has worked for them before.

Now, the One True Test to see if this is your type of Anger… and I know this from personal experience… is to it think back upon all of the things that have made you ‘angry’, and then correlate those experiences with whether or not you were alone or among other people at the time. When I first started dealing with my own anger, and read up on it, it did occur to me that there are many frustrating and exasperating things that happen to me in private which I simply shrug off or work through – clean up the broken glass and move on without even the slightest or mildest profanity – but give me an ‘audience’… even just one other person… and somehow I seemed to feel obliged in so way to make a Big Deal out of it. It was like I had to prove to the other person or other people that I somehow fully recognized the unpleasantness of the situation and therefore had to prove to them that I was quite officially displeased. Of course, as soon as I realized what I was doing, I started watching for such behavior and put an end to it. Of course, when you drop a glass, or the Secretary forgets to send out a letter, it would be a displeasing circumstance, but Everyone already knows that. Negative Things are obvious and every functioning adult is displeased by them, even when they are mentioned calmly, or even when they are allowed to pass without a single murmur.

But, yes, there is that Need for Drama… that Need for Attention. Well, this is an Anger Management Page. We don’t have a problem with all the other ways you can get Attention. Some people make jokes, and if they can’t think of a joke, well, they laugh louder than everyone else when someone else makes a joke. Some people declare a great love and affection or disproportionate admiration and approval for the things and circumstances that get the attention of others to, again, focus the attention back upon themselves. People might even resort to making strange and bazaar declaration… coming up with ‘off the wall’ opinions… just for their kind of ‘shock value’ to, again, get attention. Well, all Those Things are quite fine. As long as you don’t pretend to be angry.


The Problem with using Angry Behavior as an Attention Getter is that, well, it brings you the kind of Attention that you do not really want. It is the kind of attention that loses you the Friends that you already have, and keeps you from making friends with the people who witness your tantrums and deplore your tendency toward Negativity. The hippies used to call such people ‘bummers’ or ‘downers. Nobody would speak about the up and coming party when they walked into the room. These are the kind of people that do not get on Invitation Lists… unless they are the ‘boss’ or a relative that can’t be easily snubbed.

Anyway, all of the above was just a guess. When you said that you were no longer in need of Anger Advice, but were still repeatedly demonstrating a mild kind of anger, it made me wonder whether you were angry at all, and if you weren’t ‘angry’ then I needed to look for other causes, and this happened to be one of them…. But a very common one. You should think about it.

I hope I have been helpful. But if I was totally off base and in the wrong direction entirely, then we will have to look somewhere else. But it does kind of seem that you are not quite through with us yet… not if you want to really see this through.

I guess on forums in general, I am a drama queen. I feel the need to get peeved over the dumbest and stupidest things. I know I really need to stop, but I feel like it will take work that I am willing to take. I'm glad I'm not paying someone $300/hr to get to the root of my problems.

I really want to say a hearty thank you to everyone who's been willing to put up with the drama that I've created. I hoe you guys continue to stick around when chairs fly again. I hope they won't.

All of what you said Leo is true. So, you've hit the nail on the head. So, if there's anything else I should know about this, then I'm all ears. I won't say my famous,"I'm done" line anymore even when I feel I'm done. I'm not done until I really AM done. I'll let you all know soon when I'm done. Not now. Keep advising.

Danacovert82 wrote:I guess on forums in general, I am a drama queen. I feel the need to get peeved over the dumbest and stupidest things. I know I really need to stop, but I feel like it will take work that I am willing to take. I'm glad I'm not paying someone $300/hr to get to the root of my problems.

I really want to say a hearty thank you to everyone who's been willing to put up with the drama that I've created. I hoe you guys continue to stick around when chairs fly again. I hope they won't.

All of what you said Leo is true. So, you've hit the nail on the head. So, if there's anything else I should know about this, then I'm all ears. I won't say my famous,"I'm done" line anymore even when I feel I'm done. I'm not done until I really AM done. I'll let you all know soon when I'm done. Not now. Keep advising.

So may i take the liberty to derive from that admission the assumption that the reason why you had inquired to have the ongoing discussion between Leo and myself removed is because the topic of this discussion hadn't much to do with you anymore, and you preferred to have the attention drawn to you?

Danacovert82 wrote:I guess on forums in general, I am a drama queen. I feel the need to get peeved over the dumbest and stupidest things. I know I really need to stop, but I feel like it will take work that I am willing to take. I'm glad I'm not paying someone $300/hr to get to the root of my problems.

I really want to say a hearty thank you to everyone who's been willing to put up with the drama that I've created. I hoe you guys continue to stick around when chairs fly again. I hope they won't.

All of what you said Leo is true. So, you've hit the nail on the head. So, if there's anything else I should know about this, then I'm all ears. I won't say my famous,"I'm done" line anymore even when I feel I'm done. I'm not done until I really AM done. I'll let you all know soon when I'm done. Not now. Keep advising.

Wow! I'm kind of stunned....

I can't remember when I had ever received such a wonderful thank you.... well, once, about 45 years ago... I had seen a situation that simply troubled me, among friends of mine, and so I talked to them separately and gave them my opinion on things... well, it changed their lives and they later came and gave me a tremendously heart felt thank you, as though I had saved them from walking blindly over a cliff (and it was almost that seriously bad). Up until then, I had always been thoughtful and had my ideas, but I had never been very sure about the Reality of what I was thinking. I know that people can be 'sure' of things, but that 'sureness' in the Mind does not guarantee that the problem as it exists in the Real World, with all the details and complications that can be encrusted on such a Problem, doesn't somehow deflect or warp the problem such that the Advice would simply bounce off it or be a 'Near Miss'. So I tended to keep my opinions to myself, just to be on the careful side. But that incident gave me a bit of confidence.

Anyway, thank you for the wonderful 'thank you'. It is something I will treasure.

Introspectah: the thread is about my anger and how I need to change it. So, yes, you and Leo's talking was drawing away from the topic. But, we're back on track.

Leo: I'm glad that you appreciate my thank you. I mean it with every fiber of my being. I just feel like I may owe the whole forum a sorry, but I do that on all forums I'm on. I think I'm not going to do that.

Yeah, I hate that on forums, I have to be the attention grabber. I'm gonna try hard not to anymore. And in real life I won't either.

Any other advice you can give me about my anger? Or anyone else have advice? Not trying to rush things.

Danacovert82 wrote:
....Any other advice you can give me about my anger? Or anyone else have advice? Not trying to rush things.

All of the Books say that a person should keep some kind of a Journal and write down when they get angry, and all of the details they remember about it -- what happened, your thoughts, your feelings, and all of that.

Now, for somebody who is chronically angry, and that may be you, you may not even know that you are angry when you are angry.... it all seems quite normal to you.

So what you need to do is carefully observe how other people react to what you say and do. Particularly, do they disengage -- do they discontinue the conversation... do they look at their watch make an excuse and walk away.... look and see whether people seem as happy after your interaction then before. If not, well, you may have behaved with some mild degree of anger that you did not notice but which they did. People kind of hate negativity.... unless you are agreeing with some evil gossip... agreeing to hate what other people hate... but even then a lot of people will look upon it later and decide that you should not have been encouraging them... holding their hand and walking them to the Devil, so to speak.

anyway, you can pay attention and probably record at least several incidents a week, if you are as chronically angry as I suspect and if you are socially active and have many opportunities for 'slipping up'.

Oh, and did I give you my 'Book Recommendations'. Reading about Anger might give you a bit more insight. I used to read Religious Literature every morning, as a Devotion, but decided that it would probably be more useful if I read Anger Management Books... considering what would actually be most effective in making me a better person....

Book Recommendation: into
anyway, I have a cut and paste Book Recommendation in my files which you will find below.


But, your greatest focus should be to remind yourself every morning that you are prone to anger. After an angry episode, and we greatly embarrass ourselves, well, we are careful for a while and tend to be on our best behavior. But then we forget about it, and nothing happens for a while and we start thinking of ourselves as perfectly normal people, who don't have to be extra vigilant and on our toes, and then something happens to tick us off and we explode.

So you see, you have to have a Anti-Anger Ritual... something you do every morning to remind yourself that if you haven't been angry for a while, well, it is probably just mostly luck, and that you really need to be alert and watchful for situations that could tend to make you angry.

and then, well, reading the books.. . Start with the one's I have recommended, but read the on line reviews and read a lot of those books. Become an Anger Expert. Because, when Situations Occur, well, you have to know what to do, don't you, and the Books will tell you that... each book in some different way. But you will soon digest the books and make all of these Other People's Ways, into your own special Way ... of being a Consistently Civilized Person.

Book Recommendations:

All the personal skills required for successful Anger Management, well, they cannot be learned overnight. Of course, you can go to a Therapist, but even I have gone to therapists and the first thing they do is recommend that you read Anger Management self help books. It easy to understand why. If you do some daily reading of anger issue books… making it something of a ritual behavior, then it helps you to always stay aware of your potential problems with anger. Ordinarily we might do some intensive work on ourselves in regards to our anger issues immediately after we have had some serious episode, but then as time passes, we begin to forget that we have a problem, that is, until we explode again. So we need to keep Anger at the forefront of our attention, or at least to the extent that we have some daily reminder for ourselves that we must keep up our guard and maintain all of the good practices that we had learned.

Of course, you could find your own books. Go on line and just buy the ones with reviews that seem to show that the books would appeal to you. But I have a few suggestions of my own. One book I recommend, because I found I had given it a splendid review on that Big On Line Merchandizer’s Website is “Angry All The Time: An Emergency Guide to Anger Control” by Ronald Potter-Efron (my review is on the 3rd page of the 5 Stars). I had said that it is the one book most likely to bring anybody back ‘from the edge’. Also, check out “Rage” by Ronald Potter-Efron (the same author as the previous book). I think it is the best book on the subject of extreme rage. Then there is a book about Cognitive Behavior Therapy. The premise behind cognitive behavior therapy is that when people are angry or depressed because of their negative thinking, well, it makes the most sense to address the problem by addressing the Thinking behind the problem. No, there is no churning up the past and talking about Mother and Childhood – all that is ancient history. The Idea is to simply learn how to turn off the negative thinking, or learn to think of something else instead. It also involves reevaluating your thinking in regards to whether you have been nurturing misconceptions or exaggerating generalizations. Anyway, the name of that book is “Cognitive and Dialectical Therapy Unleashed”, by James Ashley. It’s a good book and very affordable. And finally there is one book that is a bit of a favorite of mine: “Anger Management” by Peter Favaro, in that it seems to be more complete and organized than a lot of the other books.

Anyway, until your books arrive, or you go to the local bookstore and buy some, you should look over these pages. Especially, you should look at some of my posts here. I am relatively new here and so my catalog of posts is not all that extensive, and I have dealt with problems not unlike your own, using the knowledge that I have distilled from all of my reading, and also from my own experiences of dealing with my own anger issues. Good luck, hope to hear from you soon.

Oh, Dana.... of course if you do record some instances of angry behavior... or behavior that seemed displeasing socially... I forgot to mention to let us all know. We can perhaps share insights with you that you have not already thought of.

You know, I am classified as a very intelligent person, but I am also very gregarious socially... I talk to everybody about everything... and I am amazed at how much I learn from what other people say. I am nearly always thinking... and saying... that I am so glad I am not shy about talking to strangers, since I learn so much from them.

So even if you have no exact and direct question... well, just come on and Post some 'chit-chat' and it might please you that some of the people here might get some insight out the Blue... or, what I notice a lot... something that they say that seems to be 'off track' really isn't off track after you think about it for a moment.

Anyway.... keep posting.... We'll get back

You know? I'm not going to post angry journals. I'm trying to be positive and I learned that if I do, I'll be angry forever. I want to get off the anger express and get on the positive express. I'll look for that angry all the time book.

Leo, I've done a search in iBooks on my iPod here, and found two books that I'm gonna read. I'll let you know how that goes.

Okay, guys, I've gotten all I can from this forum. I'm lwaving. Don't beg me to stay. I'm not angry. I'm just going to work on this all on my own. Thank you very much for your advice. I'm greatful for it all. Really, I am.

Danacovert82 wrote:Okay, guys, I've gotten all I can from this forum. I'm lwaving. Don't beg me to stay. I'm not angry. I'm just going to work on this all on my own. Thank you very much for your advice. I'm greatful for it all. Really, I am.

You've got a good attitude Dana. Wishing you the best.

I'm doing good with the not getting angry at my mom and family. But other things in general, I'm not doing too good. But I will get better.

Danacovert82 wrote:You know? I'm not going to post angry journals. I'm trying to be positive and I learned that if I do, I'll be angry forever. I want to get off the anger express and get on the positive express. I'll look for that angry all the time book.

Whoaa! Wow!

that's Great! Dan!

I think you are getting it.... a sort of parody on "My Fair Lady" when Lizza Dolittle (Audrey Hepburn) finally, at 4 o'clock in the morning finally was able to say her lines with the perfect British RP (received pronounciation.... a manner of speaking only native to about 4 square blocks in London but have been considered during the Victorian and Post-Victorian Eras to be, well, the 'Receieved Pronounciation'.... the proper way for a Gentleman or a Lady to speak).

You have actually Figured Out how to NOT BE ANGRY. Good! Thank God!

Dan, I don't know how this goes. I have never witnessed a ceremony like this before. but you have now demonstrated such keen insight into anger that you are nowby granted the privilege of being a 'Helper' as well as 'Helpee'. Now, you know better than most, that the balance between Helper and Helpee often shifts back and forth -- the guy you are trying to help somehow helps you.

anyway... I am so proud now. This Page.... Well, I WISH I could brag about all of the success stories. Yes, I am sure the Old Timers have seen them. But this is my first. You are the first successful rescue I have seen.