What To Do When You Feel Angry

Do you wonder what to do when you feel angry? I used to spend a lot of time pondering that one. I tried to control anger in all sorts of ways. It was exhausting. Now I understand the anger and my own humanness, the need to do that has fallen away. There's is freedom if you can see there is nothing to do about anger but some things to understand.
Join me as I explore this from a new perspective.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Claire Downham,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying and I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So today I'm talking about what to do when you feel angry and clearly it's me so I'm not going to tell you what to do when you feel angry.

I'm just going to explain a bit more about how anger kind of arises and what we might see about it that's helpful.

And I'm reflecting on this because I had a bit of an outburst a couple of weeks ago.

So if you've been connected to me for a while,

You'll know that I do record at 7.

45 every morning and have done since August 2020.

It's quite a long time ago,

Isn't it?

And so it's kind of set in our household diary that the house has to be quiet while I'm doing that and there shall be no disturbing of Claire while she's doing it or no noise.

Some of our doors are a bit sticky and creaky.

Anyway,

A few weeks ago,

Bruce,

I've taken to working in the bedroom because it is just a tad warmer.

My office is just really,

Really cold and it's nicer in the winter to be up here.

It's just generally warmer.

And Bruce went into the bathroom,

Which about the time when I was starting the recording,

Which is fine,

Of course.

So I was merrily doing my calm cast and being all calm and lovely as I am.

And I'm laughing because the next bit's funny.

And there just before the end of the session,

There was a little tap on the door.

I don't know if you can even hear that.

Little tap on the door and a little voice saying,

Have you finished?

And so I don't know if anybody who was watching it live noticed,

But my face was this kind of contorted,

I'm really calm.

I'm the queen of calm whilst literally exploding inside.

Really not a happy bunny at all.

Pretty angry with him for banging on the door.

While tapping on the door when he knew,

Well,

I thought he should know,

Of course.

Like right now I can see his psychological innocence,

Where my teeth are today.

But then I fundamentally couldn't see anybody's psychological innocence,

I don't think,

In that moment.

So I got to the end of the live with my kind of grimacy face on and I don't know if anybody noticed it was just very funny.

It's funny now.

It wasn't funny then.

And then I opened the bedroom door and gave him both barrels.

I lost my you know what with him massively.

Like I really lost it big time.

And I'm laughing about now because it's fine.

I'll get to why it's fine in a minute.

Now what unfolded was that Bruce is in this conversation too and he had a moment of kind of been a bit wobbled by me losing my you know what.

But he then,

Well,

He just didn't take it personally.

That's kind of when we spoke about it afterwards.

He hadn't taken it so personally.

He knew that I had lost my you know what.

And that was about me,

Not about him.

So that was helpful.

But in terms of how I was,

I really did lose it.

Like I was loud,

Probably shouting if I'd heard myself.

I probably would have realized I was shouting at the time,

But I was shouting.

I was really upset and angry with him.

But what happened was as I went into this full kind of explosion,

It didn't last as long as these things used to.

And I think that's for a few different things.

It's for,

First of all,

It's because I understand better what an angry feeling is.

When I first felt angry,

I didn't.

I lost my you know what completely.

But very quickly I remembered.

I remembered that I have a system that works the same as your system and the same as everybody else's system.

And that system creates horrible feelings when there is angry thinking.

You know,

So my body was screaming as loud as my voice really saying,

You've got angry thinking,

Blair.

And at first I didn't hear it,

But it didn't take long for me to sort of connect to this ugh feeling inside me and just start to do that and to slow down.

And I was still speaking,

But gradually my voice got quieter.

I got quieter.

I spoke more slowly,

More calmly.

And I was still kind of saying to him,

What you did was not okay.

What were you thinking?

And I now know that's a pointless question.

I'm asking that question less and less these days.

And very quickly,

Very quickly after that,

I just said,

Sorry.

Now let me kind of talk about what would happened in the past is first of all,

I would have stayed angry a lot.

Like when I say a lot longer,

I mean like the whole day,

Possibly several days.

You know,

I was a person who would get annoyed with,

Well,

My ex-husband used to go to bed annoyed with him and wake up and I'd already be annoyed with him again before he'd even woken up.

That's a long story.

But also I was a person who would be annoyed with the middle lane hogger or somebody who cut me up at the roundabout.

And I'd still be ranting about it when I got to work.

Like if not externally,

Then definitely internally.

I mean,

It is what I do.

Now that's the first thing that happens is when you start to see that it's not coming from the other people or the person it's coming from you.

It makes less and less sense to do that to yourself because it's not really very good.

It doesn't feel good.

It's probably not good for you physiologically.

It's not nice.

It doesn't feel nice.

And it doesn't make sense to,

You know,

I've spoken before about hitting ourselves on the head with the ruler and complaining about a headache.

It doesn't make sense to carry on being in that state when you realize you're doing it to yourself.

So that's the first thing.

But the other thing is this ability to accept my humanness.

Now you'd think that where I'm pointing to,

You know,

Being the queen of calm,

Calm being the state that I'm encouraging,

You know,

Helping people to attain that I would be beating myself up for not being calm,

But that's the exact opposite because a massive part of the calm comes from presence.

And if I'm in the past,

Being myself,

You know,

Thinking about what I've just done,

Even if it's a few moments ago,

Then I'm not respecting my own psychological and my own reality in that moment looked utterly real to me.

I'm in a separate reality three minutes ago to the reality that I'm in now.

It's seeing my own psychological innocence in the same way that I encourage us to see each other's psychological innocence.

I encourage you to see your own psychological innocence.

And when you see that this is what happens,

You fall back into the present moment.

You're not what I would have been like before was I've been inside myself with this,

Oh my God,

You shouldn't have done that.

You need to know how to do this properly.

What can you do when you feel angry next time?

You know,

What's the tool,

What's the technique,

What to do about it and try to control it.

Whereas you know,

I've cocked up,

There's no two ways about it.

I've lost my,

You know what,

I've not been kind to Bruce.

I've not been pleasant.

I've overreacted to something that really wasn't that important.

But I know that I was doing the best I could in that moment with the thinking and the level of consciousness that I had available to me.

And from that place,

I'm not inside me berating me and thinking about me and what I've done.

I'm out in the real world in the present moment and I'm giving Bruce a hug and saying sorry and giving him a kiss and making it up to him,

Trying to make amends.

Guilt,

People think wrongly that guilt is a really helpful way to get us to be different,

Behave different.

I just,

I don't think it,

I just think it puts too much on your mind and takes you away from what's natural,

Which is when we're not caught up in our thinking,

We're back in this connection to other people.

And there is an opportunity to be in this same,

You know,

Be back in realizing we're all part of one energy and we reconnect to each other and then you just want to be in a nice place with somebody again.

And that involves saying sorry,

Making amends,

Making up with each other,

You know,

Whatever feels right in the moment to just be in a good place with each other again.

And you know,

When I take people on a journey with this,

You know,

I am pointing away from feeling guilty for doing things that you think you shouldn't.

This is not about being calm and some kind of,

You know,

Cross-legged hippie.

I don't know why I said that.

Anyway,

It's not about being calm all the time and in control of yourself.

It's the real opposite.

It's seeing that you're human,

You're having a human experience and being kind to yourself when that human experience doesn't quite pan out as perhaps you might like.

And that's how you fall back into calm by not really caring that you're not calm.

Ironically,

Really,

It is really ironic is that every time I speak about it,

I just think it's so ironic that when you stop seeking calm and accept yourself exactly as you are,

Calm is your natural state really.

There's a lot less to do than you think.

So now you don't know what to do when you feel angry apart from navigating yourself from the understanding,

You know,

The things,

The truth that I've shared with you today.

So I'd love to hear if you have some fun navigating anger and you find this helpful.

So lots of love.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now,

But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been the Calmcast with Clare Downham,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.

Reviews

Yes, liked this! Thx Just stopped beating myself up over “loosing” it.