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there's a difference between 'restraint' and 'harboring' anger..
I think restraint is good.. but holding in anger at all cost has already been proven to be very bad for you..
And there's a difference between speaking your mind when you don't follow the herd with your thinking, and being 'angry'.
In real life, I get a kick out of people that toss that word around. Or other shaming language like "bitter".
My life rocks. I actually look forward to each new day. Pretty much every day is better than the last, and I can only think of ONE since.....August?....that I wouldn't want to repeat, and that only because the starter went out on my car AND I got stupid and chatted up a female. Both on the same day. It never rains but it pours, eh? Only on that day it snowed. Ginormous flakes roughly the size of hubcaps, while I'm fiddling about under the hood, hoping the issue was just a loose wire or something. But I digress...
I'm pretty laid back about life, because I just don't give a ....er, fig. Fig works and no one can object to it. I don't give a fig about much of anything except enjoying myself.
I'm not angry at anything. I'm not angry at being lied to my entire life, I'm not angry at the way things are, I'm not even angry at everything my ex wife did (and there is cause to be angry there. Well, there was at one time, but not several years later).
There's no point to harbor anger. None. It has zero return on investment. It's like drinking poison and hoping that someone else will die. Nah, that ain't for me.
This is an old thread. Also, I'm not sure if it might fit better (probably merged with others) in Psychology. Anger isn't just a "relationships" thing. ??
I don't really do anger. If I get to a point where I feel it, I go silent. I speak to no one, I show nothing. I might journal if I have thoughts I need to process. Often the feeling of anger arises from the state of confusion where I have many thoughts running around in my head in a chaotic way. If I write about them, then I put them to order, and figure out what they are really connected to. I make sense of things. Then the anger is gone. "Processing."
I do not like expressing anger through shouting or violence or fighting. It makes me feel helpless, because I have never been a big, scary person. I'm petite and small, so if I get all ragey and I want to do something violent, the world will react to that with, "Oh that's so cute!" Which makes me feel powerless and miserable. If you imagine someone torturing an animal (one of few things that fills me with blind rage) and a smaller, weaker person wanting to stop them, but unable to do anything, and the tormentor just laughs at them...that is my picture of anger. It only makes a victim of me. Then the violence and rage turns inwards to self-hate and self destruction.
So I don't do that. It is healthier for me to stay calm, and allows me to harness my greater strength, which is that of the mind...so I pretty much always stay calm, no matter what. I've been studying Zen philosophy, concepts sourced from Buddhism and Taoism, and it helps a great deal. I want to have complete mastery over myself.
I have not found any ill effects, from refraining from expressing anger or rage through violence, shouting, or fighting. It feels much more emotionally healthy to me, NOT to do those things.
You can become pretty passive aggressive, though, if you aren't assertive enough w/ someone who's out of line when you have cause to become disturbed by their behavior. And, then that behavior becomes a learned habit, which is not a good communication style to have! I have used "That's inappropriate" w/ good results or another very short statement. Like the human whisperer--it stops the behavior.
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