Mad as Hell
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Red-alert ready Don't get hooked Who's a hot head? Get it off your chest Five steps to serenity How do you channel your anger? << back to Work/Life Balance << back to ANF Women's Forum |
Five Steps to Serenity Turn your meltdowns into moments of insight: 1 Trade the sword for the pen For a week or two, write instead of rant, jotting down everything that ticks you off. Be alert to patterns: are you more prone to anger at work or at home, on weekday mornings or weekend nights? Find yourself blowing up at the kids when they clamour for homework help the minute you walk in the door? Take a 10-minute “mum time-out” and designate an after-dinner “homework hour” during which you’ll happily field questions on trigonometry. 2 Plan ahead Take your iPod on the train if chattering commuters annoy you. Bring a book if you’ll be waiting in line. Psychologist Dr Robert Allan suggests when faced with, say, a person who holds up the queue at Coles, you distract yourself by observing how others deal with it. Keeping a stress ball in your bag to squeeze is a good standby, too. Or just practise your Kegel exercises… 3 It’s not all about you Don’t think of the people who piss you off as out to get you. “I have a mantra,” says psychotherapist Anna Maravelas: “This person lacks skill, insight or courage.” Even if someone is actually trying to hurt you, taking it personally won’t help, says anger researcher Jerry Deffenbacher. “Instead of vilifying someone,” he says, “think of them as someone you need to set some limits with or back away from.” 4 Learn to cool down To become a pro at letting slights go, practise. Visualise a situation that made you stew – say, a friend backing out of a weekend away at the last minute. Relive your fury for 30 seconds (long enough for your heart to start racing and the adrenaline to flow). Then switch to relaxation methods. Breathe deeply, unclench your jaw, release any tight muscles. Don’t punch your pillow. Experts now believe such techniques actually increase feelings of aggression. 5 State your position, then negotiate When Lisa Cohn, a single mother of two, merged households with her new love, a single father of two, they fought constantly about food. He fed his kids hot dogs and ice-cream; she served soy milk and tofu. The fix: his-and-hers refrigerators. There’s more to the “agree to disagree” maxim than meets the eye. |