In
my personal experience, how I react to anger varies on who I am angry with. For
example, with my mother I tend to loose my patience and blow up on her. When it
comes to my boyfriend I either express it calmy or not at all. I briefly
touched on this on my Conflict Assesment paper, but I react to conflict
differently depending on who I am frustrated with, or where we are. There are a
lot of factors involved to how I channel my anger. On page 143, it talks about
the term anger-ins which is the idea of not expressing your anger to the person
who has upset you. It also suggest that you may express that anger to someone
else,like venting. I find myself doing this more, but more so to get advice and
vent so I don’t blow up on the person I am mad at. I want to hear if I am in
the wrong or if I am not seeing something, so I use this more as a time for
suggestion and for me it works really well because then I don’t blow up on the
person I am angry with. I am able to think things through before I talk to that
person about why I am upset. This also follows under the idea on chapter 8 of
taking a time out. It suggests that you should exit temporarily, to help you
cool off (Pg. 147). I think this is the best way to express anger as long as
you aren’t permanently ignoring the issue that made you angry in the beginning.
However, when I do blow up on someone
out of anger, it never solves the issue at hand. Instead there is a lot of
shouting, and not any attempt to reach a common goal to resolve the issue at
hand.
This was a good post. It is interesting how you handle your anger based off the people you are dealing with. I can relate with you on not expressing anger at all because I can find myself doing that too. I handle my anger in a very calm manner and sometimes that results in me not sharing everything I have to say. It is good that you have people to vent to because I feel that venting can be very beneficial. I do not know why but I found not venting to help me, it is odd but it works.
ReplyDeleteThe book talked about how different people can bring about different expressions of anger in us. Just like you, I find it to be the same for me as well. Most of my conflicts are with my wife just because she’s the main person I interact with and, as the book suggests, it’s the people we’re closest too that can upset us the most. The conflicts that seem to be harder for me are the ones with authority figures. It’s relatively rare, but when I have a conflict with a boss or a professor it tends to make me feel powerless and I get so frustrated.
ReplyDeleteI also can appreciate how when you vent your anger you also use that person as a sounding board and are willing to hear that you are wrong. When I vent my anger to my best friend, she is really amazing at reading between the lines and getting to the heart of what’s going on and calling me on it. I think she’s able to do this because she knows both me and my wife so very well.