Episode 258: Understanding Your Emotions for Emotional Resilience: Mastering Anger - Part 5

Episode 258: Understanding Your Emotions for Emotional Resilience: Mastering Anger - Part 5Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. This is the last of the 5-Part Series on Creating Emotional Resilience.This series was created from a class I took, you’ve heard about it in all the other episodes - in it  we practiced different skills like healthy thinking patterns, managing stress, overcoming anger….all the good stuff. Take from it what resonates with you, that you may navigate your life with a bit more resilience. One step at a time. These are muscles we are trying to develop. Emotional resilience muscles.Today’s episode is about one of our strongest emotions. Anger.It’s a real emotion that we don’t want to deny, but that we need to learn to navigate and choose thoughts and actions that create more peace in us rather than feed the anger beast. Stay tuned.As I am writing this episode we just completed the April 2023 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As I sat and listened to the prophets and leaders I was surprised at how many talks were about not being contentious. Even the prophet himself focused his primary message on the topic of being peacemakers. In 3 Nephi 11:29-30 the Savior taught the Nephites: “There shall be no disputations among you…for verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another behold this is NOT my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away.”Anger is something we all feel. It’s an emotion that rears it’s head when underneath we really feel resentful, disappointed, ashamed, hopeless, guilty, our expectations are unmet, we are embarrassed, frustrated, anxious, threatened, rejected, hurt, offended, heartbroken…there are a lot of underlying emotions and situations that trigger anger. Emotional resilience means that we are able to more effectively understand our emotions and manage them. This is a life-time of work, but a very important part of our work. This is part of living with awareness and moving toward higher ways of being.Let’s consider a couple ideas.1. Anger comes from lots of various emotions, as I’ve just mentioned.  Understanding that can help us get to the bottom of an angry situation so we can deescalate it and understand ourselves better. What I mean by this is that when you feel yourself getting angry, stop and consider what’s causing the anger. Are your feelings hurt? Are you disappointed? Are you embarrassed? Once we understand what has us so upset we can navigate the situation better - sometimes even just understanding that can help you better communicate with the person you are angry with. For instance, let’s say you’ve asked your husband to do something numerous times and he doesn’t get around to doing it. You can spiral in the “Why doesn’t he listen to me? Why can’t he help? Why can’t he see the wisdom in doing it this way?” etc. etc. or you can identify that perhaps you’re feeling disrespected, resentful, unappreciated, hurt. With this knowledge you can then open a conversation, “When  I ask you to help rake the leaves up over and over and it doesn’t get done, I feel unheard, disrespected, hurt.” This approach shares a vulnerable insight into your feelings that focuses on you and doesn’t focus on making accusations toward him At the very least this opens space for communication. People talking things out and striving to understand another’s position on something is a tool to choosing peace and peacemaking over anger and...