Overcoming Self-Anger
You need to feel good about yourself in order to cope with any problems and to have honest relationships with yourself and others. Anger can get in the way of feeling good and in times when anger is not manage properly and has no place to go, it may be turned into self-anger. This means that anger is directed against you and can lead to self-destructive behaviors like excessive drinking, drug use, gambling or even anxiety, depression, physical illnesses and suicide attempts. Self-anger makes you feel like you cannot stand yourself.
The antidote for self-anger is to feel good about yourself by developing your character and building yourself esteem. The first step in improving your self-esteem is to try to recognize the things make you angry with yourself. Try completing the following sentence, “I get angry at myself when . . .“ I don’t do as well as I should; I eat too much; I lose my temper; I don’t speak as I should; When I say stupid things etc.. These self-provocations are things that make you angry and are usually things where you have no one to blame but yourself. You need to learn how to work out these self-provocations. Failure to do this can lead to anger overload that can result in self-destructive patterns of behavior.
Once you identify your self-provocations, the next step is to develop strategies to overcome them. For Example, if your self-provocation is that you eat too much, resolve that next time you will eat more nutritionally and eat less. Secondly, do not kick yourself too hard when you are not successful. Allow yourself to be human (which you are). If your problem is that you get angry, you may need to exercise some relaxation techniques. When you encounter something that makes you angry with yourself, use the following statement, “What is the best thing for me to do now?” Remember to BE WISE, NOT RIGHT, which mean engage yourself in healthy and productive thoughts and actions. Your acknowledgment of the problem, and at the same time, focusing on improving the situation and getting better is the road to overcome anger. Merely sitting and belittling yourself over what has happened is not productive and even make anger worse.
In case of situations that are beyond our control or when we cannot make changes, we can develop the strategy of either learning to live with it or leaving the situation. Once you accept the fact that the source of the problem is not within you, it is easier to accept the provocation without developing self-anger.
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