Earn On-Going Rewards Now
S01E16 – Anger Management – Part 1
Date:
Channel: Muslim Life Hackers
Series: Muslim Life Hackers - Season 1
File Size: 10.11MB
Episode Notes
Maheen discusses all things anger management. Feel like an angry little monster? Find yourself fuming at even the littlest things? Or maybe you just want to be more chill?
This podcast delves into how we as humans express anger through different ways and methods and the importance of being aware of yourself.
In this episode you will learn:
– Anger and it’s role within our character
– 3 ways people express anger
Episode Transcript ©
TRIGGER WARNING!!!
Transcripts are auto-generated and thus will be be inaccurate and at times crude. We are considering building a system to allow volunteers to edit transcripts in a controlled system. No part of this transcript may be copied or referenced or transmitted in any way whatsoever.
Episode 16 Welcome to the Muslim life hackers podcast, the weekly podcast providing you with tips and tricks on how to hack your life and maximize its potential. And now for your hosts Mithra maroof and Mahima Lake
as we sail across the sea, so much.
So I'm like what's in my packet, this is me for America. And in today's episode maheen will be talking about anger and practical ways on how to manage it. All the links and resources mentioned in this episode will be found in the show notes, you can find them at Muslim life hackers.com slash 16. That's number 16. Also, I just want to point out that in today's episode, because this is a very big topic to get through, it's going to be a two part podcast. So today would be the first part of this podcast, and inshallah Next week, we'll have the second part of this podcast. So make sure you tune in and not be saddled the next one. Okay, so let's get started. Anger. maheen. Where do we start?
Well, first, I want to talk about a story like an incident that happened to me. Okay, tell us about Okay, so intro drumroll. I saw that I was driving and I was going to meet a friend for dinner. Yeah. And what happened was, it was after work. I just finished from a meeting. And I was driving it was peak time traffic. road rage.
Okay, so for those who don't know what, like, road rage is the second you're driving, and you just, you just find everything irritating. And I had the GPS on and I was trying to navigate my way to the destination.
Everything was just annoying me and I just felt so irritable. Whenever someone cut in front of me and Elaine, I came to take you overtaking my leg. I was just like how?
Like, obviously, in the moment, I wasn't reflecting upon my actions or anything. And what else happened is really sent me off as I took a wrong turn. My GPS is like go straight, especially when you're running late. When I'm running late. I was running late. So I forgot to mention that. Previously, I was running late. I took a wrong turn. I just added three minutes to my travel time. And this just infuriated me. I'm like, How could this happen? It's It's It's funny when he when when we're running late, like every single minute counts. Yeah, but then it's like, well, we're at home, we'll gladly like, put out half an hour on social media or waste it and have no problem with that.
You don't
realize it and yeah, every second was precious to me, though it wasn't like a life or death situation. I just felt like I needed to get there on time. Yeah, my reputation
was turning into the Hulk. I was turning into the Hulk. And that's like the green monster. For those who don't know.
But I
was a Marvel or DC, or whatever. So basically, I was just infuriated during this like traveled despite not Rachel but like my commute to the to my destination. And later on after I'd like arrived at the dinner and things and I had went inside. I was just like, what just happened to you? Yeah, I was I wasn't myself. I was. I just went insane temporarily, right that I was caught up with so much anger. And I felt so embarrassed. I'm like, I can't believe someone else told me in that situation. I was just fuming at every little thing. normal things that happen on the road. Yeah, just annoyed me. overtaking people overtake on the road. And that was annoying me. Red lights turn red. And that
was amazing. I couldn't believe it. And this really got me thinking, you know about anger? And how many of us experienced anger and you might have experienced that as well. And you will experience it definitely. It'll be different situations part of us where you're going to get angry. And I was just like, Well, I was getting angry at wrong turns. I mean, that was my color. I wasn't meant to go that way, kind of mini predestination predestination. And I wasn't meant to go that way. Anyway, nothing that I could have done. Could have changed my situation in that time. Except I could have changed how I approached how I react to a situation pretty much you couldn't change the situation. But you
could control how you react. Yeah, I mean, that was a test. That was a test. Okay, lessons I took this from this was just amazing.
Wow, like, I didn't realize that I was capable of that kind of anger.
And thinking like, I need to I need I thought to myself, I need to have ways and strategies on how to combat myself in situations like this where I'm being tested, like my patients being tested and things are out of my control and I can't just blow up at any time. I guess I got on a side point when you're when your sheet frame frame things that way. Like whenever something happens instead of saying oh my god, I'm like an angry wants to
or whatever and then lose or hope you rather after that you realize your error and you think Okay, so how can I not prevent this from happening again? And that's a really good way to approach these things. Yeah, definitely. These little things that happened to us and I'm sure while I was sharing the story with you, maybe another moment was coming to your mind where perhaps you overtaken by anger and or maybe a person came to mind and like a character kind of this angry, hot headed character. We all have those moments and yeah, but it's just for different people, different things trigger it differently. For one, one person, it might be that it's road rage, but for somebody else,
because I don't like when I'm when I'm not normally driving. It's just like, any kind of unicorn.
I guess. I guess I'm so into what I'm listening to a podcast or audio book or something. And it's like, okay, but I think like, another other things that irritate me. So it's not happening as soon as the situation is, and each and every person is different. Definitely, definitely. Like, you can express this anger as like as rage, intense frustration, or it could just be like a fleeting annoyance at something. Yeah. But when it gets out of control, that's when we need to delve more into the issue. Okay. We're also told us Muslims have the best of character. And this is why I wanted to talk about anger as well. Because we know that Prophet, peace, the peace of blessings be
upon him, was said to perfect our character. And in Him, we see this amazing character of a man who knew how to express himself beautifully. And you had to deal with these anger, even in situations where his anger was justified and really mango wasn't justified in the car. So also know that anger is completely normal. It's a normal human emotion. It's healthy at times, especially when it's justified. But in this podcast, we're not talking about that healthy anger. So what do you what do you what do you mean by healthy anger? So that's a really good question for healthy anger is, for example, when we feel an injustice, maybe you had someone say something really rude to you and
something oppressive. Maybe an incident happened in your social circle, and you just your anger is justified, you feel that some oppression has been done to you. And you have that that flare within yourself.
Like the second point, you were making about some some injustice that you saw as well, like, say someone was wronged, wrongfully treated, and you saw that and you you were, that caused you to be angry in a sense that, like, this has happened, and you need to do something about it.
Yeah, yeah. So it's not necessarily always has to do something with yourself, but it's also giving you something in store as well. Okay, so that makes it so that was to get healthy anger. But yeah, that's what we mean, okay, anger. In this podcast, we're going to be talking about the anger where it turns into a rage, and it gets out of control. It's kind of destructive. And this kind of anger can lead to many problems, whether at work, your personal relationships, you might even find that has a huge impact on your quality of life, how you deal with people, yeah, if you have this tendency to just blow up at anything it can, it can also make you feel really vulnerable, like you're not in
control of yourself, either. It's quite a powerful emotion. Before I go on, I just want to point out to guys that we are not medical professionals. And if you find that you really have a problem with your anger, and it's just out of control. It's best to seek a counselor or medical professionals advice on this, but this is for only for educational purposes, of course. Okay. mahane. So if we were to just give like a definition of anger, then what? Like, how would you exactly define it? Just that emotion anger itself? What is it? Okay, well, I'm what researching this topic, I came across a great definition. Very simple. It's by Dr. Child, Charles spielberger.
I think we just chopped up so many people's names. But anyway, he's a psychologist who specializes in the study of anger. You'll find a link to a brochure that he wrote on anger management in Okay, great. Yeah, great, good stuff. He says that anger is quite an emotional state that varies in intensity from mild irritation to intense fury and rage. And quite unlike other emotions, it has an impact on our physiological and biological state. What I mean by this is that someone who's experienced experiencing anger could be could have an elevated heart rate, blood pressure, as well as increased levels of your energy hormones, which are nor nor noradrenaline and adrenaline and
there's a few others, but the main ones, okay, so how exactly would someone express their anger? Okay, so it will naturally at least first anger when we are faced with threats, okay, like in a fight or flight situation like, like a ninja going to take your handbag.
It's there as an adaptive response, but the anchor is all well and good when you need to actually defend yourself. But you can't lash out at everything. Like for example, my traffic annoyances like laws, social norms, and people's act.
psychology in place, you can't be angry at everyone. This point kind of reminds me of when I was working for a little, little guy. I actually work as a therapist with kids with autism during one of our sessions with this one little guy, and we have some downtime, some Showtime and this little guy, he loves puzzles, right. And he was doing one of these puzzles during his free time. And he noticed, I noticed that he was having trouble feeding one of the pieces of the puzzle, and just would have been after a few seconds, he grabbed a puzzle and just
threw it against the wall.
So interesting to watch. He just sat there for a while. He looked at the puzzle. And then when he picked it up, and he started, like doing it again, all the way from the static. Yeah, he just started started again. And now at the time, obviously, like we were working with communication with him, he didn't know how to express his frustration. So him throwing that puzzle against the wall was perfectly normal for him. And it was, so we're going to like kind of ask for help and how to deal with those kind of situations properly. That way, he doesn't have to throw things to get attention and stuff like that. Yeah, but I believe that this story perfectly illustrates what happens to us
when something doesn't go our way. When we when something doesn't go according to plan, we just lose it. So during my research on this topic of anger, I came across three ways that people express their anger categorically. And you can find a link to the article where I found these three ways. Okay, so what what, what exactly are these three ways? Like how does one express anger? As I know, not all of us? Like if we had a puzzles, we'll throw it to the wall? Yeah, of course.
Okay, so there's three ways that people express anger that I found during the research was the first it was, people express their anger through expression, that's like, only a technical term, but that's what they call it. The first one is called expressing, okay. And this is where you're, we convey your anger, like and the way that you convey your anger.
Let me rephrase that. This is where you let people know that you're not happy with how things are going. Okay. So the way that you express that anger can be either right or wrong. Okay, so I can give you an example. Maybe like your managers, people, and maybe you when something's not going, right, you'd let them know that you're angry by yelling at them. Okay. So that's, that's one way that you could like the wrong way or the wrong way. And the right way, or the better way you might Express under this category. Yeah, under like a kind of expressive category would be maybe that you've got to your employees and let them know, look, I'm not happy with this. Can you do a
different way, though? Like a different way of expressing your anger? I can say yes. You said in a more polite way. But But pretty much this. This type of mix. expressing anger just pretty much means. You verbalize it. Whenever you get angry, it will come on your tongue like you say it out you and how you say it will kind of differ with people to people. Yeah, definitely. Okay. But that makes it so. So what's the second way of expressing anger? Like, how do people express their anger? Okay, the second way that people express their anger through suppression. So we've had Express expression. Yeah. And I will notice a suppression. So this is where anger is converted and redirected. And what
do you mean? What do you mean mean by that? So for example, like you hold your anger in and you say to yourself, no, I'm not going to think about it, or you kind of like, or I'm not gonna talk about how angry I am right now. And the situation just, I kind of forget it, and just go on. And the aim of this kind of suppression is to kind of convert you and get to more constructive behavior. But whether whether it becomes constructive or not, is really difficult situation to this situation. The dangerous kind of like, suppression is where you when you don't allow any outward expression of your anger all the time, it can turn into anger, or yourself, and you can kind of question yourself, and
it can lead to depression and hypertension, where you're always thinking negative things about yourself and really not expressing your anger and always holding it and can have some really bad, bad consequences. So what do you mean by like, expressing out outward? outwardly? So for example, if if, if, for example, you find that, you know, something's angering you, and you're always holding it in Europe, kind of expressing it to yourself, you might find that you kind of flip that anger on yourself and be like this I can be so so yeah. continuously. That's the way you express anger. So even if there was a situation in which you should have spoke about, I say, there was something
something just injustice happening, okay. And then you students speak about it, it's gonna eventually eat you up inside pretty much. Definitely. Okay, think about unexpressed anger is like it often lead to other problems, like passive aggressive behavior. Now, if you don't know what passive aggressive behavior is, it's kind of like getting back at people indirectly without without telling them why. So what are some ways you can actually get back at people without telling them why I don't know like, maybe just sitting in
Class me and you're angry at someone
for like a paper airplane that day. And the turn around you're just like, pretending to write.
Yeah, I this actually reminds me of a story like this passive aggressive behavior, a story about my mother's sister. So just imagine like this little five year old, and I had done something to annoy her. And it was in a playful way, of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And she got a little angry at me. And I later on that day, while I was walking past her,
she whipped by lightning, right? And she just smacked me on the back, disappeared, disappeared around the corner. And I'm like, What?
And later on when I confronted her about, like, the smack on my back, she was like, Oh, I didn't do that. She was totally shocked and totally innocent. And I knew it was the result of like her anger. And she was just trying to get back at me for something but a bit of passive aggressive behavior there. Yeah, yeah. So another result of this suppressing your anger is that it can lead to a very grumpy personality can be pets, right? Yeah. No one wants to be around you It's just that bad energy. Yeah, you
got to get away from my second Mr. Mr. Angry in the mystery series.
Sanger? He's like the spread thing. You read or he's got like, a yellow. I'm not sure I'm. Yeah, I'm not sure what color
camera. He's read. Read. Make sense? Yeah, it would make sense, but we can be wrong. I remember Mr. noodle. noodle is like a noodle dish. Uh huh.
Anyway, so you can you can call Mr. Gumby pants. Yes. So you can become very cynical and hostile. Maybe you're constantly putting other people down, dishing out mean comments to them. Because you haven't constructively learned to express your anger. You're constantly like saying these mean comments to people, and they just don't know what they've done wrong, because you haven't told them. Yeah, and if you find that you are this kind of person, it shouldn't be surprising to note that it will not lead to many successful relationships. So pretty much you won't have a lot of friends. You won't have to turn if you're throwing airplanes at the back. Well, they won't know though. That's
true. But they might get this. Okay. So what's like the third way? So the third way would be how people express and guess when they try and calm themselves down, calming selves down them inside, as well as controlling their outward behavior. Yeah. So when a person finds that they're getting angry, they might try and like do breathing exercises, think through why they're angry and kind of let those feelings subside. Okay, so would you say that this is like the best way to express your anger?
It definitely sounds like the best way to express your anger. And I, but what I think is that it's actually a combination of the three. Maybe you need to express expressively assert your anger sometimes, like let people know, I'm kind of a bit angry about this maybe should be done a different way. Maybe at other times, it's not good to be expressing anger, like maybe you're in front of a crowd and pretend to be yelling out would not be suitable at the time. And other times it would be best to do some calming, type calming kind of method, that's a third way people might naturally go ahead and try and come and come selves down. Some people might naturally try and suppress all their
anger and use this passive aggressive behavior. Some people naturally might like, always tell people, I'm no good at this, why'd you do this to my blow up, they might be assertive things up. So these are just three different ways. Researchers are found that people naturally express their anger. They either try and calm themselves down, they either suppress the anger or they either express it Okay, now it's all well and good to know like how we express anger. But when none of these three ways of expressing anger work, this is where Dr. Phil spielberger says that someone or someone someone or something is gonna get hurt. So when you when people find that none of these
three ways of expressing is working for them. This is when anger kind of gets out of control. Does it like not not working doesn't mean that they're not doing doing it in like the correct way for example, yeah, how you were saying like the expressing way how it's like you can lash out and say things that are totally inappropriate for the situation and for the second one it can the negative way to express that would be that you keep suppressing it inside and you know when you're mad about it, okay, so so that makes sense. So pretty much like Yeah, when you when you find that your your natural methods of dealing with anger aren't working. This is when it can kind of go overboard and
can be become destructive destructive for yourself and others. So that's really three ways. Yeah, yeah, definitely interesting. The three ways people normally express anger so the hidden would would you be telling telling us on like, how exactly to take it from there like once once
We actually realize, okay, what do we naturally lean towards when we're angry? Like, what's, what's our behavior? When we get angry? Where do we go from there? Okay, so I feel like knowing about these three ways that we naturally might express that anger. And if you do find that, you know, like, sometimes your anger is a bit out of control, and maybe these three ways aren't working. Be sure to catch our next episode, where I'm going to be discussing some strategies on how to manage your anger. If you find that you know, it's a little bit too much and you want to be more peaceful person on the inside and outside, maybe
causing some stress. I'm actually looking forward to hearing that. Me too. Hopefully my road rage will go down.
Okay, then that ends off today's episode of the Muslim life hackers podcast. As always, make sure you check out our episode notes, which can be found at sim life. hackers.com slash 16. That's the number 16. Also friends. If you guys are on Twitter, by the way, I think you should, but if you are in Twitter, share the love by going to some life hackers.com forward slash love and tweeting about the podcast. It really helps us get the word out there. Okay. So that link would actually give you a pre written tweet, so all you have to do is press tweet. Doesn't get easier than that. I wouldn't do it guys.
Okay, then inshallah, we'll catch you all next time. Until then, aim high. Take action.