Controlling Anger

It isn’t easy for a quasi therapist like myself to admit to hypocracy. So, here goes my lame excuse for losing it. I have been dealing with a family financial consultant for about eight years now. He contols my hope for a comfortable retirement. I realize he has to make a living. However, he constantly remarks that my family is not just a client and he always has our best interest at heart. So when I heard about the possibility of owning my own self directed IRA, I immediately called him and asked why he never informed me or the family about this. His reply was “I have to make a living. Don’t I?” I lost it.

We have a great tradition at my house. It revovles around avoiding arguments. We commit to each other (my wife, myself, my daughter and my son) to never make a purchase over twenty dollars that we haven’t discussed. We figure this is one way to control any bitterness or resentment when someone (especially my wife, if I may) spends a considerable amount of our limited budget. We include everything from food items to clothing. We even had a meeting over obtaining one of those kitchen carts. Which, by the way, was one of the most useful purchases we have ever made.

It always makes me furious when my brother constantly annoys me with his negative take on any thing to do with stem cell culture. His pervasive personality can easily incite anyone to rage. I am trying to take my own advice and control the anger on my side. Maybe the only way to stop it is to remove the thorn. He is what the rest of the family regards as a “contrare”, if you think it, he doesn’t. He has to be different. The real problem is that he loves the confrontations. Whenever one of us storms off irritated, it makes his day.

It may seem trivial to some but the truth is the biggest problem with having additional family live with you is the kitchen. With the economy being what it is today, many of us are moving in with other family members as a way to survive. The problem in my situation is that my sister, who moved in with her two children, is a talented cook. She constantly takes over my kitchen and it is beginning to make me angry. In an attempt to control the situation, I am buying two kitchen carts from Cymax. We will each keep our own weapons, excuse me, cookware on our own cart to contribute to the peace.

It goes without saying that the number one cause of anger is stress and more often than not finances have something to do with that stress. The perfect example of this is what happened between a friend of mine and his business partner when the going got tough at the onset of the recession. They began to make poor inventory decisions in their furniture business and were overstocking some items and understocking others. This tied up much needed revenue and had them at each other’s throats. An outsider stepped in and showed them how furniture retail software could help resolve their situation. With a small investment and a few months adjusting, they are now doing fine.

When I first saw the term green printing, I thought that meant that the color green was possibly easier on the eyes and might replace the forever standard of black ink. My son heard me relate to that and literally called me stupid. It instantly made me angry. To my credit, I closed my eyes and counted to ten (or maybe it was twenty or thirty) and swallowed hard. It was a good thing I didn’t over react because as soon as I opened my eyes, I saw a grin on his face depicting that he viewed my oversight as funny. I’m sure I’ll be hearing more about this in the future.

I have witnessed good friends losing it with each other over some of the most ridiculous arguments you could ever think of. My cousin and her so called BFF (best friend forever, in case you’re over 50) were discussing (that’s putting it mildly) an embryonic stem cells differentiation lecture they just attened at the local university. They obviously derived opposite points of view from the dissertation. One thing led to another and the next thing you knew they were rolling on the carpet pulling each other’s hair out. They both let their egos stir up their anger. Now they have to pay for a broken lamp and coffee table.

I’m sure we have all heard about tragedies that happen that were incited by some meaningless incident. This proves over and over how dangerous uncontrolled anger can be. There recently was an incident where two rival brothers were in a department store and were arguing over who would buy the last of the kitchen carts on the floor for their mom at Christmas. They, unfortunately, let it get way out of hand and so physical that they destroyed thousands of dollars worth of merchandise at the store and one of them lost an eye. They will be coming up on charges in the next month or so.

Yet another tongue twister out of the world of stem cell research. Methylcellulose based media is a great phrase to use when some loud mouth party animal is strutting around like a peacock and annoying everyone in the room. Yes, it makes even me angry when there is an obnoxious display going on. I always remove myself from the vicinity as quickly as I can. When I return to the scene of the obscene, I blurt out medical terms to divert the attention from the idiot. I don’t know if it works for others, but it works for me.

Very often in life you are placed in a situation where you can decide what direction to go in when something arises that is obviously controversial. You ask yourself “Do I get angry? Do I let it slide? Or, maybe, I should just try to understand it?” If you take the time to control the emotion you have a great chance of coming up with the right answer, which is never anger. A friend was spewing out medical terms like CHO cell media and embryonic stem cells to impress my fiancee. It irritated me to no end. Then I realized, there is no way she would so easily be impressed by this braggart.