by Phillip Day

‘Go, and never darken my tow­els again!’ – Grou­cho Marx

 Anger is not the event itself but your inter­pre­ta­tion of it.

After you’ve calmed down, was your anger reasonable?

• Always seek a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to a conflict
• Don’t delib­er­ately make trou­ble for someone
• If some­one is deter­mined to make trou­ble for you, exe­cute a pro­por­tion­ate response to the threat com­ing against you
• If nec­es­sary, have a third party mediate

THAT GETS MY GOAT

Are you short-fused for no good rea­son? Most atti­tude prob­lems such as ‘men­tal ill­ness’, anger, stress, road rage, etc. derive from the ham­ster wheel spin­ning too fast (stress, behav­ioural pat­tern­ing).¹ Don’t be unpleas­ant to be around! You can fix it! Stop read­ing news­pa­pers, eat plenty of fresh whole-foods (includ­ing those omega 3’s), get plenty of proper exer­cise, realise the value of the loved ones and fam­ily you have, and get out of town for a four-week break to calm your­self down. Sheesh!

DRUG ANGER

By far the great­est prob­lems with anger are lifestyle– and diet-related.² Many of the pop­u­lar psy­chi­atric drugs peo­ple are given, such as anti-depressants, manip­u­late lev­els of sero­tonin or GABA to ‘cure symp­toms’ but cre­ate huge emo­tional prob­lems of their own, and the under­ly­ing prob­lem remains unre­solved. Is your med­ica­tion mak­ing you horsey?

SOCIAL ANGER

I am not against anger as a social state­ment maturely directed, it can get things done. I founded the Cam­paign For Truth In Med­i­cine because of my resent­ment (anger) at the unac­cept­able quack­ery being prac­tised by the med­ical and drug estab­lish­ments for great profit and to great harm. I don’t intend beat­ing any of these peo­ple up or emp­ty­ing their garbage over their heads or front lawn, though a ‘British Spring’ citizen’s upris­ing would be nice. The point is, if you are socially upset about some­thing, do some­thing about it if you can affect the outcome.

Many whip up their social indig­na­tion read­ing the news­pa­pers every day, real­is­ing at the same time there’s pre­cious lit­tle they can do about it. This emo­tional impo­tence is sim­ply no good for the old ticker. Each of us must decide how much extra­ne­ous influ­ence and junk we want to allow to pres­sure our lives. It is sober­ing that if you didn’t watch the news or read news­pa­pers, you’d hardly be aware, much less affected by the fol­low­ing, which may have been a cause of anger for you in the past:

• 9/11 (Twin Tow­ers and Wash­ing­ton attacks)
• 7/11 (Lon­don bombings)
• The Afghan War
• The Iraq War (parts 1, 2 and ‘the peace’)
• Israel, Pales­tine and the Gaza Strip
• Cameron, Clegg, Gillard, Abbott, Obama, et al
• FDA, MHRA, TGA, CIA, C&A, etc.
• Bird flu, swine flu, Hong Kong flu, SARS, AIDS, etc
• The Euro­vi­sion Song Contest
• Minor­ity immigrant/asylum/crime/gay and les­bian policy
• EU/Global warming/GM/nano, etc.
• The Indone­sian tsunami, Hur­ri­cane Andrew, etc
• Earth­quakes around the world and other nat­ural disasters

The point being made here is, don’t emo­tion­ally bite off more than you can chew. Some peo­ple become great cham­pi­ons of social jus­tice, oth­ers can’t because of the stress, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do some­thing to con­tribute to a break­through to usher soci­ety in a more right­eous direc­tion. Join a group! They’re not shoot­ing us yet! Over-stimulation of the senses via media, though, is one of the most dev­as­tat­ing yet rarely dis­cussed noce­bos of our mod­ern cul­ture. And then there’s Red Bull.

Excerpted from Phillip Day’s Sim­ple Changes

Copy­right © Phillip Day 2008