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diadicic
diadicic's picture
Mad at the world

Ever feel mad at the world and not know why? Trying to look at things differently and let go of it. I am not an angery person by any means, just seem to let daily life pull my strings lately and know I shouldn't. How do people deal with it? Dom

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

As a general point to all readers: All health issues (mental and physical) are best addressed through consultation with professionals. The internet is no substitute for that. Do seek professional help if needed. You’ll be glad you did.

diadicic wrote:
Ever feel mad at the world and not know why? Trying to look at things differently and let go of it. I am not an angry person by any means, just seem to let daily life pull my strings lately and know I shouldn't. How do people deal with it?

Sometimes anger can be a symptom of anxiety and depression. As per the general point above, it’s important to get help if that’s the case. True anxiety and depression should not be confused with day to day stress and sadness. They are very different. That important point made, we all feel stressed, sad and angry from time to time. It’s a natural.

For my part, exercise is a great panacea. I take the stress, the anger, the frustration, the sadness, etc and burn them as fuel. Intense exercise has always been very cathartic for me.

I hit, I lift, I move; and I always feel way better.

I know I’m not alone in this either. A training partner of mine jokes that training is “impact therapy” for him. He has a high stress job and hitting things burns up / gives an outlet to the physiological responses to that stress.

Music also helps me too. Sometimes I need something energetic to burn the emotion up. Other times I need something light-hearted to encourage a sense of perspective. Sometimes, something relaxing and soothing is what’s needed. Music can be a very powerful tool for emotional regulation.

Prevention is always better than cure of course. But that said, I don’t think it’s healthy or realistic to expect a life devoid of all negative emotion. We’ve not failed, and we are not “wrong”, when we feel less than perfect. There are things that can help us keep us on a more even keel though.

Meditation and breathing exercises can help a lot. 5 minutes here and there can make a huge difference to our mood.

Avoiding and identified “triggers” is a good idea too. For me, I’ve stopped putting the news on as I have my morning coffee. It can wait until later in the day :-) I now start my day with a little comedy. That helps keep me more upbeat than the morning list of all that’s wrong with the world. If you can identity the triggers, then you can manage them much better.

Taking time out each day to relax and do something nice for yourself is important too. If we don’t recharge the batteries, that background stress can see us in an endless low- to mid-level adrenalized state. That can make us hypervigilant and that can result in feelings of anger (the “fight or flight” response).

You’re not alone in this and I hope some of the above resonates.

All the best,

Iain

Nimrod Nir
Nimrod Nir's picture

Iain Abernethy wrote:
As a general point to all readers: All health issues (mental and physical) are best addressed through consultation with professionals. The internet is no substitute for that. Do seek professional help if needed. You’ll be glad you did.

Great post Iain, with many solid suggestions and an important caveat regarding seeking professional help in cases of psycho-pathology.

diadicic wrote:
Ever feel mad at the world and not know why? Trying to look at things differently and let go of it. I am not an angery person by any means, just seem to let daily life pull my strings lately and know I shouldn't. How do people deal with it?

I would like to expand on the meditation and breathing exercises, which Iain suggested.

Iain Abernethy wrote:
Meditation and breathing exercises can help a lot. 5 minutes here and there can make a huge difference to our mood.

I highly recommend incorporating Yoga practice as part of the routine. Meditation and breathing, along with physical postures, being a part of Yoga practice.

Aside from being a sort of physical exercise, which is a common stress reliever as mentioned by Iain (and could also improve the general health, flexibility, mobility etc.), an important aspect of Yoga practice is the spiritual aspect of eliminating the suffering from life.

For the sake of our case, it is important to define what I mean by "spirituality", as it tends to be a very vague definition which means different things to different people.

To me, spirituality is the process of the gradual breaking of the social programming and transcending above the suffering.

I feel that this definition is still too vague for most, so please bear with me a little further.

Our existence is based on survival. Therefore, we have evolved and are built to survive, both in the internal-genetic level (DNA) and the external-social level. Because of our social survival instincts, most of us live an unauthentic life. Our "choices" are influenced by social programming, a mechanism which originally developed to support the survival of our species. However, today we live in a totally different environment than our primitive ancestors, and the risks to our survival are significantly lesser in modern life. Still, the adaptation of our genetic design (evolution) is a slow working process, which has developed over millions of years. It did not have enough time to adapt to the rapid change in our living conditions the last few thousand years. Basically, we try to go through modern life using a very old and un-updated "hardware and software", which was designed to help us survive primitive life. This dissonance creates a lot of suffering. The spiritual process is, therefore, the gradual breaking of the social programming, and the process of adopting authentic life choices. A by-product of this process is the elimination of suffering from one's life.

That is spirituality to me - transcending above the social programming and living an authentic life, devoid of suffering.

Spirituality is the original purpose of Yoga practice, and that's why I highly recommend incorporating it into your routine.

However, just like civilian self-defense was the original purpose of Karate, and today many (most?) organizations either do not address it or address it incorrectly, the same thing happened with spirituality and Yoga. Most modern Yoga teachers don't address the mental-spiritual process, and instead focus more on the physical side of practice (becoming more flexible, achieving more challenging "circus" postures etc.). In fact, practicing with this "modern" attitude may indeed contribute to the suffering more than aid to eliminate it.

I therefore recommend finding the right teacher, which addresses your needs.

Hope this helps and gives another direction and path.

diadicic
diadicic's picture

Don't worry I'm not falling off the deep end or anything. And I would never hurt anybody else for myself if I fell the had a problem. I'm just enjoying the conversation I've had to deal with all of it using my own facilities.

Dom

AllyWhytock
AllyWhytock's picture

Hello, My experience of Karate helping to protect myself from myself.

https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/article/toudi-jutsu-positive-living-ally-whytock

Kindest Regards,

Ally

Marc
Marc's picture

diadicic wrote:

Ever feel mad at the world and not know why?

I think it helps to identify the specifics: Who actually is "the world"? Exactly what makes you feel mad about them? How and why does that make you feel mad?

In my experience breaking down vagueness by asking for specifics, looking at the data (if there is none try to collect it) and honestly questioning my own beliefs is a good way of turning that feeling of unease into knowledge of a problem. A feeling may just pull you down. A problem can be tackled - even if it is a complex one.

Take care

Marc

PS: Of course, it may be that you're still captured in The Matrix... ;-) https://youtu.be/zQ1_IbFFbzA?t=102  

Ian H
Ian H's picture

Worth repeating:

Iain Abernethy wrote:

As a general point to all readers: All health issues (mental and physical) are best addressed through consultation with professionals. The internet is no substitute for that. Do seek professional help if needed. You’ll be glad you did.

My favourite quote from The Art of War is ... 

No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.  If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are.   Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.  But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.  Hence the enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution. This is the way to keep a country at peace and an army intact.

I also encourage you to look into the works of Jocko Willink.  He's a retired Navy SEAL who is now an author, podcaster, and business consultant who focuses on leadership issues.  You can get the bulk of his philosophy from his books "Extreme Ownership" and "The Dichotomy of Leadership" ... or you can get it for free from his podcast (including Youtube clips on specific topics).  A good place to start may be a Youtube search for "Jocko anger" and see what clips come up.  Worth studying well.