“Don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill” this is a pretty common idiom that I imagine we all have heard some variant of in our lives. Assuming you haven’t, it essentially means not to make a huge problem out of a small problem. That is, a sink of dirty dishes does not lead to the end of humanity as we know it. Sure, certain situations can be far more frustrating for one person versus others, but that does not make a small issue any larger. But, what if I told you that a mole hill can build its way to being a mountain. In other words, that sink of dirty dishes has been there for 7 months, started festering, and you’ve asked the culprit to clean it up every day of those 7 months with no success. Most people by this point would roll up their sleeves and wash the dishes themselves, and I often do just that in my situations. However, this little problem, has grown little by little into a much larger issue. Each new added dish, each refusal to address the issue, has added another grain of sand onto the mole hill, until it becomes this mountain of a problem.

I genuinely have never been good at managing my emotions, but through trials and tribulations, have learned to do so. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I’m any good at it, but there are some emotions that I have more success with than others. To this day, anger is the sole emotion that I still cannot express in a non-negative way. I’m not proud to admit, but I also have some sadistic tendencies. Not that I enjoy hurting people, but I want people to understand and comprehend pain. That every single action has consequences, good or bad. I often feel the best way to teach this lesson is through violence. I don’t condone or enjoy violence, but somewhere deep inside me screams to just pummel a person who is being an ass. I do believe this is a relatable feeling, but not something that should actually be done. I myself have only ever thrown 2 punches my whole life, and I don’t even remember why. I do remember however, that by physically expressing my anger, I immediately lost all benefit of the doubt and became the person in the wrong. It’s this part that I really don’t like. I, again, do not like violence nor condone it, but some people do deserve a good punch to the nose; and being the person who threw that punch should not automatically discredit the reason for doing so. I am unsure as to why I cannot process my anger in a beneficial or even neutral way. I either hurt myself or want to hurt others. Usually, I just take the anger I feel, bottle it up, bury it deep down, and fantasize about the person who made me so angry getting their comeuppance. This, as you may imagine, is an endless cycle that is ultimately bound to break apart in a explosive fashion. I would regularly “empty” my anger with alcohol, but that too is not a sustainable solution.

So, how do we deal with anger? This is a question that I ponder often, and I am sure has a million and one answers. The problems arise in that these methods for managing anger are not universal, what works for you may not work for me and vice versa. Not only that, but the second conundrum we find ourselves in, is outpacing the build up of anger, to obtain a net zero or negative. Otherwise, the mole hill still ends up a mountain, it just takes a lot longer, and will generally be hard to detect before it explodes. You look up anger management skills online and 9 times out of 10, it will be just some form of “go exercise”. Whether that is as simple as go for a run, or as on the nose of go punch stuff in a MMA class. There are also businesses that exist solely to let you break things. Throw dishes at the wall, take a bat to an old TV, etc. I’ve never been to one, and I don’t really know if it would be as cathartic as everyone says it is. But I don’t think that exercise would be a good match for me. Long story short, I associate exercise with punishment because of my younger days in sport clubs. I haven’t for the life of me, been able to break that association, and therefore avoid exercise like the plague. Despite knowing full well, that it is quite possibly the best thing I could be doing for myself in all aspects. Then there are of course the anger management courses that focus on any sort of meditation and mental mind games like reframing and such. I don’t think these are bad methods in the slightest, and I even use reframing in other parts of my mental health. I will say however, that these are also not very effective in my case, as my mind tends to run a mile a minute, has extreme difficulties acheiving that level of focus, and I can never seem to hold it long enough for any relief. I assume that this is probably one of those “practice makes perfect” type skills, but practice and patience are some of my many weak points maybe even the weakest. I have a streak of perfectionism, in that things must be done to a certain standard, and if I don’t get it right on the first try, then it’s not something I’m capable of doing. That however, is a discussion for a different time.

So what are we, and by we I vicariously mean me, to do with our anger? That isn’t something I have the answer to…well, true. There are many answers, but having a solution, and that solution working are two vastly different things. Though, to be totally honest, I’m not really sure if I could even say that I’ve tried any of the solutions available to me. Again, that little streak of perfectionism prevents me from investing time, money and energy into something that there isn’t a 100% chance of success with. Of course that is just my excuse, and although I’ll call myself out on it, it doesn’t change the fact that it continues this way. So, I found some bad coping methods that kind of work, and I stick with them for better or worse. I don’t know why I do this, maybe because they are an easy balance of effort and relief? Low effort and low relief that is. But nonetheless, I still find myself in quite the predicament with my anger. During these fantasies I often imagine those that made me angry meeting a rather violent, but not life threatening event. Whether it is myself causing this violence doesn’t matter, but I just imagine that this person gets put in their place. I don’t know if it’s because I view them as too stupid to reflect on their actions with words alone, or too prideful to do so, but I generally see violence as the only way to teach these people a lesson. For the third time though, I do not condone nor enjoy violence, and am actually rather disturbed when I have these fantasies. Though, it probably has to do with the fact that I’ve been bottling up my anger and shoving it deeper my whole life. Plus, the methods I do have for managing my anger, repressed or present, are so wildly inefficient, that every grain of sand removed from my mole hill is usually replaced with a dozen. I am not afraid that I’ll snap one day and go on some violent spree though. While I do have the physical capacity to cause harm to others, I don’t have the mental capacity for doing so. I know this very well about myself. I don’t like pain, and I can’t stomach inflicting it on others. The two times I’ve done so, I was not only very young, but it didn’t really sit well with me. The two people I punched most certainly deserved it, but just imagining the pain I inflicted, being inflicted on myself makes me shudder. I like to think myself to be rather empathetic, and therefore I do not like even thinking about causing physical harm to other people. But for some reason, my brain goes there anyways, in far more drastic ways than I can even comprehend. But at the end of the day, these are all just fantasies in my imagination, and while I know that I will never even try to live them out, it still is not a helpful, nor effective method of managing my anger.

I’ve been rambling on a while here, so I’ll try to wrap things up. I know that anger is a natural emotion that is unavoidable. At some times it can even be a beneficial emotion used for positive outcomes, like not killing myself for the sole reason of outliving my enemies type of deal. But I am still troubled by trying to keep it within reasonable levels. I keep waiting for some ultimate grain of wisdom to drop into my lap, allowing me to suddenly become an expert with anger, but that will never happen. I will have to overcome myself before I can overcome my anger. I will have to try and try and try and fail and try again to succeed in becoming someone who doesn’t bottle up their anger. Then I’ll probably have to do it all over again to become someone who can healthily manage my anger. I will stumble and fall, and that in my mind is not okay, which is being too critical of myself, because almost everyone trips up with things they aren’t good at. So I guess, I’ll just have to get used to slamming my head against the wall until I can learn these skills. It won’t be easy, it will be painful at times, I’ll most certainly give up more than I can count, but this road of thorns is one that I must travel. Knowing myself this well, I’d say that I’m a lost cause, but one foot must go in front of the other. Standing still and expecting things to change, is just pure foolishness, and while I am most definetly a fool, I am a fool who can learn. So, last thing, be hard on yourself, but also be understanding, learn from your mistakes, and always keep moving forwards