Reduce Your Rage When the World is Going to S**t

Women are filled with rage. 

Women are experiencing collective exhaustion, irritation, and outright rage - for all the reasons.

Midlife rage, hormones, injustices, fear, overwork, underappreciation - you name it!

Always being on watch. Working harder to earn our spots. Now we are to blame for the male loneliness epidemic!

Trying to be in two places at once. Doing it all with little support in our families and society. Under constant scrutiny, experiencing condescension and doubt. We fight quiet uphill battles every day.

Rage is a signpost that something is not right in the world. 

The best thing you can do if you feel rage is nothing! We are so busy trying to act like we are okay, but in doing so, we are throwing ourselves under the bus! The best lesson I have learned about rage is to sit with it. Let it simmer. Feel it fully in your body. Where do you feel it? Is your chest thumping? Are you clenching your jaw and your fists? Where are you holding the rage? Take some deep breaths with your rage and just observe it. Accept it with unconditional love. Don't try to push it down or make it go away. Don't do anything. Just be with it. 

The fastest way to diffuse a heavy feeling is to allow it live within you. When it passes through you, you can do the work to move through it.

Some rage we WANT to feel. Would it feel right to you if you didn't feel a certain amount of rage at some of the events happening in the world right now? Do you want to feel happy that our fellow humans are being raped, murdered, trafficked, starved, or neglected? No, it would feel ludicrous or sociopathic not to care or feel something. Personally, I want to be feeling rage, because it shows me that I'm human, I have character and values, and that feeling of rage inspires ACTION in me. It makes me want to have higher standards and help other people. On the other hand, I do not want my entire life to be overcome with my rage because I have responsibilities to do, I have goals to achieve, and I don't want to feel miserable all the time. What good is it going to do if I fixate on the negativity and darkness in the world?

You cannot control the circumstances around you, but you have control over YOU - your thoughts, feelings, and actions. As the Serenity Prayer says, "Grant me the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference." Focusing on what we can control is where the true power lies. 

Aside from the first step: pausing to be with your rage, how do we work through it? Today, I'm going to give you a peak at some of the tools I use at The Bold Life Coaching to help women reduce the rage in their lives to feel better.

The first step is to figure out what we are mad about. The reason I say so, is because these days I'm hearing reasons all over the spectrum. Rage is really an umbrella emotion - you may call it pissed off, angry, frustrated, sick and tired, over it, done, etc. There is specific, nameable rage, and that boiling up rage that festers beneath the surface and seaps out like poison in our moods, actions, words, and actions. Sometimes we can't even put a finger on it because we have bottled it up for so long. 

Generally, the types of rage I see fall into three general buckets:

• Rage at self
• Rage at others
• Rage at society

Which type of rage are you feeling lately?

Rage toward self - you are mad at yourself for letting certain behaviors go, not standing up for yourself, not standing up for others, not living up to the expectations you have for yourself. Your internal critic is loud telling you that you aren't good enough, smart enough, or capable enough. This can look like shame, low self-worth, or giving up. You can shut down, take up less space, shine less, limit yourself. You don't have your own back. We become our own biggest obstacle and we've been treating ourselves so badly for so long, that it barely registers anymore.

Rage toward others - you are mad because someone said or did something to you that you didn't like; maybe they expected too much of you or you expected too much of them. You are disappointed or pissed off. Maybe you have been letting bad behavior go on for too long. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions are directed outward. Maybe you are not looking at your part in the situation though. Maybe you are so busy pointing fingers that you can't see that you have any choice in the situation. You might lash out, but you might back away. When we are angry at others, we often default to a lot of blame and excuses. Our vision is clouded by our own life experiences, pain, inadequacies, judgments, and assumptions, and those keep us from solving our rage.

Societal rage - you are mad at what is happening out there - in politics, what you are seeing in social attitudes, values as a whole, at injustices, abuse of power, etc. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions are directed outward, and chances are you feel the most helpless here. We are blinded by rage, but we don't feel like we can begin to make an impact in situations bigger than us. Our judgments and emotions lead the way. We spin in drama, negative energy, but don't even begin to expect to make a dent in the problem. After all we are only one person, right?

Chances are, you want to address your highest priority rage, so pick a problem or at least a type of rage to focus on. 

The next key step in reducing your rage is to extract the thoughts you are having about the situation from the situation itself. I got news - your thoughts are actually the problem.

We spend a lot of emotional time and energy being mad because we think we are mad at what other people have done or said. What has been taken away from us or messed up for us. It is definitely always someone else meddling, amirite?? But seriously, we are not actually mad at the thing - the event, the person, the words, the situation. How do I know? Because circumstances are not inherently bad. They are neutral. Because others may have experienced the same event, words, situation, and do not have the same feeling about it. We see this all of the time in politics. One side is thrilled with the Big, Beautiful Bill. The other side is the opposite. It cannot be the Bill you are mad at or the people that made it, rather it is your thoughts of the Bill that are causing your rage or your happiness. Either way, your thoughts, experiences, values, judgments, and assumptions color the Bill.

Whether you like the Bill or not, it happened. Those are the circumstances. 

The goal is to reduce the rage in our lives to feel better. Because don't ever forget - your sanity is #1.

Cognitive Behavioral Theory essentially says that our thoughts, feelings, and actions are all interconnected and by getting a handle on those, we can effect desired change in ourselves and the world. When we have negative thoughts, we feel negative, and chances are we act out in unproductive ways that are unhelpful. If we are not careful, this pattern of negative thought creating negative feeling inspiring negative actions becomes a downward spiral of negativity which then becomes the norm in our lives. The concept is simple: change these 3 elements - thoughts, feelings, and actions, to transform your life.

This isn't front page news for many, yet here we are. We are angry, upset, pissed off, enraged, and we can't seem to get a handle on it. You may not have an issue where you fly off the handle, abuse people, and you can regulate your emotions effectively enough to those around you. But rage, stress, and other heavy emotions take a toll on mental and physical illness. Feelings have a way of coming out one way or another. 

When we are trying to improve some aspect of their lives, say anger, we often skip right to the behaviors and try to change habits we've been repeating for a long time. We say that we are going to get off Facebook so we don't have to see the negativity, we swear off toxic relationships, we pledge to change our diet and workout plan. But when we try to make behavioral changes without going any deeper, we often fail to get results. We want to see the new version of ourselves, but the same inner critic is telling us we can't. The same judgmental voice blames others instead of looking at what we can change in ourselves. Soon, we are back to the same behaviors and habits that we were trying to get away from, but now that we perceive that we have failed, we are even less confident.

To break this cycle, we have to be willing to become aware of low-quality thoughts and reframe them to produce better feelings and better actions. This is the thoughtwork that produces change.

I'm going to demonstrate this Thoughtwork model with a pretty simple example to show you how to reframe your thoughts. Now this takes commitment and time to fully bring about change, but if you can pick up a few basic principles, you can make big changes.

What is the scenario? Well, I feel rage because my kids leave their stuff all over the living room and they don't appreciate me. 

The circumstance is that my kids left their stuff in the living room. This is neutrally framed. Not good or bad, it just is. This is what happened.

My thoughts or belief about it is that they don't appreciate me. Wow, imagine if it were really true that your kids did not appreciate you at all? What a horrible way to live. What a travesty! How dare these children to feel such a way - no credit to poor me for doing everything for them!

Do you hear the drama, the self-victimization, the assumptions, the blanket generalization in my thought, "my kids don't appreciate me"?

With all of that personal drama, pain, grandiosity living in my thoughts, of course I feel rage. But is it even true? Is it a fair statement to say that because the kids left a few personal objects in the living room that they don't appreciate me as a mother? No. Is it based on evidence? No, there is no causal relationship between leaving clothing items around and total lack of appreciation. It is not a logical conclusion to draw. Is it a thought I may have had because of a lot of unresolved pain, assumptions, judgment? Quite likely. Could there be other reasons the children would leave their items around the house that have nothing to do with me or their appreciation for me as a mother? Yes.

Our thoughts can get really messy, carried away, illogical, and toxic. In order to clean up our thoughts, we have to self-reflect on them. We have to get honest with ourselves about our own internal messaging. 

The problem with uncontrolled thoughts is that they can create a lot of chaos in our actions.

So my kids left their things in the living room. I thought the thought: they don't appreciate me. This led me to feel really angry. As a result of the anger, I proceed to huff and puff as I clean up their things and yell and scream while doing it. They then shut down because I'm yelling and everyone ends up miserable and angry. The kids think you are crazy and you feel emotionally crazy. It’s a lose-lose because it seems nobody has learned a lesson or grown here.

The thought that they don't appreciate me caused me anger, which led me to lash out and the results were not in my favor.

Reframing the thought begets a different feeling.

• Let's look at this another way: Instead of thinking, "Nobody appreciates me!" I can pause, look at the thought driving my rage, and see how I can replace the thought with something more positive, productive, fair, or reasonable.
• Is it possible that the kids were just being kids, not thinking about the consequences of their actions or got distracted, leaving their belongings where you just cleaned up? Is it possible that they figured you would take care of it because you always do? Yes, all of those reasons are possible. It is possible that their actions had little to do with you and everything to do with them. It is possible that they do appreciate you for picking up their things, but they aren't very good at expressing it. There are a ton of reasons outside of your control. Others are going to say and do things that we don't like all of the time. It's unavoidable. 
• When you reframe the thought so something more reasonable, you get a more reasonable feeling. And this drives more reasonable action likely to get you closer to your ultimate goal.
• In this situation, if I thought these kids left their things out, but they will need to own that, not me, I would feel unbothered, or less bothered for sure. This assertion would probably make me feel pretty driven to go up to their room to ask that they pick up their belongings. I would let them know the consequences of not doing so, and then leave to focus on whatever I needed to do. Totally different actions and reactions that were produced when I was enraged as a result of my extreme thought that Nobody appreciates me!

This is a relatively common example of what women go through on the daily at home with kids and family. There are a hundred little annoyances - rage bait - that can either send us off the deep end or remain unbothered and productivity-oriented.

None of us WANT to be enraged all of the time, especially when it comes to the little things. We want to feel good about the thoughts we have, the way we feel, and the way we act. In order to empower ourselves to respond to others in a way that makes us feel sane, emotionally controlled, and even to fight fairly, we need to first think thoughts that are logical, open-minded, and not blown out of proportion. We can't let our emotions send us into emotional childhood - ranting and raving, making wild generalizations, and blaming others when we have choices in how to think, feel, and respond to the circumstances of our own lives.

Once you have handle on your thoughts and emotions, your actions, reactions, and ultimate results will improve. 

Improving the quality of your thoughts to bring about big change and goal achievement requires commitment and good old fashioned hard work. If you want to achieve transformation in your life by getting a handle on your thoughts, feelings, and actions, schedule a Strategy session with me at theboldlife.coach. I'm happy to help.

You can download the free RAGE worksheet from today's blog 12. Go to the Members page at www.theboldlife.coach, and create a free account or log in. Members can access this and any future content!

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Gandhi:

"Watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Watch your words, for they become your actions. Watch your actions, for they have become your habits. Watch your habits, for they become your values. Watch your values, for they become your destiny."

- Jamesyn