Anger Management

I wanted 2017 be a good year compared to the debacle that was 2016 but so far it is proving to be as bad – if not worse.

I won’t elaborate yet but suffice it to say that I am struggling to contain my anger as well as the other negative emotions that are vying for position.

The good news is that I have a new framework for controlling them – but boy is it hard sometimes.  I want to focus in particular on anger, arguably the most negative and destructive of these emotions.

I have recently been driving to my hometown of Walsall quite a lot and this has been one of many sources of anger and frustration. The distance between Manchester and Walsall is approximately 75 miles and motorways cover all but about five of those miles. On a good day, in the past, the journey has taken me about an hour and fifteen minutes – which doesn’t seem that bad – does it?

The problem is that the main motorway that joins Manchester and Walsall is the M6, which is the worst motorway in the world – or at least in the north of England (if I’m honest).

When I am driving between the two places, the motorway tries to make it as difficult as possible by pushing every single one of the hot buttons that make me angry when I am behind the wheel of a car.

The ensuing road rage is a sight to behold, particularly if you are watching from a distance. If it were a movie, you would grow fat on all of the popcorn you ate as you watched me devolve into a ranting Neanderthal version of myself.

Let me take you through some of the hot buttons.

First, there are major roadworks for four junctions near to Manchester, resulting in the speed limit being reduced from 70 mph to 50 mph. There are 17 miles of this nonsense. During this tedious distance several things happen. There is no hard shoulder so if a car or lorry breaks down or a car has an accident then the whole motorway grinds to an absolute standstill. The motorway is usually busy anyway so we all end up sitting there immobile for what seems like hours on end. Equally frustrating, cars and lorries overtake each other at approximately 35 mph sometimes slowing everybody down completely.

The M6 on a good day!!!

I have crawled along every single mile of that damned motorway at 10 mph! I know every bloody square inch of that motorway in intimate detail!

Next, the M6 is full of lorries. You have never seen so many lorries on a motorway. Some of these lorries travel at 55mph, which isn’t a bad thing until another lorry, just behind, decides to overtake at 56 mph. When this happens, some car drivers lose their minds and swerve into the fast lane without really looking. Others decide to overtake the overtaking lorry at 57 mph thus blocking the motorway for those of us who are in a hurry and travelling at 70 mph. This behaviour causes instant congestion and, depending on how busy the motorway is, can lead to irritating lengthy tailbacks.

Next, the M6 brings out the dick in many drivers’ heads turning them from normal human beings into complete dickheads. For example, there I was in the fast lane overtaking other cars in the other two lanes when Mr Dickhead came up behind me. I was travelling at around 70 mph and this moron roared up at 90 mph and got so close that I thought his car was trying to mate with mine. In my rear view mirror I could see him bashing his steering wheel in frustration. He started flashing his lights.

So where the fuck was I supposed to go? Next to me in lane two were lorries driving nose to tail. I couldn’t have pulled in if I had tried, at least not without causing a major collision.

Did he think my car was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and could take off just to let him pass?

And these dickheads always seem to be driving a Mercedes or a BMW or an Audi. Is it a prerequisite of buying such a car that you have to mutate into a total dickhead when you get behind the wheel?

And then there’s the person who was in lane two approaching a junction. I was in the slow lane. Suddenly, he realised that he was going to miss his turn off and, without even looking went to shoot across my lane to escape the insanity of the motorway. Except I was there and this pillock was inches from side-swiping my car and causing a major accident. Thankfully, he realised at the last minute and swerved back, missing his junction and making my heart miss several beats.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, dear reader. This post could have gone on for days and days but I think I had better rein myself in.

The journey generally takes at least an hour and a half with the record being two and a half hours, which included being stuck in the same place for 45 minutes while the emergency services cleared up an overturned caravan.

I am somehow managing the anger because I have my music (a useful tool for dissipating rage as described in my last post) and when the traffic comes to a standstill I tend to escape into a calmer place with mindfulness techniques.

Also, I can rant on this blog post – that’s a great anger management technique.

Mr Angry

Everybody has a moment when they become angry. I know I do and I’ve seen normally mild mannered individuals succumb to the red mist and explode in a flash of rage. Usually this is a rare occurrence.

However, the are some people who seem to spend their entire day in a perpetual state of fury, never resting from their wrath until they close their eyes to sleep, whereupon I’ll wager their dreams also involve stomping around shouting and screaming at every poor figment of their imagination.

I like to refer to people like this as Mr Angry or, in the case of ladies, Ms Angry. Let’s not forget that such illogical behaviour transcends gender.

I have worked with such people in the past. We all know a Mr Angry.

Mr Angry fails to control his temper and has a short fuse and the only reason he seems to be calm is because he is waiting for a random person to speak to him so that he can explode in rage.

Mr Angry is usually a bully who thinks that bellowing at people will somehow force them to behave in the way that Mr Angry wants.

Mr Angry also explodes when something trivial annoys him – like this man:

Personally, I hate being angry because ultimately that is undoubtedly a low point. It is a rare event, dear reader, and when I am possessed by rage, my mind isn’t clear and I am prone to say things that I will later regret. I am sure this is the same for everybody.

When this happens to me, I simply walk away from the target of my wrath as soon as I can. The symptoms can actually be physical – increased heart rate, anxiety, depression and high blood pressure are just some of them.

Some people may argue that it is sometimes beneficial to become angry in order to “let off steam” and while that may be true for the occasional hissy fit, I think that if you are constantly angry it can’t actually be that good for you.

Therefore I avoid it when I can – and if I can’t I simply run away from the source of my anger.

Okay, regular readers may say; “But hang on! You often rant and rave about things on this very blog!”

Yes, that is true, but it is a technique that I have honed, certainly over the past few years. Anger is pointless but the ability to “let off steam” on a blog allows me to vent my spleen in a controlled way without the adverse reactions associated with a full blown Incredible Hulk moment. And I enjoy it because I can inject a little humour into the mix.

This is also what I do at work; I strive to “let off steam” in a fun way, which allows people to laugh at me. It’s entertainment in a way.

People who know me really well consider me to be very laid back and this is the truth of the matter. I rarely genuinely lose control.

Yet I have seen people who thrive on this anger, maybe because they have had some success in the past as a result of it.

Here’s an example.

Many years ago, I was working in an edible oil production plant. We had supplied a process management computer system to the company and we were testing it in real time. I had heard of a man whom I shall refer to as Mr Banner (in a similar way to the Hulk) and that he was prone to moments of rage.

Yet whenever I had met him, he has been as nice as any person I had worked with. One day, we were running a test and something went slightly wrong.

We were all trying to find the problem and it was either a computer glitch or a problem with the equipment itself. We were in a control room above the equipment and we had to wear all the safety gear including hard hats and goggles to satisfy the Health and Safety police.

 I looked at the computer screen and after about five minutes of watching what was going wrong, I turned to the guys in the room and told them that I thought I knew what the problem was. We had a test system downstairs and I knew that I could confirm my hypothesis on that machine and actually fix the issue. I said, “Give me ten minutes.”

Now everybody in the room seemed to accept this – apart from Mr Banner. He glared at me and then he glared at each of the other guys in the room in turn.  Then, in a true Hulk moment, he pulled off his hard hat and screamed:

 “PPPPPPPPHHHHHHHAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!”

He hurled his hard hat at the floor and it bounced up with a noise that sounded like a firecracker. His face turned bright red and everybody in the room backed away from him. I stood there open mouthed in shock.

He walked to his hat, picked it up and I could see his inner struggle. I expected him to calm down but he didn’t! Instead, he picked it up again and hurled it across the room at the wall. I was expecting him to turn green but instead his face darkened to a weird crimson colour.

That was my cue.

I turned to the guy next to me who was also goggling in shock and said “I’m off to the test system!”

I left the room and went downstairs shaking my head in disbelief and half expecting Mr Banner to follow me. There was no way I was going to tolerate that kind of behaviour.

Thankfully, I was not followed.

Twenty minutes later, I had found the problem and returned to the control room with the fix. The rest of the day was fine and by then Mr Banner had returned to his normal calm self. I received no words of thanks and he behaved as if the episode had not happened.

What scares me about such behaviour is that it is unwarranted and also the perpetrator thinks that his antics will force people to bend to his will.

However, what makes me laugh about Mr Angry is the irrationality of it all and, sometimes, I have to walk away when I see Mr Angry in full flow, in case I burst out laughing and enrage him further.

Like in this video:

My advice to Mr and Ms Angry is to take a deep breath and walk away. That’s what I do – it works for me – unless Piers Morgan is on the TV.