I’m Pissed Off!

You’ve been abused, neglected, or disrespected, you’ve had about all you could take. If asked how you feel, you might grit your teeth and express, “I’m pissed off!” if you were able to practice some restraint. You might like to express yourself with other superlatives, but nonetheless, you’re mad, and rightfully so.

Someone has hurt you. Maybe they did not slash you with a machete or shoot you with a gun, but the pain is just as real, possibly worse, because a physical wound could be treated at the hospital and you could return to normal physical operation with nothing more than a scar to remind you of the initial wound, while emotional wounds of those who have hurt you remain and can persist for much longer.

How you respond to being pissed off for being hurt or suffering some injustice has a huge impact on the quality of life you experience along your life’s journey. If you harbor bitterness and resentment, you will experience premature aging, advanced illness, and a shorter lifespan. There is also evidence which suggests if you entertain thoughts of being victimized by someone or something, you will attract more victimization, thereby increasing the damage done by just thinking about former transgressions.

If you are in the frame of mind of feeling or saying,

“I’m pissed off!”

At someone or about something, you’re inviting more reasons to be pissed off.

Do you like the feeling of being pissed off? (Most people do not) and there’s good reason, because if you’re pissed, or have bitterness or resentment in your heart, your body is actually suffering deterioration. Your otherwise healthy state of being, both physically and emotionally, is breaking down. Your immune system declines making your more subject to illness and disease and your state of mind becomes fragile, leading to anger, outrage, sadness, or depression.

What Can You Do When You’re Pissed Off?

So, what can you do when you’re apt to shout out, “I’m pissed off!”

You basically have two options in general. You can be part of the problem and fight back, or you can be part of the solution, practicing tolerance and let it go. Revenge and tolerance are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Fight Back

The emotional stance of fighting back can be performed either by launching a counter-attack of any kind in the real world, in your mind, or by adding to the energetic momentum by focusing on the cause of your angst, or the negative results of it. Whether you’re fighting back in the real world, or just in your mind, the psychological and physiological deterioration is the price you pay for entertaining the idea or engaging in a battle over the even that pissed you off.

While holding it in may help you to save face in the real world, far more damage is done to your body, mind, and spirit in the process of burying the emotions inside. Doing so will literally decrease your quality of life and lead you to an early grave, but you will be more respected in the community for your ability to handle whatever life throws at you.

In this respect, it’s healthier to have expressive emotional outbursts or to launch revenge-fueled counter-attacks, but depending on your definition of integrity or dignity, this may not be the best approach to promote a better world, for retaliation only makes whatever your fighting against more powerful.

You don’t want to become a generator of negative energy. If you want to take a stand against something, do not oppose it, instead support and turn your attention toward a positive solution.

It may be wiser to consider a bit of,

Tolerance

From the perspective of tolerance, you see things from a different point of view. You imagine what it must be like to walk a mile, or live a life, in someone else’s shoes. From this compassionate and loving viewpoint, you can understand and see that most injustices are neither malicious or fueled by any intention to harm you or make you feel bad in any way. More the most part, people are just trying to get through life the best they can with what they have.

You could forgive your transgressor, but that establishes you as a victim. A higher resonating vibration is not to need to establish yourself as a victim requiring recompense or forgiveness but to disempower the whole affair by realizing there was never an intent to harm you. You realize that had you been that person, living their life in their shoes, at that moment in time, you would have done the same thing. You know this is true because you witnessed it.

Now you can have compassion for that person (being careful not to self-righteously judge or demean) understanding that we’re all just doing the best we can with what we have,

The practice of tolerance is the moral high road, and it does not come easily because we are trained from birth to practice separation and opposition, whereas tolerance promotes unity and harmony. Tolerance takes practice, but the benefits are more of the qualities in life that you desire.

More love, happiness, wellness, peace of mind, longevity…

Then there are the cases of malicious intent to deceive or harm you directly, these are really quite rare and might be associated with someone who is potentially a psychopath or sociopath, but that’s a different story.

What approach are you likely to take the next time you feel like shouting, “I’m pissed off?”

See also: How to Keep from Getting Pissed Off

How to Keep from Getting So Pissed Off

I don’t care who you are, every once a while you find yourself running off the rails and getting pissed off by someone or over something… Aargh!

Can’t help it, in life, shit happens, and sometimes we lose our otherwise sense of cool and let ourselves get pissed off, even to the point of losing it.

Beware when you start to feel like shouting, “I’m pissed off!”

Anger is a negative emotion based on fear, which is the gateway to lower emotional vibrations of sadness, guilt, frustration unhappiness and helplessness.

If what you want is to achieve happiness in this life, you’re going to have to learn to recognize anger when it rears its ugly head and lop it off before it makes you look the fool and starts to drag you down.

Identifying when your emotions or anger start to build within you, catch yourself and ask,

Am I angry at someone else? Or alternatively, Am I angry at myself?

Analyze yourself and determine what it is that makes you feel angry, this will help you to pinpoint what it is that’s getting your goat.

The better you get at controlling your anger, the easier it gets to get along in life without the unnecessary distraction of unbridled anger running amok.

The better you get at getting a grip, the closer the happiness is that you seek.

Try this:

When you feel anger welling up inside you, allow yourself to go limp, as if all the life just drained out of you and from this slumped, deflated position, breathe into and out of your diaphragm allowing your inner soul to reinflate with love. You will find this an effective way of disarming anger before it gets ahold of you.

Imagine yourself stepping outside your body and looking at you and asking you, “Do you think displaying anger in this moment is going to get you what you want?” Will it affect or change anything for the better of give you what you want to be angry? If not, let it go. Public displays of anger are unbecoming and are not likely to serve you in any plausibly positive light or lead to a good outcome.

Anger is a stressor which breaks down your immune system, promotes advances aging and physiological deterioration. Is that what you want? Create a stress-free zone in your mind, a place you can go where you feel perfectly calm, safe and secure. Go to this place which is safely secure in your mind, when you feel like anger is getting the best of you.

If the object of your anger is something someone else is doing, try to imagine yourself, if you were that person doing that thing… Would you be as pissed off if it was you? Might you be able to imagine why that person might feel led to do what they’re doing that’s pissing you off?

When it comes down to it, your anger is all about you, no one else but you. You are the one who decides whether your anger gets the best of you, or not. You choose whether to get pissed or let it go. It’s all on you.

For some people, reciting a positive affirmation in the moment that you are facing anger building up inside you can prevent you from compromising your otherwise healthy state of mind. Affirmations, such as, “I am calm and relaxed.” Or, “Anger is not going to have its way with me,” “Take it easy,” and/or, “Let it go,” are all good examples. Fina a mantra you can initiate at the moment, you need to get a grip.

My grandmother always used to tell me to count to ten before letting anger get the best of me, and I’ll be damned if this didn’t turn out to be an effective deterrent to making a fool of myself by letting rage possess my state of mind. The simple process of focusing on the numbers and seeing them in your mind’s eye as you are counting to ten can allow you to not lose control and see things from a more logical perspective.