Eph75

You should watch Leo's latest video, he's speaking to you in that one

@Dany Balan I second @Inliytened1's comment. If you get stuck in your head about this, it will escalate. Even if it's psychological e.g. Cialis can help in the sense that it let's you get out of your head and build new confidence, as you can rely on performing, and thus break an unfavorable thought spiral. Also, how are you doing generally, psychologically, depression, stress, a lot on your mind or other things going on? Is there something that you should address separately that might mess with your general mental state?

@Blackhawk This isn't directly related to the OP. I know that you think these thoughts serve you well, in the sense that they verify the world as you experience it. While the thoughts affirms what you "know", they don't serve you well from a transformational perspective. They keep you firmly fixed in the world view that you currently have, that I think you do acknowledge as "dysfunctional". Not meaning that you are dysfunctional, but that the world around you is dysfunctional and essentially, as a results, treats you in an unfavorable way. This being confirmed by you thinking that you aren't attractive enough, and that people won't accept you for who you are, based on that, which you "know", by experience. Basically, there's no arguing with that, as it is, in your world, "true" and "confirmed" by yourself, yes? What if what you need, in deeper sense, isn't good looks, which you probably could control to some degree. Nor is it for others to change, which you certainly cannot control. Have you ever contemplated that the way you relate, attach meaning to things and the resulting world view and view of yourself as well as the people in it, is the result of your way of relating? And that, if your focus is being switched from affirming that the outside world is "against you", your focus better serves you by being on your mindset. I'm not saying that you should shift from thinking you're less attractive to being more attractive. It's much more fundamental than that. - Positive thoughts vs negative ones - actively looking for opportunities vs seeing obstacles everywhere - Push for growth and movement vs entertaining a deep belief that what is, is fixed and can't be done anything about I could easily say that this is the path forward, and we're you to walk this path, you would absolutely change as a human being. You probably already feel the resistance against possibility of this being true or even remotely possible. And if it were, it would be others and that you are some kind of exception from the rule. It's the right-hand side of those three mindset traits that is working away on you. Only by shifting how we see things, we can allow outselves to see and experience a different world, within what's already there, in our field of experience. Those mindset traits determines whether we see a beautiful, supporting world full of opportunities that are ripe to be picked, by you, where you feel powerful and in control of your choices - or - whether you see a world that is dark, grim, full of problems, let-downs and that is essentially "out to get you", where you is the victim of circumstances. It's only when, deliberately, you can recognize the unfavorable mindset traits that you hold, that you can shift to try to adopt, and transition into holding a more constructive mindset. This isn't rocket science, but it's by no means easy to achieve. Mostly because of the nature of our mindset itself, as it defines the dogma that keep us running in the same old ruts that got us stuck in the first place. But instead of trying something new, we struggle with the same tactics that got us there, and that we deep down already know, won't get us out of those ruts. Rather they make the ruts deeper, getting increasingly stuck, with the obstacles growing increasingly monumental. Could I suggest you a summer read to learn more about growth mindsets, and maybe you could deliberately entertain the idea of this crazy thing called "growth mindset" possibly being true, and something you could practice and adopt to successively change your world into something more positive? (It's not explicitly dealing with "hot girlfriends" , but that's the point, that need is just a symptom of things on a deeper level that needs attention) The book is Mindset by Carol Dweck, and it's also available on as audiobook if you don't care for reading. See it as an investment in yourself, and try to approach it with an open mind. I'd also suggest that you re-read this post, slow down, and try reading it thinking about how positivity, opportunity and growth would interpret this post.

Same here, still am, in multiple arenas, not for the sake of results, but for the sake of doing, simply because you can, and the prospect of doing something for humanity. Hold on there cowboy Effort is finite, and how it's spend should be decided with care. I'm curious though... What would your efforts to raise consciousness look like, as you imagine it? What does raising consciousness really mean, within this kind of group context? What kind of social groups do you have in mind? What makes this any Different from what is, or could be happening, right here, right now?

Yes, and everything is at movement, always, even when it doesn't seem so, smaller or greater movement. The design when done "right" just helps with setting a greater pace of change

Which by no means negates such efforts, but includes them

Would only work if you managed to shift at least one person's mindset while doing do, otherwise the group dynamic just flexes back to whatever manifestation it represented when you entered, and by doing so, temporarily changed the group dynamic. That shift in that [minimum] one person would have to be strong enough for it to maintain continued influence, after you leave that group. That would imply that influencing the group isn't the path forward, but targeting specific people that holds the potential to A) be open to shifting, and B) impose continued positive (as you deem it) influence on the group dynamics. If the group is a loosely coupled set of individuals, e.g. too large with many inconsistent contributors, that vary from time to time, the culture is a more complex sum of the total of the individuals in that group, often united by deficiency needs and fears, compared to a group with prominent, consistent contributors where there are leaders and followers. What the desired outcome is matters, and the path, and the means to move in a desires direction needs to be carefully selected, to move towards the desired outcome. Also working from as many directions as possible, and as many key individuals as possible, as a coordinated effort. I do think that this is utopian thinking and that, without knowing what social media groups you're thinking of, those groups are the least likely to be susceptible to shifting. People typically don't want to, and are not looking to change themselves. So change would need to happen despite their resistances, and ultimately change must be created within themselves, by themselves. It's easier to play on people's needs and frustrations, to catalyze negativity, than it is to catalyze positive change within people. Just look this forum. You would think that people are here to change, that's the whole point of self-actualization, a never ending quest for a better tomorrow self, realizing the dormant inherent potential that all of us hold. Yet, people put up huge resistence to allowing actual change, even so. Rather wanting the world around them to change, to meet their needs, than them changing how they attach meaning to the world, and thus changing how the world shows up to them. Long-term consistency is needed, by *someone*. That someone can't be you, or me, it needs to be someone else, as this would have to be permanent, to the composition of that group, and scalable, which neither of us are. Which bring it all back to targeting key individuals, purposefully, and in ways deliberately designed in such ways that they respond best to, to catalyze them to shift themselves.

If you manage your pizza eating habit and make that sustainable from a health perspective that's great. Although, that doesn't mean it will be a healthy experience for most people.

Well, to start with, let's not compare e.g. Neapolitan style pizza with the typical grease bomb pizzas that seem to be the norm in most places. American style pizza is much to cheezy and greasy for me. Americans also seem to be addicted to adding sugar into foods, where I would find sugar strange. We have different taste preferences. The pizzas you find in the typical around-the-corner pizzerias in Sweden might be a little bit less unhealthy, depending on which pizza you buy, but still unhealthy. Although Neapolitan style pizza is getting more and more popular, they are, from my experience, rather a Neapolitan hybrid than being pure Neapolitan style. Traditional Neapolitan style pizza is a whole different deal and is quite healthy and doesn't have much cheeze, rather small islands of mozzarella cheeze, and light, airy and easily digestible bread. And especially so compared to these other pizza styles, and these franchises mentioned here. Pizza is a much too wide of a concept to say all is bad, but undoubtedly the majority is pizza lean towards being the unhealthy kind and generally best avoided. The amount of pizza of course matters. Most pizzas are much too much food, especially store bought. There can be too much of a "good thing" as well, doesn't need to be pizza, to turn something healthy into unhealthy by consuming unhealthy amounts. Why do we eat pizzas, might be more interesting to ask, ourselves. Do we buy it because we're too lazy to cook? Do we use it as comfort food, as a coping mecahnism, or do we feed some kind of addiction? And also why feel a need to defend eating pizzas, instead of just eating it, if we're confident that the version we do eat is on the healthier end of the pizza spectrum.

The whole obsession with career and finding ones life purpose can be toxic and anxiety inducing. What role does this play in you feeling depressed? Finding life purpose is supposed to be something that is freeing not the source of feeling like you're failing someone, society or self. The challenges to get "there" will cause some anxiety, but that's healthy challenging of internal resistance. Not having found what your direction is shouldn't make you feel bad. That's more connected to the false expectations, and probably impatience driven by instant gratification, social media so on. So what if you find your true purpose at 30, 35, 45 or later? It's the journey that matters, and the path will unfold when your focus is right. The path is not straight and has many forks on it, and some dead ends. Focusing on things that causes us stress won't help. Rather, it's probably pointing you to exactly with you need to deal with, which is tending to your own growth, by looking at what/why that stress arises in you. "Actualizing oneself" does not equate to being successful in the achiever sense, wealth, fame, status. That's something that inevitably will have to be transcended anyways, but to be able to do so, you first have to do the journey on which your path there sooner or later will show up. Enjoy that journey, that's all we can do.

@somegirl I second that, and it's already been implied. @evgn The question becomes, has the relationship put you into a depressed state, or is what you experience with the relationship a side-effect of the depressed state. Depression can make sex not enjoyable, it can becomes an act that is best gotten over with, but is not denied for the sake of other. Been there, I felt like I was suffocating, literally could not breath, and focused just on breathing to, what felt like, being able to survive. That was not about anyone else than about me, but at that point in time, I had made it about someone else, as an ego defense mechanism. It's easy to shift attention and focus onto other when what we need to do is to internalize that focus to sort something within ourselves out. It's easy to have knee-jerk reactions, and as noble it may seem, to take the blame for being the problem, it might be completely unnecessary to throw something good away, if the "problem" is you. You can run from the situation, but you cannot run from yourself. Focusing on dealing with the depression, and having your girlfriend whom sounds like she is a supporting person to help you get through this sounds like the right thing to do at this point. A daunting task, but it can be done. And support is needed, if nothing else than having someone there that can truly listen to how we feel, so that we can make better sense of ourselves, and what we need to do to get better. Just as @somegirl says, when you get that sorted out, you will have gained clarity and ability to soberly assess the situation, if there's more to this than a side-effect of the depressive state.

@MrTouchdown Yes, and I'd like to tweak that, just by adding complexity. Change as a deliberate phenomena is enabled by the detachment from past, i.e. happening though acceptance, not denial and suppression, as it will keep haunting you in some way, holding you back, or reinforcing what's undesired and needing to change away from. Significant or deliberate change is defined by a desire to create change, which is created by past experiences. Change in a direction, takes two points in space to define that direction, "now" being one point, the other point needing to exist in the past, projecting a direction of movement defining change. With a single point in space, there is a lack of definition of direction, and change is rather more or less variation happening. That doesn't mean that variation based on e.g. positive mindset won't result in signitifant positive change over more/less time. Law of attraction, butterfly effect, not necessarily by conscious influence, but creates change nonetheless.

Touché!

Norwegian coastal landscape is uncannily beautiful. Rent a car, road-trip the coast is a given, consuming spots like this. There are many YouTube videos showing the crazy Norwegian coastal beauty. For a Swede, this is mesmerizing. So close (distance) but so different from the north-east Swedish coast (where I live). @Carl-Richard Curious - are Norwegians desensitized around the multitude of picturesque coastal gems Norway have to offer?

Here are some. They are mostly about investing and aspects connected to investing. But that also will teach you how to think about money. Rich dad, poor dad The richest man in Babylon Think and grow rich The psychology of money One up on Wall Street All very good, but the two first are particularly easy/fun reads as they are using storytelling, might be a good start.

@Someone here Religion serves a function. When the need isn't there anymore, i.e. join/conform where the masses are not united around some level of shared morale, the function needs to be transcended, either by abandoning for some other function that serves developmental evolution, or by changing with time. Ideological religion can evolve to a deeper sense of individualistic spirituality. Or it can evolve to atheism, which itself becomes a function for individualism, that is a stepping-stone towards individualistic spirituality. Function, after function, after function. Serving the inherent need to keep developing. Getting stuck with one function, for the sake of the function and not the development, arrests the development itself. When we're looking at phenomena as function, there's no objective good, bad, true or false. There's only whether it serves the need for development in a sufficient way, or not. If religion helps us transcend developmental evolutionary obstacles, then it's favorable. If it's holding us back, the it's unfavorable. This is easy to see if we're focused on a desired outcome that is "development". What if the desired outcome is something else, for example escape the pains of existence to seek comfort and distance ourselves from responsibity of our own lives (which essentially is resisting development). Then, is religion favorable or unfavorable? Looking at history, you will see different times when religion served a much needed, and required, function. Looking at the world and different societies, you can see that different countries have different needs and require different functions to develop. The question then becomes, which societies are using religion as a function to transcend its current state? And for which societies has religion become a crutch, a means of power or oppression, suppression of change, or otherwise, that no longer serves development. Generalizing, and looking from a developmental perspective, religion was an ingenious invention, in a barbaric time where conformity and control was needed, to be able to create a society that functioned in a better way. Generalizing, and looking at today, religion is more a crutch and holding development back, and it's some new ingenious function we need to evolve. What might that function be, today, that isn't yet fully evolved and not yet fully accepted to create needed change? Connects to the progressives discussion here, where progressive is more the pioneers that being new functions into an existing system. Back in the day, the ones that brought religion into the game were the progressives of their time. Your example of groups split up is a problematic comparison, since all of these groups stand on a foundation that is built on the positive outcomes that religion already has produced. You'd essentially have to reset cognitive development (remove all external influence) and in that sense reboot the non-religious group, to allow that group to evolve through thousands of years, while still in isolation, to get an unbiased result. And, if that experiment even was feasible, I dare bet that they would invent a form of religion as a function to conform their masses, on their developmental journey. Just like religion in various forms, seemingly independent of each-other, have sprung up in different places around the world, while still being fairly similar at the core, driven and shaped by the need to developmentally evolve.

Yes! I never quote Star Wars, but when I do, it's this quote: "Try no. Do or do not. There is no try." Of course this isn't easy, to change something like this there needs to be deep intention, and strong motivation. Extraordinary change require extraordinary measures. Achieving emotional mastery is extraordinary. And the gains are extraordinary (far bigger than anger issues) That's a natural part of the change process, and it makes sense; you came to realize, consciously or subconsciously, that enough was enough, and you compensated. Overcompensation often happens, and I'd stretch to say, with important and "loaded" things that push-back, overcompensation is more the rule than the exception. This is what needs to be unlearned. This is a coping skill, to maintain sense of self and autonomy, by protecting boundaries. But that's where anger is great, useful, and serves an important purpose. Agression is not a useful response. It's the aggression side of this that needs to go, as it's destructive in nature. All emotions are impulses that should go away quickly, except happiness, which dissapates slowly. When we are angry over time, we walk round with cortisol in our bodily chemistry, which has so many negative side effects, psychological, pschysomatic and physical. Maintaining boundaries can be dealt with in more constructive ways, for example impact feedback. Example; "When you keep pointing out my mistakes in my language it makes me feel as if I'm less worthy as a person, as if my worth is reduced to my ability to be grammatically correct." Framing it like this without active/passive aggressivity leaves an imprint in others as "them hurting you". When giving impact feedback it's about letting others know of their action and the impact on you. And it's important to leave it at that, and not get into an argument. If there's an argument, you still lose. The point is to leave the other with a thought. That's a thought that they are likely to take with them. This is especially powerful. If there was an argument afterwards, their lasting thought would be connected to whatever ways you wronged them in or by having that argument. Not the impact they had on you. The grammar example isn't a perfect one, as people commenting grammar is something we're better off not reacting towards, recognizing that there is some need within the other to feel important, or maybe them thinking they are being helpful, by helping you see and correct your grammar. When setting boundaries, we need to we selective, and choose our battles, depending on the severity of that boundary infringement. Not engaging in what's trivial, which is likely a over-reaction based of other more severe boundary infringements. Let's make a distinction here. A) A person with a lot of anger issues go partying every weekend, and keeps getting into fights. This person uses fighting as an outlet of his anger, into aggression, into physically abusing others. That anger release makes this person feel powerful, in control, and it also acts as a pressure release valve. This person gets addicted to exercising that power, essentially finding pleasure in being aggressive. Our brain chemistry works like that, we build addictions within our rewards system. (Extreme example, yes) B) Your example, you feel powerful by setting boundaries, you have difficulty to control your aggression while doing this. You feel powerful because you get a sense of control over your life, by setting those boundaries. That's your Brian chemistry rewarding you for that boundary setting, administering serotonin. That reward is making you come back for more boundary setting, as it makes you feel powerful, and good. This is very different from examole "A", this is healthy power, while "A" was not. Now, the crux here is the agression. There's likely also a bit of power sensation happening based on the aggression. And there's risk that we do get hooked on using aggression also while managing our boundaries, which (think about brain as a trainable muscle) closes the gap towards starting using aggression is other non-boundary-setting situation, as it then brings sense of power. How we manage boundaries matter. We just need to me aware of this, and introspect, into how we use aggression. The end goal is not to use aggression, and find creative outlets. That is, unless it's a life threatening, life-or-death situation, aggression to protect yourself from actual physical harm or injury as a result of someone attacking you. But then we're talking about fight-flight-or-freeze responses where fight require aggression, and will happen instinctually. The possibility is very, very real. But extraordinary, require extraordinary.. Let's make this simple. No. Anger yes! Healthy. Aggression no! Unheatly. Unless it's actual survival. The distinction between the two is important. By losing aggression you don't lose anything, really, you gain something, as aggression takes a toll on you. By losing anger (suppressing anger) you lose everything, as it's connected to maintaining your sense of self. Some would say beating on a punch-bag is a healthy expression of agression. Well, yeah, it's way better than beating on a person. But that's managing aggression outlet. Not emotional mastery. The negative side effects of aggression are still there, needing to be managed, being channalize into an outlet that doesn't hurt others, at best. Great! How would a lovingly radiating person, lovingly set boundaries? (Rhetorical question) It would involve learning to set boundaries without "pouring gasoline and throwing a burning match" onto the problem (which aggression essentially does). And keep remembering, anger is your friend, feel into it, understand it, take action, but regressing to aggression is when we've lost our self-control. Is there room for win-win where boundary setting actually builds relationships and gains respect of others? (Rhetorical question) Some people switch roles when you set boundaries, from being a "perpetrator" to being either "victim" or "helper". Maybe you've seen this in some cases already? Somewhat off-topic, but at the same time not, as this switch happens when setting boundaries and the dynamics in relationships change; "Karpmans Drama Triangle" is a good read-up on this phenomena. (of course, some negative people we should just choose to stay away from, or ignore, but also that can be done without aggression, and instead as a conscious choice) Making this an inward journey puts focus on gaining as much understanding as possible about emotions, conceptually, and observing emotions in yourself. And having that strong intention to move towards mastery. It's hard work, but fully possible. Here's something that helped me towards emotional mastery: When first sensing an unpleasent emotion, say anger, but often it's something else before that, you can stop and ask "it" a disarming question, such as, "hi little friend, who are you and where did you come from". Saying this out loud, if possible, works best. This might sound corny, but that's part of the point, adding some lightness into the process. If we're "dark" in our mind, we need to shift to a somewhat "lighter" mode of introspection. It becomes ritualistic and forces a pause, and a shift, with a note of love and friendliness, into introspection. If you experience emotions as physical phenomena, as I do, shift you focus to the part of your body where that sensation is experienced, and engage into a friendly constructive conversation with that sensation. Over time we catch ourselves in earlier stages of this emotional process, before it gets inflated in the mind. As with everything that is difficult to change, we need to engage with it from all imaginable angles at the same time. That increases the chances of successfully changing our behaviors.

@Magnanimous If anything, Leo's videos is a journey, just like it is for all of us. It might be tempting to skip to the end (current position on his journey), due to instant gratification and all that. Don't. You have your own journey to take which will be fairly represented by watching Leo's videos from day one, and not stressing through them to get to today. This journey is one that takes many years, if you want to embody the information conveyed, through own experience. Knowledge is useless if you don't make the changes in your life. I daresay most people here are in for mental maturation moreso than changing themselves. Slow down, start from the beginning, and make sure that you embody the developmental opportunities that show up. It's not even certain that you will be taking all of this journey. The most important parts for you are the ones at the beginning. Once you get change going you will have your own path unfolding before you. That's more important than following Leo. Start there.

Thanks for sharing that one, it's a powerful one, I'll hold on to that quote ❤️

That's a great start! Sorry, this got long, but it's a complex topic. So regardless of what the trigger is, the work that is needed is within you. The result is that you better manage the anger impuls, and the outcome become at all times more constructive. That's the end game; emotional mastery. This should by no means be confused with emotial suppression, that a no go. It also does not mean engaging in the anger that involves acting out of aggression, which would be destructive. Destructive for two reasons, it births negative side effects in the external world, and, it creates a pattern of more easily channeling anger into agression, every time we allow it to. Our brain builds patterns, it's like a muscle flexing, getting stronger with the type of practice we do, building stronger neural pathways that create strong behaviors that we default to, more easily and quicker, without being able to interact with ourselves inbetween the impulse and a knee-jerk response. That's the first thing that we want to do, to work on creating time/space between the anger impulse and our response, in which we can rationally reason with ourselves to make sense of what's going on. And, based on that reasoning, we can choose the most constructive response that we can come up with. As we do this, we create new neural pathways, that can grow stronger and overshadow our older default pathways, building a strong habit, of being in control of that unfolding. CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) is often used to achieve this, and it's focusing on our cognitive/inner behaviors that produces the our outward behaviors, through which we interact with the outer world; people and circumstances. It's in our cognition that we attach meaning to what happened. And it's this internl world that we can control, and grow towards mastery. Anger (and all other emotions) is based on an impuls that has a message for us, that is useful to us, and that we need to listen to, as it's telling us something, and is calling out for us to take some action. @JonasVE12 already talked about this. Let's make a distinction between anger and anger. There's anger that wants you to take external world action, and this is about someone infringing on you as a person, overstepping your personal boundaries (psysically or mentally), and is calling our for you to establish (or reaffirm) those outward boundaries, so that you maintain (or build-up) your self-worth, self-esteem, and so on. Action: Let others know they've overstepped your boundaries. And then there is anger that is a product of an underlying emotional impulse, where feelings are layered, much like an union, and where the outermost layer is experienced, as anger. Action: Introspection. The first kind is ambiguous, as it's hard to know, without deep enough self-awareness and self-knowledge, whether your outward boundaries that you perceived was overstepped, are healthy or dysfunctional boundaries. Your boundaries may be dysfuntional based on the second kind of anger, where the layer effect as made you overly sensitive towards outside phenomena. Some people are hypersensitive with very dysfunctional boundaries, flying off the walls for everything that happens, typically seen with people that have victim mentality, that perceive the world is against them. Others have let's people infringe on their personal space to such a degree that there's little sense of self left, with resulting low self-esteem and self-worth. People-pleasers and yes-sayers that disregard their own needs are in this risk group. Action in both cases: Working on self to reduce boundaries (first case) , or increase boundaries (second case) , so they are no longer dysfunctional. And to be able to do this, we need to focus inwardly, and not get hung up with others and circumstances, as the change needs to happen within us. Suppressed anger is like a glass of water. That glass keeps filling up, drop by drop, and a lot of us are walking about with full glasses. One single drop, regardless of the significance of that drop, causes an overfilled glass to overflow, resulting in uncontrolled engagement in outwards facing aggression; active or passive aggression. This is why CBT is so important. A) We're not very able to do self-therapy, as our ego is defending our own behaviors, not allowing us to ask ourselves the right questions, let along, producing answers that don't reaffirm the ego. And we're stuck within our own frame so to speak. Although, it is possible, with the right motivation to change, to start building self-awareness and self-knowledge around our anger (emotions) management, to build understanding of what triggers us. B) Therapy trains us around general cognitive behvaior understanding, and being able to learn to choose to leverage our behaviors to product constructive, positive change in our lives. In that sense, it's training in self-management. This is where our focus really matter. If we're externally focus our efforts, we're engaged with blame and justification, removing our own responsibility and ability to learn to manage ourselves. If we internally focus our efforts, we're engaged with blaming ourselves, and feeling obligated to absorb external phenomena. Or a combination of both. The latter build up internal pressure until we snap, until that glass of water is full, and overflows onto "someone". That someone is often not deserving of our "full wrath" being released, as it's often misdirected and exaggerated. If we reach such a point that we focus internally, to create time inbetween our impulses and our responses, we can examine our triggers, choose differently, having more constructive responses, and as a result we create change. We change ourselves, how we function internally, and how we manage to interact with what's external to us. A side-effect from this is that it also changes other's responses to our behaviors (cause and effect), which interestingly can catalyze positive and permanent change within others or your relationship. That means, managing our emotions can and will be hugely rewarding, to ourselves and those around us. Sounds grand doesn't it? It's not easy, it takes dedication and persistence. We need to make a mission out of it. And most of all, it takes the disengaging with aggressive responses to force ourselves to create that space, so that we can keep practicing emotional mastery. Part of this focused effort/practice need to include better understanding emotions, and to be able to go deeper into the different layers of our emotions, to find the underlying emotions that are causing the outer layer emotional expression. Anger let into aggression is our sledgehammer that brings vengeance onto the world. There are reasons why we grab that hammer, and that's what we need to learn to see, what the underlying need is, so that we can work on and understand those needs. We also need to beware, that anger is also a drug, aggression can make us feel powerful and in control. And we might start using it as a drug, to get a false sense of power and control, causing us to feel good about ourselves, that even further shields us from seeing the underlying emotions around which we lack control. Apart from CBT, we need to learn more about emotions and what they are meant for. Tomkins Affect Theory can help with this, and in combination with keeping an emotions journal it can be very effective. Journaling to capture the feelings you've experienced in each day, the intensitet of those feelings, and what might have caused them. Possibly using tools like the "emotions wheel" (Google for different versions and instructions) to help add nuances to our base emotions, helps us to get more "in touch" with our feelings, and build awareness and knowledge of ourselves, and our triggers. Essentially what I'm saying here is that you need to channel the desire to not be an angry person, into building emotional mastery. It's not easy, but it can happen surprisingly quickly, to such a degree that we are able to manage our responses. Moving from catching our anger after the fact, into the moment of engaging with it, and then before, where we can choose not to engage, or to engage constructively. With time, and within introspection, also our triggers grow smaller, and the number of triggers reduces. This is an attempt to point at the start of a process. It's fairly straight forward and a matter of building strong enough intention and motivation to engage with. The complexity is brought by your relationship to each emotion and your history, and the emotional bagage that you have accumulated over a very long period of time. Also, a final note; I just want to point out that "no action" is a perfectly valid action, and often the best action. And sometimes, choosing to take no action in the heat of the moment is what we need to reassess the situation once the anger and adrenaline has settled, at a time when we're more capable to be constructive. While we're "seeing red", we're the least constructive version of ourselves. Yet, this is typically when we either attack others or engage with dealing with and trying to solve problems. Befriend "no action" and "delayed action". Take care

@somegirl If the solution involves fully focusing on yourself and making changes in how you function, are you still willing to make the changes that are needed? Or are you externally focused, looking for changing or interacting with those that trigger you, so that they change their behaviors? Only one of these are in your control.

Perfectly combines; @Leo Gura Distributions are good, yes, distinguishing them allows for seeing the higher level of complexity that helps with the practical side of the equation... @Gesundheit2 ...Which help with moving us to the position where, they're "no biggie".

Coping is definitely not the way, letting go is, eliminating the need to cope. The concept is so simple, but it's not easy. Wouldn't the world be very different if it was? It brings a deeply profound sense of freedom, when this happens. Freedom from self. And yes, of course, your ego won't like it, as it means a ginormous chunk of itself gets discarded when that shift happens. Who are we when we understand that we don't really know anything? We're less - which won't play nice with the ego - and infinitely more, at the same time. Contradictory, paradoxical. It makes it a lot easier to relate to, and helps us to create some easy to accept distance between us and our beliefs. Without implying that we should replace our beliefs with someone else's, as they see it, better beliefs. That would trigger the egos defences. And, we all know intuitly that, it's true. We've proven it to ourselves in the past. Many times. We've most likely just haven't been mindful of it happening.

Not falling for that one.

@Manusia Beware of @Preety_India's response - notice how that strokes your ego? It putting yourself on a piedestal, above what you don't like, as something better or more entitled. Should fire of a bunch of sharp sounding warning bells. Of course, unless ego-stroking is what you are looking for. Has nothing to do with development nor actualization.