yragelok...
I worked in the field of mental health for 25+ years.
My personal experience and my experience counseling
others taught me that, unless anger is connected to
and directed toward its proper source, exercise is
only provides temporary resolution.
It sounds to me like you have some suppressed anger
and are unaware of its true source. When you begin
to exercise, the increased level of activity gives
your body permission to experience the anger, and
after a time, the energy is dissipated. This is not
unusual, in my experience, and this is one way that
some people manage their anger.
However, dissipating this energy without discovering
its source doesn't resolve it, so it smolders and
builds until the next time your body gets to vent it.
This kind of "management" is more of a manipulation.
This is "controlling" anger, more than resolving it.
True anger management means engaging with the feelings
of anger and using your intuition and intellect to
assist in the discovery of its source. Doing that
will lead to the eventual permanent resolution of
the anger, which can have such lasting benefits as
lowered blood pressure and pulse rate, and permanent
reduction of the ongoing stress level of the body.
When you're aware of who you're angry with, another
technique called assertiveness (taught in assertiveness
training courses) allows you to express the anger in
a verbal fashion and in a timely manner that precludes
the build up of disproportionate anger which holds the
possibility of becoming physical and violent.
All of this is part of real anger management. It may
also assist you to utilize a method other than exercise
to get in touch with your anger. Beating a mattress with
a baseball bat will give your body the message that you're
interested in exploring the feeling of anger, and not just
dissipating its energy. Doing this also focuses the feeling
on the spot you're hitting, rather than dissipating it
through every muscle in your body while you're running,
for example. This focusing makes it easier for your mind
to associate the spot you're hitting with a face and/or
an incident that gave rise to the suppressed anger.
You said you liked being outdoors. Another variation of
focused expression is throwing rocks at a target outside.
This again provides the aspect of focusing, which allows
your mind to project itself onto the target, and begin
to associate it with the source of the angry feelings.
If you're going to use such a technique outdoors, you
should attempt to find as much privacy as you may need.
Anger is called a secondary emotion, in that it doesn't
arise except in the case of a repressed primary emotion,
such as feeling hurt or threatened. So true resolution
of the anger usually results in getting in touch with
the underlying sadness or pain which prompted the need
to strike back. True resolution usually ends with a
cathartic crying jag, though that is often resisted by
the male population, since we've been taught that "big
boys don't cry". Nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact is that most people carry anger from incidents
which occurred during childhood, when we were relatively
small and powerless in a world ruled by adults who seemed
to act in arbitrary ways that often contradicted both
what seemed logical to us and what felt right to us.
We were also relatively powerless to express those things
in an assertive manner, demonstrating respect for both
ourselves and our parents. Most parents don't express
themselves in this assertive manner, so we had no model
to learn by. We learned to express ourselves in the same
manner that our parents and elders did, if we were even
allowed to do that. In far too many cases, children are
taught simply to suppress themselves and their feelings.
Remember "children should be seen and not heard"?
Therefore, most people enter adulthood carrying around
a boatload of suppressed pain and sadness, and every
incident in the present which reminds them, even on an
unconscious basis, of the forgotten events that initiated
that pain is seen as potentially painful as well. The
resistance to the triggers in these current events can
lead to seemingly irrational, inexplicable reactions
of anger or avoidance, which are just reactions to
protect ourselves from the pain stimulated by those
triggers. It's the basic fight-or-flight syndrome.
Thus you can see that true resolution of the angry feelings
we sometimes experience, and which seem disproportionate to
the current events which triggered them, can take considerable
amounts of soul-searching while exploring the anger, rather
than avoiding or dissipating it. It takes a good deal of
commitment and dedication, but the end result is well worth it.
I'll also add that not everyone who has suppressed anger lashes
out irrationally at others. Anger can also be directed inward,
toward the self, which leads to depression and low energy,
rather than the opposite.
And, again from my experience, you're at exactly the age when
many men begin to explore the feelings that they've been too busy
with the responsibilities of life and living to give attention
to previously in their lives.
A good place to learn more about anger and anger management
is this page from the American Psychological Association:
http://www.apa.org/topics/angersub1.html
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