Why do I lose my temper over tiny things?
You thought you had a temper. You’ve got a list.
Three or four triggers, not thirty. That’s very good news.
“Before… I lived like I was on a commando mission. A saucepan falls? Red alert. A text takes too long? It’s the Cold War.”
Chapter 23 — Jazz, Dark Side
When it happens to you
A saucepan falls: red alert. A text takes too long: it’s the Cold War. Your neighbour gets his drill out at 8 a.m. and you consider things the law frowns upon. And afterwards, you wonder what came over you.
Why your anger gets there before you
By the time the part of your brain that knows it’s a drill gets the message, the alarm has already gone off. You’re not behind your reaction: your reaction is ahead of you. And as long as it stays in your head, you think the problem is the neighbour.
Rule
You can’t defuse what you haven’t named.
How to keep the notebook, in 4 steps
- 3 columns. The trigger, the emotion, what you did instead.
- Write the trigger down precisely. Not “he gets on my nerves”, but “the sound of the drill at 8 a.m.”. Vague, you can’t spot it; precise, you’ll recognise it next time.
- Give it a code name. Operation Drill. Spilt Mug Alert. The Odd Sock Incident. It isn’t decoration: when your anger has a ridiculous name, it becomes an object you look at instead of a state you’re at the mercy of.
- Reread it after 10 days. You’ll see it’s always the same triggers. Three, four, not thirty.
⚠ We’re talking about one kind of anger, not the other
This is about the anger that flares up at the drop of a hat and gets taken out on others. Not healthy anger, the kind that makes you say stop and get out of a bad situation. That kind, you don’t defuse: you listen to it.
What it changes for you
Three things, and the third is worth the trip. You no longer get caught off guard, so you can act first — warn people, organise things differently, leave the room. And above all you discover that the trigger belongs to you: as long as you think it’s the neighbour, you’ve only got two options, avoid him or lose your temper.
How to practise
Two weeks, often less. You don’t show this notebook to anyone: it isn’t evidence for the prosecution. At first you’ll write things down afterwards; the day you catch yourself writing during, you’re already out of it.
Remember
I thought I had a temper. I had a list.
You may be wondering
Won’t writing down my anger make it worse?
No, the opposite happens. What feeds anger is being at its mercy without understanding it. Written down, it loses its air of inevitability.
How long before I see something?
About ten days is enough. It’s the number of repetitions that brings out the pattern, not the length of time.
And what if my triggers are people?
Then write down exactly what those people do, not their name. “When someone decides for me” is something you can work on; “my sister” isn’t.