Who’s Upset You Recently?!

Who’s upset you recently?!

A boss 🧍🏿 🧍‍♀️ ?

A friend 🧑🏽?

A family member?

Recently, someone upset me

It really got under my skin.

It happens to all of us, doesn’t it.

How do we get rid of that anger?

Good friends will listen to us vent about it for a while.

But, after a while we might catch them yawning, when they think we’re not looking.

After even longer, they might start to use well-meaning (but ultimately, pretty useless) phrases with us like:

“Don’t let it get to you”

“Focus on what’s important”

Or my personal favourite (and what my parents always used to say to me when I was upset about something someone had said to me at school back in the day…)

“They’re probably just jealous of you”*

Aside from the question as to whether Nasty Nadia was really jealous (given that she was mega popular and I was a bit of a dork, I’m still not convinced…)

This stuff doesn’t work.

If you’re looking for a way that ACTUALLY works to rid you of your ire, try this…

*Write down ten reasons why you wouldn’t want to be that person who’s doing your head in.*

Why does this work?

1. Because we get to indulge our naughty side, thinking about all the things that we think are rubbish about them. This caters to the fact that we all secretly love basking in a bit of self righteous anger. For a while. Before it turns on us and becomes corrosive.

2. But the second stage that quickly follows, quite unexpectedly, is you start to feel a tiny smidge of compassion for that person. And compassion is a great way to smother resentment.

3. Because it doesn’t involve someone telling you how to feel! We live in a world where people forget all the time that telling someone how to feel rarely has any effect. It usually sends them in the other direction.

And, if you need more help with anger, sign up with us for therapy!