Venting

What do you do when you feel frustrated / increasingly angry because of someone or something? When something truly starts to drive you insane and you can feel the anger coursing through your blood, what do you do? How do you handle that positively?

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have anger management problems or anything. I am largely my own mistress in that sense, but I’m just wondering how people deal with these feelings. I usually feel like I want to hit, throw or smash something – most especially the thing that’s annoying me in the first place. I don’t do any of that, I hasten to add. Well, not in an uncontrolled, all-out rage kind of way. I will occasionally whack a remote control or a mouse or whatever when it won’t work, but I rarely throw things and I never smash them. I know it’ll only make things worse, if only in terms of having to clean up afterwards.

What brings this up, you may ask. Well, yesterday I was in the shower and I got really annoyed and frustrated (by the dodgy plumbing, if you must know) and I basically whacked the tiled wall near one of the shower pipes to vent a bit. Shortly thereafter, I realised that I must have hurt my finger on a pipe. I couldn’t figure out how though, I mean, it’s a pipe; it’s a smooth cylinder! Anyways, turns out, there was a thingumy bob for attaching the pipe to the wall and that’s what I hurt my finger on. Then I was rather peeved that I’d lost my temper only to hurt myself. Yay for me.

I spent the rest of my (long, calming) shower thinking about venting anger and frustration and a recent conversation I had with a friend who said that she throws things when she gets angry or frustrated. She will literally throw the first thing that comes to hand: a pot of bean soup, a plug-in modem, mugs of tea or coffee, books, etc, etc. Once she took out all her plates, picked up a rolling pin and stood over the bin, breaking each plate into it until there were no more left. She said it felt wonderful and completely de-stressed her. And then, of course, she had to go buy new plates.

I however, would never, ever do that. It takes me forever to replace / fix the things that break of their own accord, never mind something I broke on purpose. Also, if it breaks, it would only make me feel worse, like I’m out of control and I’m a bad person. So instead, I’ll punch a pillow, whack an unlikely-to-break inanimate object, bitch, whine and complain ad nauseaum. If I can’t do this then I take deep breaths, try to focus on the positive of whatever’s annoyed me and try to get away as soon as possible.

What do you do?