ANGER - Some Causes

“We’ve all felt anger. It can come when things don’t turn out the way we want. It might be a reaction to something which is said of us or to us. We may experience it when people don’t behave the way we want them to behave. Perhaps it comes when we have to wait for something longer than we expected. We might feel angry when others can’t see things from our perspective. There seem to be countless possible reasons for anger.
“For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.... but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away.”
To be angry is to yield to the influence of Satan. No one can make us angry. It is our choice. If we desire to have a proper spirit with us at all times, we must choose to refrain from becoming angry. I testify that such is possible.”
President Thomas S. Monson Oct Conference 2009
http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1117-21,00.html 


This is the first obstacle I had to overcome on my road to personal healing. I was hurt by the betrayal and spent too many months angry. Clarity came when I really studied the book, Feeling Good by David Burns and then discussed these ideas with my sister.
It’s natural to believe that external events upset you. When you’re mad at someone you automatically make them the cause of all your bad feelings. You say, “You’re annoying me!” but when you think like this, you’re actually fooling yourself because other people really cannot make you angry.
The bitter truth is that you’re the one who’s creating every last ounce of the anger you experience.
Before you can feel irritated by any event you must first become aware of what is occurring and come to your own interpretation of it. Your feelings result from the meaning you give the event, not from the event itself. Many of your perceptions are one-sided, twisted and sometimes just plain wrong. Sometimes they are justified but if they cause you to respond with anger, do you really want to live like that? Can you afford it when it drives away the Spirit? What is your motivation for staying angry? For sympathy?

When you are tired of being angry and are ready to be done with grieving the lost or damaged relationship, take a step back, practice some hard honesty and see if you have been involved in some of these distorted ways of thinking:

Labeling - When you describe the person you’re mad at as “a jerk” or “a liar”, you see him in a totally negative way. Someone may in fact have betrayed your trust, and it is absolutely right to resent what that person did. When you label someone, you create the distorted impression that he has a bad essence. When you write someone off this way, you are ignoring his good points. He may have lied sometimes but every word out of his mouth is not a lie. Labeling is a distorted thinking process that causes you to feel inappropriately indignant and morally superior. Your labeling will inevitably give way to your need to blame the other person. This fit so well with my need to justify myself; I quoted scriptures, conference talks, anything I could think of to keep my focus on what he had done wrong. I was the victim! Unfortunately, feeling like a victim kept the anger alive.
I have to add here that other people can label you with their distorted perceptions also. Lean upon your gift to discern truth from error and correctly identify the source of any labeling as from the enemy of your soul. 2Nephi 4:28

Mind reading: You invent motives that explain to your satisfaction why the other person did what he did. “He’s doing this because_______________”. Your reasons are often erroneous because,in reality,how do you ever really know the actual thoughts that motivated the other person? Be careful! We tend to not be very good at understanding the heart of other people.

Inappropriate Should and Shouldn't Statements: This is my all-time favorite. Nothing will bring you more sorrow than "shoulds". When someone’s actions aren’t to your liking, you tell yourself they “shouldn’t” have done what they did, or they “should have” done something they failed to do. The perception of unfairness or injustice is the ultimate cause of most, if not all, anger. There is no such thing as a universally accepted concept of fairness. Fairness is relative to the observer. What is fair to one person can appear quite unfair to another. (I always cringe seeing the big cats stalking and feeding on the poor zebras; I have no problem chowing down  that cheeseburger- how does the cow feel about that? ) Other people have their agency and often will think and act in ways that aren’t to your liking. All your insistence that they must fall in line with your desires and wishes will not produce this result. No where is this more true than when dealing with addicted personalities (or any personalities for that matter). In a gospel setting, there are some absolutes about standards of behavior but there is also that pesky little principle of agency which we all fought so zealously for in another time and place.You will spend a lot of time feeling unhappy if you buy in to thinking you can control another human being with your "shoulds".
Sister Julie Beck, General Relief Society President, spoke at a regional conference regarding pornography and said (I'm paraphrasing), a wife must remember her own divine nature and then should set boundaries for what is and is not acceptable behavior and stick to them; sometimes enough is enough. What she didn't say but that I would add is that you desparately need the Spirit to help you decide when 'enough is enough' and you will not have that divine guidance when you are angry.

Hopefully you can identify (and claim as your own weaknesses) some of these first two distorted ways of thinking  and begin to eliminate them. As you do, you will also be eliminating the frequency of angry feelings and inviting the companionship and direction of the Holy Ghost. For dealing with those pesky "shoulds", Dr. Fred Luskin suggests in Forgive For Good that you replace them with "hopes".
That will be a post for another day.