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When you are dealing with something like anxiety or stress, the only way you can imagine the presence of laughter and humor in your life is to see it as a temporary distraction from the anxious and stressful thoughts and feelings that seem to dictate the way you see and act in the world. But there are many ways that humor can be a therapeutic tool in your struggle with anxiety.
One of the myths of relationships is that a good relationship involves little or no conflict. In fact, all couples have conflicts. Every couple is made up of two unique people, with differences in worldviews and life experiences. Each person has their own way of dealing with the thoughts, feelings, and happenings of life.
Learning how to develop response-ability to your anger means understanding how anger develops. You may not think that there is a process to anger; it just seems to happen, and you have to figure out how to manage it. In their book, ACT on Life Not on Anger, Georg H. Eifert, Matthew McKay, and John P. Forsyth identify five components to anger.
When you are depressed, it is easy for your mind to produce automatic negative thoughts. It is like your mind gets stuck in a rut, and most of the thoughts that come to you are negative self-evaluations and self-judgments. It is like the depression places a filter on your mind, and the only thoughts that get through are negative ones.
PTSD stands for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a psychological disorder caused by exposure to a traumatic event. When you hear the words “traumatic event,” you may think of horrible things that have happened to other people. So many of us have experienced a traumatic event. And yet, most of us do not have PTSD. What makes the difference? It is the impact of the event and how you respond to it that leads to PTSD.
One of the myths about anger is anger and aggression are instinctual to humans. When we buy into this myth, we are able to justify our anger and refuse to take responsibility for it. And when we combine that with another myth—that anger is the result of what someone has done to us—then this innate angry response is on the other person, not ourselves.
It is easy to get caught up in a mindset that sees the world as a hard place. This is especially true if you struggle with depression. It is common for people with depression to ruminate over all that is going wrong with their lives. This mindset leads you to have negative perceptions about yourself, your relationships, and the world around you.
In an earlier post I reflected on the place of values in relationships. Values are important because they capture how you want to be in the world. Values invite you to think about what matters most and what you want to stand for. Values also invite you to consider how you want to interact with others, how you want to be in relationships.
While anxiety is an emotion that seems to be problematic, even wrong, you have lots of people that will tell you that anger is normal and natural. After all, not everybody has anxiety or panic, but everybody gets angry. I would question that anxiety is a problematic emotion, but it is true that no one will go through life without emotional pain and anger.
