The only person who can make you mad is you.
The only person who can make you feel inadequate is you.
The only person who can make you feel unhappy is you.
The only person who can make you feel jealous is you.
Life is unfortunately full of events which make us feel emotions but other people do not make us feel in any specific way. Only our own reactions to the event cause our bodily functions to remain calm or cause us to lash out in defence. We learn responses from our upbringings and many negative feelings arise from a fundamental insecurity. If we feel secure about ourselves, if we are confident and value ourselves, how can we allow someone else's comments or actions to make us feel negative?
"A minute spent in anger is 60 seconds of happiness lost."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It seems that the more angry someone becomes, the more childish they react. Some people even go red in the face and cannot even stand anymore. That is because, in the moment of their reaction, they go back to the age they were when they first learned anger which could have been in the womb or maybe before they learned to walk. Most children have learned ANGER by the age of three, which means the average person has a mental age when they are really angry of less than three!
Out of control, ongoing negative reaction is not healthy. Any unnecessary stress can cause heart problems, high blood pressure, possibly even spark off cancer in the body. We all have cancerous cells within our body so must do our best not to ignite them thereby causing them to multiply.
The next time someone says something which makes you mad, take yourself out of the situation, close your eyes, breathe five deep breaths and sit down to think rationally. Is your reaction appropriate or has it triggered emotions from your childhood?
© Antonia Stuart-James 2007
Antonia Stuart-James is an English Hypnotherapist in Belgium helping people to make positive change, including learning to control stress and changing negative behaviour patterns.
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