Unconscious assumptions of anger

This is one simplified, general model of thinking about anger that might help you be less angry. It's about three unconscious assumptions of anger.

Let's pick a hypothetical example. Suppose I'm angry at my wife for not loading the dishwasher correctly. I used to be a very angry guy who held a lot of tension inside. So the internal dialogue looked like this at times:

"Didn't I tell her to load it in this way? Why is she loading it in this inefficient way? Now that's a waste of space and it's inefficient to waste water like this, what's the point of using the dishwasher then?"

The three unconscious assumptions of anger are,

She knows exactly the same thing as me, nothing more and nothing less. So she completely understands what I like and don't like as much as I do.
YET she chose to do it in this way intentionally. She didn't mess up / make a mistake through a slip-up.
She intentionally did this to spite me, no any other reason.

This sounds like a very extreme model and you might disagree with me. But let's take a look at each of the assumptions and consider their counters.

If I truly know that she doesn't know the same thing as me, or that she thinks very differently from me, then I wouldn't have a reason to be angry. Remember, this is an unconscious assumption: in my head I can know very well that of course she thinks differently from me. But inside our mind in the layer of the unconscious, we keep assuming things that aren't true about the other person.

I get angry because I think this is the best way because I tried all the other ways that I thought of, and I told her this but she doesn't listen to me. Again, if I truly understand that she knows differently (she might think 'I don't really care about dishwasher efficiency' / 'I think this is how he told me to do it in the past' / etc), then I have no reason to be angry.

The second assumption: I don't give her the grace of human error. How many times have we heard this in an argument: "How many times have I told you this already?". The thing is, we're human and unfortunately at times we make silly mistakes because we aren't present in everything we do.

If I know for sure she messed up because I saw her exclaim mid-dishwasher racking like "Ah! I forgot to load it that way!", then I have no reason to be angry. She just messed up, I can mess up and that's fine.

Now onto the third assumption. What if she's also experimenting like I did in the past to find the most optimal way herself? She could be trying to internalize by making different loading options and so. There are many reasons why she might not partake in dishwashing like I do even while knowing how to do it the way I like, but we jump to the conclusion that she must have done it to spite me.

So at each step of the three unconscious assumptions we have a chance to stop the anger, but because it's so unconscious it's hyper-optimized to the point of being almost automatic. Anger is one of the biggest sufferings a person can experience and we often times forget to stop and think: what if it's possible to be not angry? I understand that you may find this post ridiculous, but I hope you at least consider it as a food for thought.

Billy Seol

July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com