Anger

The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger. ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Get mad, then get over it. ~ Colin Powell

Gotta agree with Lucius, deferring my anger often works best. When I was a child, I used to have fits of rage, destructive, violent anger that landed me in trouble more times than I can recall. However, with age comes maturity, and perhaps maybe my parents also beat the rage out of me:)

Either way, now at the ripe ol' age of 25, I have found better coping mechanisms for dealing with anger. Better than being destructive, and it hurts less people in the process.

1. Defer: I retreat from the scenario as quickly as possible. Later, I examine my feelings and regroup, finding the source of what caused the anger and thinking logically through it.
2. Vent: I dial the digits of one of my closest friends and blab everything to them, and in the telling of my horrendous tale of woe, I somehow manage to unleash all the emotions and get over it.
3. Write: Nice, long, nasty pissy letters to the source of my ire. Usually I shred the letter into little tiny pieces and visualize me shredding their neck. Works wonders.
4. Distraction: I find another way to distract and isolate myself from the situation. I have a playlist on my iPod that is just full of seething, angry music. Just rapping with Eminem's Cleaning out my Closet or Eve's Love is Blind gets the anger out of my system. Ah, the magical powers of transferrance.

What about you? How do you get over your anger?