December 8, 2024

The nature of anger

From Volume 11, Issue 3:What makes you angry? Politics? Bad manners? Erratic driving? Poor service?

And why, when so triggered, do you express the emotion anger?

Psychologist Gail Brenner, whom I’ve been reading lately, has dived deeply into this emotion, and it ties in with the nomenclature I’ve been using to describe reactive behaviors in this newsletter. Anger exists in the Knower/Judger. It’s learned.

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Hey, Maybe I Like My Rut

From Volume 9, Issue 10:.Over my lifetime I have frequently identified myself as being “in a rut.” I do the same things day in and day out. I eat at the same places for lunch. I pal around with the same people. It can be a little boring, but comfortable. And therein lies the rub. It’s comfortable. But does that mean I should stay in the rut or not? Here’s why we like our ruts and how to tell if it’s time to leave them behind.

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Pain and the Brain

From Volume 9, Issue 9: My friend Mary Lore likes to say, “We are not our brains.” Her thesis is that, while allowing our brains to manage us works in many situations (letting our Knower/Judger persona respond to our environment, carry on our conversations, react to threats, etc.), we can be far more productive in other situations when we manage our brain. She would have us use the brain as a tool instead of having it use us as its tool. So I began to think about this as it pertains to pain, because we could all use less pain in our lives.

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