Anger Management

I have started taking an interest in Anger Management to try and control my own anger issues. I have discovered that really I do not have Anger Management issues, and more irritablity issues. In other words I get irritated and show it a little more readily than most people.

I am attempting to understand the reasons behind other peoples actions and words, this is because the world does NOT revolve around me and my feelings, and although someone may have said something hurtful to me, that does not mean they are meaning to be hurtful. Also the actions of others will rarely have started with the initial thought to upset me. So now I am looking extra hard at what people are doing and why it irritates me - once I have worked out that my son not picking his shoes up is not a direct result of him ignoring me, but more that he is a six year old and forgetful, and sometimes his shoes are the last thing on his mind, this makes me take a deep breath and move them to a safe place away from the puppy, and allow my irritation to dissipate - this should be like a slowly leaking bucket.

I have to say though, this is all very simple and easy and nice when its written in black and white in a nice neat little book, while I am laying in bed with a cup of tea and irritation is the last thing on my mind. However, the practice of it, when my son has left his shoes in the middle of the hallway, and the puppy is happily chomping on them because someone else has left the door guard open, and so she has come through when she wasn't supposed to, and the dinner is burning while I wrestle the shoes of the puppy, and my son and my daughter are in the lounge fighting over who's turn it is to choose what channel they watch, and the phone rings and its my husband not thinking about what time it is, and wanting a chat, and then the washing machine dings to let me know that its contents are now fully washed and needing to be hung out or up to dry, and the baby cries because he is really hungry and wants his dinner ten minutes ago, and the dog starts growling at the puppy because she is now fussing round him because I've taken the shoes of her, and then the children come through for dinner with arms full of toys wanting them to sit with them while they eat their dinner, so I have to find somewhere for the toys to go in between shoving spoons of mushed up food into the baby, and finishing serving up the dinner, then the dinner goes in front of the children, and my daughter gives me that look to say she doesn't like spaghetti even though it was her absolute favourite last time I cooked it, and she flicks a mushroom off her plate because she has now decided she hates mushrooms (I hate mushrooms so I don't blame her but at the same time, last time I made dinner with mushrooms, and painstakingly picked all the mushrooms out of her dinner and mine, she whined all through dinner because she didn't have any and she LOVES them, and because I don't have any in my dinner to share with her, and getting mushrooms from her brother of father would be like stealing honey from a bear....) then someone knocks a drink over, and I have to mop it up, then the baby manages to get hold of a loaded spoon and flicks it all over me and him - its amazing how much food one of those baby spoons can hold when it comes to flicking them, then my son sits with his arms crossed chatting about his day while his dinner goes cold, and I smile and nod and encourage him to please eat his dinner, all the time seeing in the corner of my eye my daughter flicking various other bits out of her dinner that today she does not like, then when the baby has finished his dinner, and I have had a chance to eat my dinner, I start to clear away, and THEN my son starts to eat his dinner, and so I load the dishwasher up with pots and pans, and wipe round the kitchen surfaces, I clean the high chair and the baby, and wipe round the rest of the dinner table, I get the dogs food ready, and slowly but surely my son may have taken three bites of food by then - again I encourage him to eat more quickly, and he takes that to mean shove as much food in his mouth as possible....eventually the hell that is meal times is over and we retreat to the lounge where a bomb has gone off amongst the toys, but nobody knows how it happened and even more so they don't wish to be involved in the clear up that is required, eventually I give up and we retreat upstairs where I discover my son who has spent all of three minutes upstairs since being home from school has managed to drape dirty and not so dirty clothes all around his bedroom, the bathroom and the hallway, there are toys everywhere, drawers open, teddy bears have sprung forth from their places, the curtains have been tweaked, and the tap has been left running, and of course the toilet has not been flushed. So after tackling most of this, I then attempt to run a bath for the children. While I wait for the bath to run, I undress the baby ready for his dunk, and then I ask the children to undress ready for theirs. Of course my daughter either has a t-shirt that has no wish to travel back over her head, or a pair of trousers that do not wish to come free from her legs. After she cries about it, I help her, and then have two children with not a stitch on running around, while I check the bath. The bath almost always runs far too hot - and so I then have to wait for the cold water to top it up and cool it down. After the baby has had his dunk, the other two can get in, while I dry and dress the baby, the other two usually end up having a row, and covering the bathroom (and sometimes the hall carpet outside the bathroom) in bath water. Then I have to evacuate the bath and wait while they dry and get their pjs on.
Then comes my long drawn out attempt to get them all to bed. The baby usually requires a feed before sleep, and so I try and get the other children into their beds and on their way to the land of nod as quickly as possible - however they then take to shouting through with various demands, usually something I have forgotten to do bad Mother that I am. This will often wake the almost sleeping baby, and my anger or irritation bucket, by now is so overflowing there may as well not be a bloody bucket........

As you can see, in real life irritation is at every corner, nook and crany and is more than ready to pounce and wrestle you to the floor.

Anyway, I have been doing what I can to deal better with my anger and irritation, and amazingly even after an afternoon as I have described above, I have managed not to shout and not to get too angry, so I must be doing something right........mustn't I?