One trait of an introverts is bottling up anger. Yeah, we learn to forbear at a very high degree even if it hurts our ego. If you've heard people make the statement "he rarely gets angry, this particular one that made him anger must be something big" then that's a typical example of an introverts. But that's a misconception, we get angry too easily and forget as easily as it comes. When it becomes a big deal, then one must have crossed the forbearance level with repeated wrongdoing and all that remains is to allow them see the other part of us we hide from the world.
When I was younger, the visible evidence that I was angry was refusing to eat. I can choose to stay the whole day hungry just to prove my anger. It was easy to cope with then, but as I grew older, I used confrontation, and sometimes cut you off for as long as you remained reluctant to apologize. However, there are times I have done the extreme in response to anger, later felt bad after seeing the harm I've done but the message was passed.
I can't exactly recall what my brother did to me, but it was concerning a shirt, the next moment I was outside with a bunch of his clothes dipping them into a gutter. He never reacted after that and it made me feel bad. A recent one that happened was with a POS(point of sale) agent. I went to a plaza to swap my SIM and decided to withdraw some amount of money from a POS agent. After making the transfer, the POS agent received the alert and refused to click on accept that I used a fake alert for him. The transaction was showing, but he told me he wasn't going to accept it and wouldn't give me the money because he's used to such a format.
Maybe he thought I was all calm the way I looked and felt he could cheat me and go free. I didn't waste time to show him I wasn't that calm. What started as a friendly talk ended up into a hot quarrel. He accepted the transfer and tried acting funny but I wasn't ready to accept any of his talk. I talk a lot when I'm angry and at that point I am not careful with words, I throw words the way they come and sometimes end up regretting what I spitted out. The POS agent gave me the money after a few minutes of delay, at that point I knew being calm can have a disadvantage. Sometimes, better the regret with words said than be taken as a fool.
Anger management is an easy task to do yet difficult and that's because our anger surfaces in an attempt to protect our ego. However the following can help us manage our anger in cases where we should;
- Forbearance: Knowing someone must hurt you in one way or another can help you forbear responding to certain things
- Empathy: Putting ourselves in the position of another might help us understand people better and why they do certain things.