We make decisions every day, throughout the day. In fact, we make so many decisions we often don’t even see them as decisions. Decisions we’ve made over and over eventually turn into habits. Although we often think of habits as bad, it’s important to see them as a set of decisions that simply don’t need much, if any, conscious thought to perform them. Brush our teeth. Put on our shoes. Eat breakfast or skip it. All of these mundane tasks are still choices, still decisions we make.

All too often, we make decisions based on faulty information, peer pressure, and impulsivity. In this article, I’d like to highlight some red-flag behaviors that increase our chances of feeling regret about our decisions. I’ll also offer some suggestions on how to avoid these red flags.

Red Flag: Decisions Based on Other People’s Wishes

Literally from birth, we find ourselves surrounded by other people and their wants, expectations, and fears. We come into this world already shadowed by built-up beliefs about how we should be, according to cultural and socioeconomic factors, parental expectations, our gender, and on and on. It’s no wonder we often feel pressured to be and do other than what resonates with our truth.

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Because of the pressure to fit in and to please, we can find ourselves making decisions that don’t align with our highest good. From small decisions, like drinking at the party, to life-altering decisions, like getting married, our surroundings impact what we choose to pursue. When we make decisions from the fear of being judged and/or rejected, we doom ourselves to this people-pleasing brand of decision making.

So apart from moving to the woods and shunning society, how do we combat this monstrous impact on our decision making? We begin by reframing the nature of making decisions. At their core, decisions express our humanness. They express the gift of our free will. Although we are definitely animals, we are a unique form of animal with the option to move beyond our limitations.

Moving into a place where we make decisions based on our own wants and wishes requires us to know ourselves. Not possessing intimate knowledge of our core value system inevitably leads to a “follow the herd” mentality. This ultimately leads to frustration and resentment.

A simple exercise to acquaint yourself with your values is to simply ask the following questions about everything you choose. (Yes, everything.)

• What do I like about this?
• Does this thing support my growth?
• If no one were around to influence me, would I still want to do this?

These questions will be answered by your bodymind through other thoughts, images, and emotions. Listening to them will steer you straight.

Red Flag: Making Impulsive Decisions

Impulsive decision making often gets viewed as wrong or bad because impulsive behavior is seen as “emotional.” Once again, we have society’s misunderstandings about emotion dismissing the importance of emotion in our lives. We can view impulsive decision making from two angles.

We must learn to fully connect with our emotions. Feeling them fully without comment allows the energetic charge to run its course. After the intensity of the emotion subsides, calm, creative problem-solving can occur.

The first angle involves making a decision while feeling an intense emotion. When we are intensely feeling emotions, we don’t have access to our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain designed for effective problem solving. When we make decisions from an emotionally intense place, we basically tell ourselves whatever emotion we currently feel has complete sway over our wants and needs.

The second angle surprisingly encompasses the exact opposite—not feeling our emotions at all. When we suppress our true emotions, we cut off access to our self-appraisal regarding a particular situation. Put differently, we sever a relationship to our values. Being disconnected in this way leaves us vulnerable to making those impulsive decisions that don’t align with our growth and truth.

The solution to both of these predicaments involves the same process. We must learn to fully connect with our emotions. Feeling them fully without comment allows the energetic charge to run its course. After the intensity of the emotion subsides, calm, creative problem-solving can occur. We can learn to regulate our emotions through numerous ways. Dialectical behavior therapy works wonders here, as do mind-body exercises such as tai chi, qigong, yoga, and other breathwork practices.

Red Flag: Believing Our Mental Stories

I could write volumes about this issue alone. Most of us, most of the time, are thinking. That wouldn’t be so bad if our thoughts were grounded in reality. Sadly, our thoughts, especially intense and obsessive thinking, rarely are. We make bad decisions all the time simply because we believe something to be true that isn’t.

I call this habit “storytelling.” It’s a handy way of looking at our string of thoughts. Storytelling occurs as we “once upon a time” our lives, filling in loads of made-up information to fill in the gaps between aspects of reality we really don’t know or don’t have access to. Storytelling occurs most frequently in relation to the future. So many of us hate uncertainty. Rather than learning to accept the limits of our knowing, we tell stories in an attempt to self-soothe. Anxiety is usually the result.

Reality testing is a tried-and-true cognitive behavioral technique used in therapy to help us break away from acting upon our untrue but intensely believed thoughts. In reality testing, we ask the simple question, “How do I know this thought is true?” We are then tasked with the quest of seeking external proof that our thoughts accurately reflect reality. This involves behaving differently, taking risks, and assertively communicating our thoughts, needs, and desires to others.

Being mindful of the red flags mentioned above, as well as practicing the steps discussed, can lead to an increased sense of ease and confidence in your decision-making and problem-solving capabilities.

The key to having freedom and joy in our lives stems directly from managing our emotions rationally and effectively. Practicing emotional intelligence keeps us intimately connected with our thoughts and their emotional correlates.

However, sometimes certain habits or life occurrences block us from thriving. Understanding these roadblocks can move us one step closer to healing.

It can be argued that we choose our emotions based on what we think. This notion can be a bit of a misnomer. If we can’t point to the thought or belief with awareness—meaning be conscious of it—can we really say we’ve chosen the emotion in question? I think it’s fair to say no. Psychology has long explored human behavior through the stimulus response theory. Basically, it states that we respond to things (or behave) according to the stimuli presented to us. The challenge with this theory is how to incorporate our personal make-up, decision making, and level of personal awareness into this model and show how they all interact with a stimulus to produce a response.

Practicing emotional intelligence requires patience, determination, and strength. All of these qualities are required when learning to “sit with” our emotions. To fully feel emotions that have long been ignored or resisted can prove quite painful. When we don’t have a loving relationship toward our emotions, we can turn them into bad guys or bogeymen we avoid. Ignoring our emotions in this fashion prevents us from fully recognizing what sorts of beliefs and views we hold. This pattern can develop further into chronic, overreactive emotional responses that may not make sense based on the stimuli present.

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A concept that explains this situation is called emotional hijacking. Emotional hijacking occurs when a stimulus activates the “emotional brain” and causes a person to react before that information reaches the neo-cortex. If the information doesn’t reach or get processed by the neo-cortex, reasoning around/with the stimulus in question doesn’t take place. This is important to recognize, as it describes why so many of us feel blindsided and overcome by our emotions. It also explains why so many of us perceive, long after the fact, that an emotion was “irrational.”

While we “choose” our emotions in the sense that what we think leads to what we feel, it’s important to recognize that emotional hijacking is a real phenomenon.

Trauma fits nicely into the concept of emotional hijacking. People who have experienced trauma can find themselves emotionally hijacked on a regular basis. The moment of the traumatic event, the person may have feared for his or her life or safety. Furthermore, he or she may have been unable to get out of the situation and unable to discharge the intense emotional charge of fear and helplessness generated in the moment. This charge gets stuck in the body. Left unprocessed, it can lead to depression, anxiety, and of course emotional hijacking.

Another core aspect of trauma is the formation of mental walls blocking connection with the original hurt. Consciously or unconsciously, a traumatized person learns to avoid anything that may trigger further emotional distress. You can see here that awareness of one’s thoughts isn’t sufficient for healing. One must also learn to re-experience those pent-up emotions in a safe and healthy manner.

While we “choose” our emotions in the sense that what we think leads to what we feel, it’s important to recognize that emotional hijacking is a real phenomenon. When we actively avoid connecting with old hurts and traumas, we set ourselves up for more pain in the future. This two-step process of connecting with our emotions on a bodily level and with the thoughts to which they are connected increases our chances for healing. Learning to acknowledge and eventually accept these emotions helps us live fuller lives.

In my articles on anger management, I frequently talk about how anger gets disguised as another emotion. Conversely, I also emphasize the reverse: other emotions left unnoticed and unacknowledged can turn into anger. In this article, I offer no disguises, no cover-ups. Witness instead a direct creator and perpetrator of anger.

I expect things. So do you, and so does everyone else. These expectations encompass virtually everything we conceive. We expect things about our bodies and minds, other people (along with their bodies and minds), our jobs, our pets, the sun and moon. If I sound a bit hyperbolic, it’s because I mean to emphasize this: the vast majority of the thoughts we have throughout any given day are comprised of expectations. And with these expectations—every single one of them—we create frustration, irritation, and anger.

An expectation, put in the simplest of terms, is a thought about the way we want something to be. Expectations can range from the obvious form of “I really want to get that job” to more subtle expressions that hardly go noticed, like heavy sighing or rolling one’s eyes. Regardless of what form an expectation takes, it ushers in personalized judgment about the way we think the world should be.

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Expectations trap us when we cannot see past them. When we lead with them and then meet up with something very different from our particular desire, anger is typically the result. At its core, anger expresses dissatisfaction with reality. All the different words for anger apply here: irritation, frustration, annoyance, being “miffed,” etc. The intensity of our anger is often directly correlated to the level of attachment we have to our expectations of reality.

It might seem as if I’ve made expectations out to be truly heinous. Usually at this point, a person I’m working with in therapy might say something like, “Well, then, I suppose I should have no expectations at all? Just have no standards?” On the contrary! Standards dictate our commitment, connection, and drive for excellence. What I shop here isn’t an end to expectations, but a renegotiation with them.

Expectations in and of themselves are actually harmless. They can be viewed from the perspective of expressing personal tastes and preferences. Expectations get the better of us only when they become rigid barriers keeping us from flexibly working with what life hands us.

Expectations in and of themselves are actually harmless. They can be viewed from the perspective of expressing personal tastes and preferences. Expectations get the better of us only when they become rigid barriers keeping us from flexibly working with what life hands us. Toward a more functional use of expectations, I offer the use of what I call basic requirements.

Basic requirements express the base-level necessities that must be met for us to continue cultivating a relationship with another person, a job, a lifestyle, etc. Whereas expectations get used as billy clubs to bash over the head of a reality that doesn’t meet our desires, basic requirements take a more open stance. They state that certain things will need to be in place in order for the relationship to continue—for example, respect and trust in a committed romantic relationship. If for some reason the basic requirement isn’t met, both parties may move on.

The reason expectations so often create anger is we stubbornly keep insisting that the thing in question be different, be what we want. Basic requirements free us from this trap. Instead of staying locked in a constant struggle to get an experience from someone or something that just can’t supply it, we take our basic requirements elsewhere. We relieve ourselves of the need to be constantly angry, because we no longer resist the truth that X can’t give us Y.

Notice that attachment is the real culprit here. Basic requirements express how we want the world to be. Attachment keeps us locked in struggle. Freeing ourselves from chronic anger becomes easier and easier when we let ourselves move on from no-win situations.

In a series of articles on GoodTherapy, I have explored the fact our anger often possesses underlying emotional triggers. My first article began the exploration by pointing out that many anger-management strategies avoid having us confront what might be lurking underneath the anger and frustration. My second article targeted unexpressed sadness as a main culprit of anger. In this article, I will focus on anxiety and how it, too, can turn into anger when left unacknowledged and unexpressed.

Anxiety must be understood as a self-created experience of fear that comes from focusing on the future. Although it can feel a bit like excitement, anxiety can feel debilitating because the focus on the feared future event seemingly paralyzes us. Anxiety takes us out of the present moment and disconnects us from the reality we’re surrounded by. Anxiety is no fun because when we believe bad things will happen, we experience bad things in the present moment. Anxiety’s connection to anger exists on the same plane as anger’s connection to all other emotions, through denial and suppression.

Since anxiety is simply another form of fear, many of us struggle with admitting that we are afraid. Like sadness and guilt, we have been preconditioned early on to deny and ignore our fear. Fear is weakness, it is said. To admit we are afraid is thus tantamount to social suicide. So instead of admitting that we feel anxious, we suppress the energy created, which in turn gets lodged in our bodies. The truth of ignoring our true emotions comes to haunt us, keeping us from living the kind of joyous, fulfilling life we’ve dreamed of.

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Anxiety—ALL anxiety—starts in the mind. It begins as a small story of what we believe we lack. Confidence. Patience. Strength. Quite often, we believe we lack the very thing we think we need to be successful. Over time, the story of our perceived lack gets “proven” to us through our immobilized behavior. We stop being assertive and proactive. We stop living, and then, lo and behold, we feel weak and powerless. When not aware of these mini-horror stories and the frenetic energy they create in our bodies, we position ourselves to be overly sensitive, irritable, and angry.

The path to overcoming this anxiety issue masquerading as an “anger issue” will prove ridiculously simple. Slow down. Yup, that’s it. Although simple, I caution people in therapy that the simple process of slowing down is not so easy. The simple comes from the tiny behavioral steps you will adopt; the not-so-easy to do comes from the years of conditioning you will have to overcome.

Slowing down means realigning body with mind. More directly, it means to quiet the mind and focus on just one activity, the activity existent in the present moment. Where anxiety pulls us away from the present moment and into our minds, slowing down brings us back to the body, which always exists in the present moment. Anger that comes from unacknowledged and unexpressed anxiety often boils just beneath the surface. By “surface,” I literally mean the body. Imagine that anxiety is the fuse and some external event acts as the spark. Surrounded by potential sparks, we will explode if we do not actively defuse ourselves.

Pick something sensual to focus on right now. Pick something you can hear, see, taste, smell, or touch. Focus on the sensations that occur in your body as you drink your coffee or listen to the typing in the office. When a thought pops in, and it will, simply tell it, “Not right now, I’m slowing down.” Over time, you will get quite adept at slowing down. When slowed down, we don’t produce the anxiety that then leads to our chronic anger. Becoming masters of our own inner worlds allows us the freedom to respond to reality rather than react to it.

In my introductory article on anger management, I introduced you to the notion that anger management per se often misses the mark. Spending all our time and energy handling our anger in more productive, pro-social ways can get tiring if we constantly have anger bubbling up that needs to be managed. Wouldn’t it be nice, for once, to be able to sit back and enjoy yourself rather than constantly spin inside your managerial role? It’s not too good to be true, but you must know going in that getting to this place will take considerable effort at first. Perseverance, patience, and kindness will serve you well in this endeavor.

To begin, we must understand the nature of anger. When not experienced as a secondary emotion (more on this shortly), anger occurs as a result of being a part of or witnessing a wrong. If we or a loved one are in harm’s way, the energy we call anger wells up, leading to two things: (1) an often laser-like focus on the wrong occurring and (2) increased energy to do something about it. We can view anger in this sense as organically pro-social. It occurs in relation to harm that we think must be prevented or averted. Barring any illegal, immoral, or self-harming act, expression of this type of anger can generally be viewed favorably. Sometimes called “righteous anger,” imagine Jesus routing out the bankers from the temple to get an image of what I’m referring to here.

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As you may have already guessed, the vast majority of the anger we experience on a regular basis does not fit into the first category described above. Rather, the anger we generally need to “manage” falls into the category described as a secondary emotion. In brief, a secondary emotion is one that emanates from a judgment about a primary emotion. They generally occur due to our unwillingness to fully accept and feel the primary emotion. The primary emotion is usually one that feels physically uncomfortable and might also have a social stigma attached that reinforces the tendency to keep it held in. Sadness, guilt, anxiety, and fear are most often the primary emotions that get transformed into anger. As a result of judging and therefore suppressing their full expression, their energy “becomes” anger.

In my next article, I will cover in greater detail how to work with fear and anxiety. In this article, I wish to focus on sadness. Sadness occurs when we have lost something significant. Losing a job or the death of a loved one are obvious causes of sadness, but all too often we do not catch the more subtle triggers. At its core, we experience sadness when we’ve lost something that supports our self-identity. The reason sadness hurts is because we’re experiencing the absence of a psychological part of ourselves, not unlike losing a limb.

Feeling our sadness is important because it sanctifies the thing lost. Sadness fully expressed allows us to honor the missing aspect in our lives. This process reinforces the importance of reengaging in life so that we may begin cultivating the missing value. Not feeling our sadness prevents us from accessing the importance of the thing lost. Once we inquire into our sadness with kind curiosity, we will find that some value or quality is missing.

So how do you put all of this information into practical use? We’re all fond of steps, and I’m not here to disappoint:

1. When you get angry, sit down and begin to feel the energy in your body. Rather than ranting and raving, start taking stock of your bodily tension. (Yes, this is very difficult at first. With practice you’ll get better, I promise.) Once some of the energy has subsided, ask yourself what you’re sad about. Usually something specific—and quite often completely unrelated to the thing that caused you to be angry in the first place—pops in.
2. Once you’ve accessed the trigger of your sadness, it’s time to feel sad. I can already hear you grumbling. I know, feeling sadness isn’t pleasant, and that’s why so many of us avoid the sensation. A little trick I learned, and teach, is to say “yes” or nod your head when the sensation of sadness is felt. Acknowledging our emotion in this way makes it easier to access. Now, fully feel the sadness without judging or commenting. (This part is a bit difficult as well. It takes much practice to learn to feel our physical sensations without any accompanying thoughts.)
3. Once the sadness has subsided—and it will subside—you can begin the process of inquiry. Ask yourself what was lost. If it’s not obvious, look to core values that you prize, such as kindness, fairness, support, etc. Often, we get angry when these core values aren’t experienced in ourselves or in our relationships.
4. Patience and honesty in this process will often lead you to the missing value. Now that you’ve found it, it’s simply a matter of going out into the world and cultivating the very quality that went missing in the first place. This might look like being kind to coworkers, patience with your children, or being gentle with yourself when you make a mistake. Regardless of the quality expressed, your sense of power and accomplishment will increase.

Although the above steps are simply laid out, it will take you a few goes before you really get a handle on the entire process. We’ve come a long way from talking about anger. To bring that aspect back, recognize now that underneath much of our anger is a sense of powerlessness in the face of losing something sacred. When we re-access that missing component, we reclaim our power and, ultimately, our sense of peace.