Knowing Your Limits Reduces Anger and Rage

PURPOSES OF LIMITS
Limits not only help us establish the difference between caring for and care-taking, they separate quantity from quality. Caring for and staying within one's limits leaves us feeling like there has been a compassionate exchange of time, energy, respect, and love. Care-taking very often leaves us drained, exhausted and resentful because we went way past our limits.
Here are a few more examples of less dramatic ways to thinks about limits:
•I’ll only be able to go one more week.
•I’ll explain this two more times.
•I can talk about his for thirty minutes.
•I’ll give my boss one month to respond to my request.

Going Past Your Limits

Shirley calls me up and says, "I'm so angry at my son I could just wring his head off."
"Tell me about it," I said.
"I told him I would put him through two of the best rehabs in the country and then if they didn't get him off drugs he'd be on his own."
"How did that go?"
"I have put him through four rehabs and he still uses."
"So you are angry at him because he doesn't know your limits any better than you do?"
Luckily for me she laughed.
A limit says, "This is how far I will go along with _________." You fill in the blank.
Knowing what our limits are and honoring them can reduce anger and rage significantly.

In this blog there is now over 70 lessons on anger management. Hope they help.