Chapter 4: Quit Taking Orders from Your Body

This chapter will help practitioners of all levels (except The Gifted, who don’t need the help, and the Weirdos, who are beyond it), maximize anger production by developing a more antagonistic relationship with their bodies. A single case study will illustrate the appropriate mindset.

One of the best ways to lay the ground work for anger is to mistreat your body. The more compromised you are as a functioning organism, the closer you are to a desperate fight, flight, or freeze response that could erupt into rage any time. Incorporate these practices to prepare the way for endless temper.

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Tension: Everyone’s Best Friend

One of anger’s functions is the discharge of tension. Therefore, if you want more anger, create more tension.

To do this, ignore your body’s needs for movement, exercise, water, nutrition, sleep and silence for as long as you can tolerate. Here are some tips to get you started. Once you get the gist, there’s no telling how many ways you can torture yourself.

• Instead of going to Yoga or CrossFit, sit and stare at your phone.
• Or, instead of talking a quiet walk, sit and stare at your phone.
• Or, instead of going to sleep, sit and stare at your phone.
• And then, right after you leave your next chiropractic adjustment, sit and stare at your phone.
• Over time you’ll constrict your body into spasms that will set the foundation for hours of irritation.

Maximize tension by constantly reminding yourself that every moment is urgent.

• Wherever you are going, you can’t get there soon enough.
• Whatever you’re doing, you can’t get it done fast enough.
• So hurry up already!
• Do not stop to smell the roses unless you are in a rose-smelling competition.
• And if you are, you’d better smell those &%@*@! roses like a champ.

Repeat the phrases above until your body is a stress-ball full of knotted muscles and your sphincter is so tense you practically levitate off your chair.

In summary, when it comes to making yourself angry, unconscious, unchecked, and unnecessary tension is your BFF.

MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK! Use tension to raise your blood pressure so much you’ll also do immense damage to your cardiovascular system! Go ahead! Scar those arteries! It’s worth it to so many of The Gifted!

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Breathing: The Shallower the Better

A great way to sustain and increase tension is to make your breathing shallower and shallower until your body is forced to gulp air to get enough oxygen.

This is an excellent way to let your body know who’s really in charge and that it had better shape up.

CAUTION! Do not take deep breaths! That step alone could ruin you. If you must breathe deeply, do not do so more than once. Consistent, deep breathing is incompatible with sustained tension. I’ve seen young people with amazing potential who ended up just sitting around like a bunch of Zen Buddhist Monks. Traitors. (Bonus if you caught that piece of Labeling (see Chapter 3). To maximize your anger, what foul labels would you use instead?)  

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Just Add Booze

Get yourself into some version of angry, throw in a dash of self-pity, and add a few servings of alcohol into the mix.

What could possibly go wrong?

Hypothetical Reader (e.g., You): Damn, that’s some heavy stuff to drop on us out of nowhere like that.

Author (i.e., Me): Yup. No apologies. I told you this was gonna get tough. You’re welcome. Seriously, it gets so much worse in the last chapter.

STAY TUNED for The Complete Guide to Misery, Volume MMXX: Risk Assessment –

Who Needs Forethought When You Have Guardrails?   

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Crank that Frown Down

You can influence your mood by what you do with your face. The example most people are aware of is that you can lift your mood by smiling.

So, in order to increase your fury, make your angriest face. Frown, scowl, glare, look daggers, glower, and whatever else works to get your blood boiling.

MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK! Lay the groundwork for any successful social interaction by frowning and glaring. It’s important that the other person knows you mean business. And that you’re already very, very resentful of them. This will put them on the defensive and encourage their worst qualities. You want to see them at their worst upon first meeting so, if a relationship develops, you know what you’re getting. No surprises. 

CASE STUDY: ADAM ON A DATE

Adam looked up from his phone as the entrees arrived. He was less and less sure about this blind date with Cassandra as the evening progressed. And she seemed less and less interested in him. There just wasn’t much chemistry between them. Adam was trying to be courteous and kind, but he so preferred to be petty and mean.

They were just finishing their entrees when Adam said, “Excuse me, Nature calls. And, hey, while we’re on the subject, my body makes a lot of damn demands on me. Can anyone tell me what my body ever done for me? All it does is take and take. My stupid carcass just sits around and yells, ‘Gimme shelter, water, and bacon!’ And what does my body give in return? Feces. Literally. My body doesn’t respect me. It never has. If my body cared about me at all it would offer me a backrub, not make me clean up its crap.”

He assumed Cassandra’s amazed look meant that she was really impressed with him. Seated in the men’s room a moment later, Adam checked his phone to see how his fantasy team was doing. He was proud of himself for finally standing up to his body.

            What You Can Learn from Adam

Once Adam stopped taking orders from his body, he developed a whole new relationship with his anger. Adam began to experience his body as a hostile, enemy force that needed to be subdued and broken into submission. This put him in a constant battle within himself, which increased his stress and agitation, and made his next rage attack much more likely. He furthered his progress by spending more and more time staring at his phone.

In other words, Adam mastered the relevant skills to maximize his biological support for anger. We’ve covered the psychological and biological factors of anger, and now we’ll take a look at the social.

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Thanks for reading! Chapter 5 coming soon!