 Hi, thanks for staying with us. Now we all know what anger is and we've all felt it, whether as a fleeting annoyance or as full-fledged rage. Anger is completely normal, usually healthy, a healthy human emotion, but when it gets out of control and turns destructive, it leads to problems at work, your personal relationships, and your overall quality of life. So what is anger management and how can we be more kind to each other? That's the conversation for today. Now please let's hear what you have to say. Remember you can join the conversation. Send us an SMS or WhatsApp to the red one 803-4663. You can also tweet at us at WeishuAfka1 with the hashtag Weishow. And you seem like you have a lot of things to say. Do I want to share? I don't want to share. But today... You are tested. No, no, no. I was really tested. Let me hold my peace. Mary, how do you manage anger? Because again, anger is not a bad emotion. So a lot of times I see people associate anger that is a negative emotion. It's not. There is good anger. Like you can literally be angry about something to the extent that you want to change that. So it motivates you? Yeah, it can motivate you to do something. But every time people talk about anger, they tend to associate anger with negativity. I just wanted to put out that out there. Anger is a healthy emotion because it can get you to do so many things. Like you can actually bring positive change. A lot of people are upset about how things are going. They have invented things just because the thing was just getting them upset. So anger is a good feeling. It's not a bad thing. It is when you now go to that left, where full-blown rage, you're not able to control yourself and all of that. That's where it now becomes a problem. I remember that many years ago I attended a training, the NLP training, neuro-linguistic programming. And it just helped to just bring your life in front of you. So you now begin to put dots together and calculate, OK, this is why I act this way. This is what the triggers are. So I mean, if you understand yourself to that extent, self-awareness, where you now understand what triggers, somebody can say something, it doesn't really move you. Like if somebody does this to me, honestly, you're wasting your time. I have never associated a meaning to it. It doesn't mean anything to me. Do you understand what I'm saying? But if you do this to somebody else, again. So that's to tell you that it's not so much of the action. It is what we have, the meaning that we have given to it. So that's why in NLP they'll tell you that nothing means anything except the meaning you give to it. So if somebody says, Mary, you're an idiot. If you gave an idiot a meaning, that is when it affects you. But if you don't give idiot a meaning, it doesn't affect you. You can just look at idiot and say, OK, is it an animal or something? You can redefine it. So it just helps you to always be in control of your emotions, to always respond to situations. Because when I see people go to the extreme with anger, it's because they are being reactive. If you're in a position where you respond at all times, you would always, always have your emotions in check. So as I've checked my emotions, let me check your emotions. Tell me. OK, first of all, to me, anger tells me how out of alignment I am with myself. I am aware of anger to the extent that I know that nothing good can come out of this. If I'm angry at someone, I'm not my best. I'm naturally a happy person. So when I'm angry, I know that something is wrong. I don't have the best ways to cope with it because I wear my emotions on my sleeve. And it's pretty much very obvious. If I'm angry, if I'm moody, you just know that something is off with this girl. And I also have a very contagious energy, which is, you know, it just seems as if the people around me are also feeding off that. What are you angry about? But what I do is I take time to talk to myself and look at the root cause of things. For me, I've noticed that a lot of the issues for anger is deeply rooted. It's not a surface issue. Sometimes there are probably childhood traumas. So look at your triggers. Yes, that has been inside of me and I've not been able to express it. Because maybe I've been shot down a lot so many times. So because I don't know how to express it, I just say, you know, let me just keep quiet. Keeping quiet is not the issue, rather than letting how to communicate your point. So I've had instances with my manager where she says something to me. And I'm reading this thing over and over and it's sounding so wrong in my head. I'm thinking, God, help me because how do I respond to this? Because my response is going to be taking a different way. So I can control it sometimes. You know, sometimes I just rather not talk if I don't have a better way of responding. Or I like to share, you know, like today, before we came on air, you know, I will share them up because I like to see a different point of view. What do you think, you know, what could I have done better? And someone, you know, said, oh, what you did was wrong. I think you need to apologize. And I said, okay, you know what, maybe that was a dismissive behavior. So maybe I should apologize. So I would own up to it. And I also like people around me to tell me, you know, because if people around me are keeping quiet as well and holding into themselves, I'm not going to be able to change. But I'm also... You can't get better. Yeah, I can't get better. But you need to learn constructive criticism as well. Because if you just come and shout on me, me too, I'll shout on you. Bass boost. I don't know how to say that. But I take out time to reflect, you know, on my responses. Could I have done this better? You know, road rage, a driver, a driver. And I'm just like, why are you angry, Mary? What's the problem? You know, you are late. You just admit that you are late because of yourself. If you fly now, you are not going to get this. You know, I just tell myself, calm down. Listen to some music, jam up to it. And just be like, oh, you're a bit of a bigger person, you know. So, okay. Let me talk to you. Okay. Is he mama? Is he always smiling? Mama? I don't think I've ever seen Is he angry? Or you are pretending to us. Which one? No, I have my moments. Like I've always told you, say, I pick my fights. I pick my fights. There is a saying that says that you, anger is what you give. It's the weapon you give to others. There's a way they say it. It's the strength you give to others to have a power over you. Over you, yeah. To have a power over you, basically. That's what we're trying to say. So for you to get me angry, it's that you must be rarely, you must be the love of my life. And you must make me really love you today. So I, like I always say, I pick my fights. There are, like you always said earlier, when you talked about connoting meanings to things. If somebody says you're an idiot, are you really an idiot at the end of the day? No, you're not an idiot. So basically, I think anger is subject to situation, basically for me. It is not something I just go, I go ahead on and, you know, flip over for no just cause. I pick my fight. I take my time before I react. So when I'm reacting, I know in every ramification I'm justified, but I want to look at anger from a holistic point of view, basically, not from a personal point of view. Okay. We have principles, basically, and the value principles we have as a people is what actually takes us to believe in what we believe in or what we intend to say, okay, this is what I believe I should have. So we have it as being humans, basically. So when we have that value system, that value system is what guides us to say, are we going to react in a particular way or are we going to take something too hard? So it's not overcoming it in the context that it's utopian. It's not utopian to overcome anger, but it's how you react to a situation. That's why I said it's subject to situation, basically. So I believe that you treat people the way you want to be treated. If you do not treat people the way you want to be treated, that means that whatever happens, happens. Humanistically looking at it from that perspective, I think that we as individuals are supposed to take a day at a time get to understand the perspective of where that other person is coming from, have compassion, have human understanding, have certain experiences with that person and look at it from the person's perspective, humanistically possible for us to be able to absorb or invite what the person is talking about so that we don't react in a particular way to that person. So anger management is not subject to just a person. It's subject to an environment. It's subject to a cultural belief. It's subject to you as a person and the value you apply to certain things and the principles you have. Absolutely. Alright, so let me come to you, Angie. I would take this from a different point because everyone is taking it from a personal point, but I just want to take anger from... I feel like there are different approaches to anger and one of it is expressing how you feel, where you actually either, like Ezi said, talk to the person and let them know how you feel, what exactly is going wrong, what you're probably expecting or what you were expecting, hence the reason why you were disappointed. Another name for anger. And another one is suppressing. Now, for me personally, sometimes a lot more times I used to suppress. Just like Mary said, have your own opinion, internalize, do your own analysis and keep to yourself. Make whatever changes you want to make internally and try and avoid situations that get you to that point. And after a while I found the need because you cannot be diplomatic for so long and the reason why for most people suppression is because you either don't want to have to confront it because it can escalate. I've been in situations where I've tried to confront it and it escalated and I'm like, okay, this was not the intention from the onset. So sometimes I feel better when I either walk away and then we visit it later when I'm a bit, you know, better tempered. But most of the time I find myself suppressing it. And from what Mary said is very, very important for us to learn how to do less suppression and more expression or coming down. By coming down, which is another approach to it, is just after internalizing, which is done even in your subconscious. So just telling yourself that you always be in control of any situation irrespective of what the situation is. So that's coming yourself even before you come across such situations. And I feel like it's the best place to be because when you're in that state of mind even though it's the hardest place to be because it's even more annoying when you're supposed to be, when someone is supposed to be angry at something and then you see the person, you know, not reacting, not giving you that reaction. So a lot of people that even escalate in itself escalates the entire situation. So you hear people in situations saying I don't even understand why you're smiling. I don't even understand why you're not reacting because people most of the time want these things to escalate to the point where they have to say things either physical. Physical is even the last approach in my opinion because by the time you enter physical it means that you're not able to suppress, you're not able to calm down and the next thing is violence because physical always ends up in violence most of the time or trouble. So I think it's very, very important for us to learn how best, first of all, to thyself be true is very important for you to learn how you deal with anger as an individual. Then you find the best possible way or best approach that suits you in order to actually approach this anger which is expressing at the point, first of all, calming down. I feel my, if I want to go through the approaches I feel mine would be calm down of which suppression, analyze the situation suppress it at that time because really reacting at that time would not be good. So suppress it and then express it much later when you're able to put your thoughts together and the person is actually calmer you guys can have a conversation that would result in something positive at the end of the day. So for me, I would say it's always very important to control anger so that anger does not control you. I had a friend and this used to happen in church she used to get really upset at everything like almost everything was a fight and I used to tell her why would you let someone else be in charge of your emotions it's very, it puts you in a very difficult spot it means that everyone has your button at any point in time I want everyone here to think I'm mad, I just press that button and you just go off and like, you see she's not normal. So it's very, very important for you to be in control of your emotions it helps you to be able to make the right decisions at the right time you know when to walk away you know when to actually confront where needed maybe the situation is not so would not get so escalated you just confront it immediately and deal with the situation if I was not that important, there's no need to you suppress it and you walk away you know what, I would like us to take a break I would like to open our phone lines because now Nigerians are angry with our leaders and it seems like everybody is taking it out on each other I want to understand how best we can be a lot more kinder to each other because the country is already tough the economy is slapping you from the left the government is doing this there's a lot going on and I think emotions are very heightened right now, a lot of people so let's find ways that we can help ourselves to rise above anger stay with us, over right back alright thanks for staying with us now ladies and gentlemen, we're discussing anger man-maid you see today I'm smiling now they say actually I'm too calm you want me to be angry, I don't want to be angry I want to show you that I can manage anger so we're asking how can we be more kind to each other please let's hear what you have to say remember, you can join the conversation send us an SMS or whatsapp to 081 80384663 you can also tweet at us at wayshowafrica1 with hashtag wayshow our phone line is now open and the number to call is 07025 007749 that's the number to call 07025 007749 please let us get angry with you turn off the volume of whatever device you're watching us from so we can hear you when you call in to contribute so I mean again, I was saying that so two things that came up there are anchors so if you have anchored a particular situation to something anytime that thing comes up it will trigger the anger so that's why when you talked about childhood memories and all of that it anchors something to you you're not able to see it you're trying to reflect it back to ah, this was how they used to shot me down when I was a child so you then see yourself literally wanting to I was saying to someone that I have never I don't know how people do that they are fighting on the road I have never done that do you give me a point they won't even beat me because they won't even find me I will not be there I mean it's just so interesting how people get so low to that point so I remember when one incident happened in my life and the person was on and off and just going on talking all sorts of things I think the anger was heightened more because the person was expecting that I would give a reaction, panic I did not do all of this because you can't catch me you understand because the truth is I always always try to make sure that I am in control of my emotions so I will respond to you when I have to and trust me it's not everything I respond to you can say what you want to say now till the kingdom come I will decide to be quiet or I will decide to answer you that means pick your points as well as you want man is that what oh yes I pick funny thing is because again it doesn't make any sense it's just like somebody coming and shouting and calling you all sorts of names why do you need to respond to those kind of people or react to those kind of things you just keep quiet, when they are done you know I always say to people that I love my mirror my mirror tells me who I am so if you can say whatever you feel like saying about me as long as my mirror is telling me something different it's fine so I don't even have the luxury to respond to you or even reply to you or whatever you can say whatever it is that you say but the thing I really, I think we need to start learning which is I think I touched on it a bit you see this issue of being evasive I don't like a situation, something happens instead of you to go and meet the person that probably offended you and say do you know that this thing you did that would tell me that this person is trying to work out a relationship but you then avoid the person completely and then now go and you are having conversations with other people that doesn't make any sense to me yes, it's gaslighting the situation you know so the situation now gets escalated you are not wondering, so when they now trace it back to the history or the origin of the root of this you're not wondering what happened but you see, you then gaslight the situation and everything is just all over the place so I mean, more and more people need to go learn psychology not because they want to go and start sitting in front of and be doing psychotherapy work but you need to understand you need to understand human psychology you need to understand how the human mind works because when you talked about feedback for instance, if I were your manager the best approach to giving feedback for instance, there's a terminology for it, it's called the sandwich approach where you put the sweet things at the top you lace it with the bigger things instead of just dishing it out like that that also has a mental effect on the person because you begin to think oh yeah, maybe I'm not good enough maybe I'm not good enough because you've heard that so many times it's almost, you're not even trying to guard it and say something hey, you already think I'm not good enough I don't need you to tell me I already know what it is but it's really not that you're not good enough it's just that no one is telling you exactly what you're doing or what you're doing wrong in a loving manner so how do we start to tell our government what they are doing wrong in a loving manner you just had to bring it in if I make chippen you talked on something earlier when you talked about human interaction and you also talked about the fact that Nigerians are currently upset and angry because of the situation we found ourselves so I want like I talked to you earlier or I said earlier, I talked about anger management from a holistic point of view which has to do with humanity and we as human beings I think to a large extent I think Nigerians have they feel dehumanized basically, so what happens when someone feels dehumanized they react in whatever manner or in whatever way they think they can now in the cause of this I want to buttress a few points on what human virtues are what are human virtues human virtues are based on experiences human virtues are based on creativity human virtues are based on human right human virtues are based on justice personal liberty and humanitarianism basically but right now do we think we have things like that do we feel we have things like that do we think we have justice in the system do we think that we have human rights in the system our voices being heard our experiences especially let's go back to the Naira crunch how people would I don't want to use a very bad word but we were reduced to the point where we just have to start thinking of how to survive so everything about us right now is on survival mode the only way we can we trace our steps back and you know not look at anger or not being angry at the government not being angry with one another is for us to reset our mindset and how do we reset this mindset it is for us to start preaching love start preaching human rights start preaching what really works let things work for good and not for we are preaching Mary's language spread the love it still comes back to our human emotions but I think the challenge is the challenge is the challenge is years and years and years of battered emotions this is what you get at every point in time like the person they encountered I had today you can clearly tell that this person has a lot of bottled issues like deep seated and it just stems from when people are not well trained so when I see children for instance throwing tantrums I can tell that this one is just tantrum so I try as much as possible if I am close to the parents I guide you on how to because if you are not able to manage tantrum as a child what happens eventually when you grow up is that at every point in time something angers you you are not getting what you want you will just begin to act throwing a tantrum might be beating your wife might be slapping your husband might be hitting somebody or fighting on the road it can just be anything or getting a gun or going to shoot people getting into a knife fight those are tantrums because there is not if you check it anybody that has their emotions in check you can never catch that person on the wrong side it's not possible because there is nothing you want to do that will get that person actually it's not possible on a bad day so even on that bad day even on that bad day it is still controlled somebody that has real issues suppressed anger because you become passive you have this passive aggressive behavior people that were even abused as children so for instance sexual abuse some of these people when they grow up it actually manifests as physical fight, anger just doing anything to get attention so that's why I don't know if we want to really quickly move on to solutions do you think therapy can work and how receptive are Nigerians to therapy? we just have the cliche idea that therapy is so bougie what do you need therapy for you don't need therapy it's not that bad in our culture it's almost such a taboo because I keep referring to myself I remember the first time I mentioned this thing to my mom and she said why do you need therapy from fall why do you need to go back to the past we'll move on from the past and I just told myself well I can't really blame you because the generation you grew up with that's what you were told you don't think that you know it just kill the, don't express it even I had the conversation with my manager she told me that nobody needs therapy except you have someone around you who is constantly talking you down and I just smiled and I said to myself because mental health is one of the issues I would like to throw a lot of light on to the public is what I enjoy talking about it and is a thin line between how people say Gen Z we just throw the mental health card just to get away with things but that's not true I would really like to say that a lot of us just so we can help ourselves to unravel this pent-up anger that has been you know you have older women who are just staying in marriages because their children because they feel they don't have a choice and stuff like that so if our culture can promote the fact that therapy is needed it's not a cliché topic it's not a taboo we all need help and it comes in different ways that we should encourage to the public this is going to make us laugh a little bit you know what Nigerians really need now is not therapy give us light give us money no I totally disagree you are going to use money and buy it go on and come out and shoot people I totally disagree there are people everybody will be happy that's why they will say they will say everywhere is soft when they say everywhere is soft it means things are working you are liquefied I give up on you people take comment take comment that's the character Nigerians need right now all humor but we have a lot of that and that's why this is what we have been able to deal with that's why they are making money a lot of money they are keeping us sane some days if I just want to laugh I just go to Ida Sabino's or Mr. Makaroni they are not now they are just too many they make you laugh at the situations that make you angry you are just like I'm telling you so let's take comments quickly I have Austin from Delta the truth is that impunity stirs up anger especially when it is derived from bare face lies and falsehood thrown at you like some of our government officials do personally and this is the reason why there is always suspicion trust deficit and all sorts of conspiracy theories even when they discover that they won't help position on an issue isn't correct they won't apologize however with benefit of hindsight there is nothing one can do now that I will react violently because I have discovered that many people in prison today was as a result of anger mismanagement please walk away from toxic relationships, environments temporarily to avoid taking actions you will eventually regret when tempers are down absolutely thank you Austin and that's why you can't catch me if you shout and shout and shout I'm just looking at you you will never always good you have to control yourself to that point you can't catch me it took a long time for me to start expressing how I felt because I want to think about it I want to process it so that when I'm telling you you will not miss my point it will be with clarity we internalize us how about you AC let me take your comment okay my comment goes to life gives us many chances to do good so when we take those opportunities show others why it's a more beneficial choice and you will come to the conclusion that kindness is what makes us human in this life this is from Raphael Zaria thank you Raphael someone says failure to arrest MCO Lu or more after threats to Igbo will breed impunity and more anger I will leave it there good evening my dears beautiful sisters of what are you saying ways anger management how can we be more kind to each other David Illo says anger is divided into two that is good anger and bad anger according to my dears beautiful sister Uwa the good anger is allowed because it is good for good reason and it is for change to occur when a bad anger is dangerous and it's not controlled we might destroy things and lead to this would lead to regrets my dears beautiful sister NJ said if we do not control our anger the same anger will control us and that is the key we can be kind to one another if we control our anger I also love your smile my dear beautiful sister Mary it is very therapeutic and charming do not let anyone steal your happiness always keep a smiling face and stay happy my name is David Illo Daniel Illo Waze regular fan thank you Daniel so you say this smile is going to be there I don't know for how long my own will last because it gets us like there I will do you but I just want to just because if you really want to look for a million and one reasons to be upset to be angry trust me the universe will throw you 10 billion reasons to be angry so you just you must at some point just draw the line and say this is where I'm going to draw the line no matter what happens you know I'm not going to get upset and all of that you know I don't want to apple today God if I had a supernatural power something would have something would have gone down but I thank God I thank God for my calmness I thank God for my calmness but I was I was livid I was livid but hey we move on so just to put it out there please if you have any reason to suppress anger and all of that there are therapists out there honestly speaking it would be very very therapeutic I always find people that I can trust to just talk to it helps me it helps me if you can go to the beach take a walk just go and play tennis exercise is fantastic play tennis yeah I want to join in your technology salsa I want to come for tennis has been very therapeutic for me because it helped me through a difficult time just learn the sport put all that energy into something put all that energy into something instead of channeling that energy towards something negative there is so much that can happen if you are able to channel that anger the right direction trust me your life will be transformed so many things I was upset about I just decided you know what I'm just going to change things and I've seen how much growth and results and I'm getting depressed you know I'm crying holding tissue and nobody got time for that no more crying is also an expression well crying is good but I want to be crying and let the tears be happy tears I'm using my pounds and my dollars to be clean like Issy said yeah we don't mind crying but thank you so much ladies I'm hoping that this really helps someone out there let's learn to be kind to each other honestly a lot of people are going through a lot so find a reason to just you know what spread love let's follow Mary spread love with your fine smile therapeutic smile thank you Issy thank you NJ thank you Mary you didn't comment me today I was calm you were too calm I feel like I feel like you're suppressing I feel like you're suppressing so we're going to we're going to get an expression very soon maybe she got some money No just bring Nigeria Mata is a trigger for me just bring Nigeria Mata so we know your triggers now we will bring Nigeria Mata don't worry alright now before we go make sure you follow us across all our social media hand is at waist your Africa you can interact with us further drop a comment and more importantly follow our engagements on social media I actually invited families and friends to watch and follow the conversation now if you missed our quote for today here it's again it says human kindness has never weakened the stamina or suffered the figure of three people a nation does not have to be cruel to be tough it's as simple as that I mean don't believe that it's synonymous with you know being you can actually be really kind and be tough right we see you guys tomorrow at 8 p.m. so bring another great conversation to your screen enjoy