I run with it.
Identify & Assess & Dismiss. Unless actual creditable threat, in which case I don't get angry, I get calm... I don't feed my anger over it. Which takes work. The caaaaaaalm is the anger getting put to use. Without a use? It just builds and builds and builds, which makes me even more jumpy, even more reactive, until boom! And I lash out with it. No bueno. So I've got to do something with the anger. So I need to give it a use -physical is my go to- AND not stoke the fire. Not spin myself up over the motherf*cking... Right there. Stop. Breathe. Go burn off the rage, not at the completely harmless thing. And not at anyone who happens to be in my way.
A trick... After I've gotten good at venting without spinning myself up? Finding things about the XYZ thing that set me off that either amuses me, or that I like. Drunk college kids were the bane of my existence for awhile after I bought my house :banghead: as they'd bang into my fence, as they walked -lurched- down my street, which banged into my house, which had me either on the ceiling or halfway out the door. There's an awful lot that is just f*cking hilarious to "awwwww how cute" about drunk college kids, however. And even some things I respect. They're learning to be grown up. They're big damn kids in adult bodies, and this right here is part of them learning how to stand on their own two feet. (Crash). Badly. But they're making the attempt. Learning their limits. Learning who they want to be. Learning miniskirts in winter is stupid. But learning. I can respect that. So it switched from my wanting to pour out all my rage on them -at best- to my just sitting back and chuckling to myself.
Look For Patterns. This is where I'm stepping on the neck of my hyper-vigilance and insisting on vigilance instead. Knowing my environment and what's different is key to that. Which means I know at oh-dark-thirty my retired neighbors are going to start doing battle with their lawn, and at 10pm-11pm the highschool kids are going to clog the streets coming home from curfew, and at 2am the college kids are going to be sloshing their way up the hill cursing life for choosing a bar at the bottom of the hill, and the motor heads are going to be running jenny in winter, and the homeless folk, and the footballers.... And dozens of other very predictable patterns, that I don't have to startle over, because I'm expecting them, my nervous system doesn't even have to assess & dismiss but just waves them on through. To the point of being exceptionally edgy if expected background sounds change, including are absent, until I sort a cause.
***
ETA... I go in cycles with this shit. Always have. It's one of the symptoms I never -mostly- got rid of // part of the roughly 8% that hung around in one form or another. When it starts cropping back up? I've found the best thing for it is to treat it like a game. How fast can I manually catalogue my environment? (Slooooooow. It's f*cking slow to have to do it all manually, instead of just have my brain do it automatically. And it's exhausting.) But one thing that helps it along? Move out of my "comfort" zone. Sorta like cleaning someone else's house is easier than cleaning your own? I'll go start reccing another neighborhood, or a building, or a park. Anywhere that is somewhere I'm totally unfamiliar with. And play. Listen. Watch. Leave. Come back. Suss out what the normal patterns are there. Find the rhythms. Find the flow. And then go somewhere else. Do it again. And again. Keep doing it until my situational awareness is starting to clock automatically, and fast, instead of OMFG!!! :eek: :banghead: Vigilant. Not hypervigilant. Sometimes, if I catch it early, I can cycle through this shit in a few weeks. If it's gotten bad? :wtf: Takes months. But either way, I make it a game. :sneaky: Compete against myself. Laugh at myself. Work on beating my own times. And the lessons I'm applying elsewhere start gradually filtering into my homelife.
