McKay's book When Anger Hurts got me onto the right path. https://www.amazon.com/When-Anger-Hurts-Quieting-Within/dp/1... TLDR: Anger starts with expectations. Which leads to disappointment, resentment, blame, and then lands on anger. I keep hoping for followups; surely the state of the art has progressed since.
The next plateau for me was figuring out how to unlearn my anger habit. I heard that habits can only be replaced. So I decided to pretend being happy, positive. Why not? Nothing else worked and I was out ideas.
I was really surprised that it worked.
Next plateau for me was dealing with anxiety. Maybe half of my symptoms had a physiological origin. Only discovered after a lumbar fusion and my anxiety was mostly gone. In retrospect, I'm grumpy for all the wasted effort and misc treatments endured (eg SSRIs).
I still don't have much clue about dealing with trauma, PTSD. I'd like to try psychotropics (shrooms, MDMA), but have had trouble finding trustworthy suppliers.
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Thanks to u/Dowwie for Bone's Feeling Good tip. Somehow hadn't seen that before. Will try it.
Thesis is that anger is the result of a cascade.
Expectations -> Disappointment -> Resentment -> Blame -> Anger
(From memory, will update if needed.)
So the trick is update one's expectations, short circuit the cascade before it can even start.
Separately, I learned that we can only replace habits with new habits, vs unlearn habits. Completely out of ideas, I faked being happy. One day I woke up, said to myself "Phenomenal!", and truly meant it. I was shocked that it worked. My whole transformation took about three years. YMMV. (Maybe having a life coach would work faster.)