Dealing with Anger
“When I was growing up,” Annette tells me, “girls weren’t
supposed to get mad. Just as we were supposed to sit still, and
not speak unless spoken to, we were supposed to look pretty and
keep a smile on our face. It’s no wonder I had migraines for so
many years. And when I did start dealing with it, I had no idea
what to do about it.”
“There was something wrong with her, I think,” Anthony told me.
“My ex-wife … she never got angry, all the time we were married.
Not once.” He paused and looked away. Then he added, “She just
threw the keys on the table one day and walked out. I had no
idea there was anything wrong.”
“‘Let it all hang out’ was the catchword sometime around the
late 70’s,” says Martha. “After years of being told NOT to
express our anger, we were supposed to do so all the time. I
remember this period of time as very unpleasant. We got it from
all sides. It was very, um, noisy.”
“In the 80s, they were telling women to stomp around, talk
loudly, and assert themselves. We were supposed to ‘get angry’
in order to compete with men in the work world,” says Paula.
Anger … how we struggle with this primitive, upsetting emotion.
Denied to women, it was at the same time the “all purpose”
emotion for a generation of men – the only legitimate way they
could express any emotion, since tenderness, grief, shame and
sympathy were women’s territory.
We are more accepting now for both genders to have all feelings
(like we had a choice), and yet we still don’t know what to do
about anger. “Anger kills” and the evidence mounts daily how
detrimental this emotion, unmanaged, can be to our health –
physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Can’t we just do away with this emotion we dislike so much?
Reach some state of nirvana where we’re always “happy” and
nothing bothers us? Not likely, and if we could, we’d be missing
a great source of information.
The key is not to get rid of anger – or any other emotion – but
to learn how to deal with it in a manner that’s not harmful to
ourselves or to others, and to heed its message.
There have been more “fads” about anger, than fingers on my
hands, and I’ve lived through many of them. So how are we
dealing with it now? What’s the latest?
Let’s get away from “fads” and get to the nitty-gritty about
this potentially destructive, yet vital, emotion.
WHERE IT COMES FROM
Anger, in its rawest form, comes from the primitive, or
reptilian brain. While “anger” encompasses many things when we
experience it, comes from many causes, and contains many
puzzling layers, at the bottom it’s aggression.
Emotions from the reptilian brain are designed for survival, and
are stronger than our thoughts will ever be. If we didn’t pay
attention to them, we might come into harm’s way. They’re
designed to preclude thinking. When the insult comes, or the
push, or the threat, we react … just as if there were a beast in
front of us, threatening our life.
Adrenalin starts pumping and we move into fight-or-flight.
There’s no time to think, or we’d be dead … at least the way the
emotion was originally designed to operate. The trouble is,
today there are few real threats to our existence, but our
bodies don’t know the difference, and so we react.
CAN WE IGNORE IT?
We ignore it to our peril. We are our emotions, and if we shut
down one, we shut them all down. If you aren’t willing to
experience the “bad” ones, you can’t experience the “good” ones,
to about the same degree.
I’m reminded of a friend who told me in one breath about the
death of his mother, and the birth of his first child, as if he
were reporting the Dow Jones for the day.
His inability to deal with his grief and anger at his mother,
rendered him unable to rejoice at the birth of his daughter.
Foregoing pleasure was the price he paid for being numb.
Our emotions are our guides. Anger tells us something is wrong
we need to deal with. And even if “you” choose to ignore it,
your body isn’t. It will talk to you in migraines, back pain,
ulcers, depression, and fibromyalgia.
Anger compromises the immune system. Illness ensues. It isn’t a
question of whether or not you can ignore it; you can’t. It’s
whether you’re mindful of it or not.
It will also talk to you in aborted careers, shattered
relationships, and damaged children. “The sins of the fathers
are visited upon the sons,” refers to legacies of dysfunction.
CAN WE ACCEPT IT?
We have a long communal history of judging our anger and finding
it “bad”. It’s hard to accept. It makes us somehow “not nice.”
The physiological response to it doesn’t feel good, and we wish
it would go away. We want to be “calmed down; at least those of
us who aren’t so addicted to it we’re living in a state of
hostility, on the verge of going postal, walking time bombs,
coronaries waiting to happen.
However, the more we fight it, the greater the hold it will have
on us, and we compound the stress. It takes energy to stuff it
down and that takes its toll. Besides it doesn’t work.
The first step is to recognize and accept it. “Nothing’s either
good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” said the poet, and this
applies to all our feelings, including anger. They are. They
happen. They’re there for a reason, which should be noted.
Judging our emotions only compounds the stress. Even in the
Bible it says, “Be angry, and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun
go down on your anger.” [Ephesians 4:26] The New Living
Translation phrases it, “Don’t sin by letting anger gain control
over you.”
It gains control over us when we do one of two things – either
ignoring it, or reacting to it in knee-jerk fashion, and doing
something harmful.
What’s the alternative? Sit with the anger. Experience it.
Acknowledge it. Then move yourself to the higher center of the
brain, the neocortex, and figure out what to do about it, if
anything. Respond, don’t react. Put a pause in between feeling
and action. Be willing to do nothing, while feeling it at the
same time. But don’t ignore it.
Better Anthony’s wife had told him each time she was angry and
asked for changes rather than just throwing the keys on the
table one day and walking out. Then it was too late. There was
too much water under the bridge, too much resentment, too much
to deal with.
When we stuff it down, it’s likely to come out in the “kick the
dog syndrome” as well. Some unsuspecting person will be the
brunt of our resentment toward someone else, or we’ll get drunk,
or crash the car, or trash our life in some way. Anger is energy.
LET IT PASS
One way to deal with anger is to learn to forgive. This is a
long learning process for most of us, but, of course, we have
plenty of opportunity to practice it. Unjustices occur all the
time, and we have all been wronged. Learning to let go of this
anger is part of Emotional Intelligence.
One reason this is a good policy is because many of the most
grievous injustices can’t be undone. An apology wouldn’t be
enough.
Therefore, we forgive, and we do so for our own benefit, not the
benefit of the perpetrator. The anger will eat us up, while
having little effect on the object of our anger, which means we
are twice victims, and more the fool.
USE IT (POSITIVELY)
Channel the energy. When your boss makes you angry, go chop wood
when you get home. Use the anger over your divorce to flame
through graduate school. Get angry at the opposing team and win
the football game. Write poetry when your mother dies. Master
Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Concerto when your wife runs off with another
man.
NAME IT, CLAIM IT, AIM IT, TAME IT
This is another method for dealing with anger. Name the feeling
and claim it. It’s your anger.
Intellectually speaking, someone could have said the same thing
to someone else, and it would’ve had little or no effect. YOU
are in the equation! “Aim it” means know where it’s coming from.
Don’t slap your child because your partner infuriated you. “Tame
it” means learning to self-soothe.
Developing your emotional intelligence can help eventually to
modulate your feelings. (So can therapy.) You experience them
less strongly after time, if you work at dealing with them as
they come up.
DON’T REPRESS IT, DON’T EXPRESS IT, CONFESS IT
This is Paul Pearsall’s formula. He has a Ph.D. in
psychoneuroimmunology and is the author of “The Pleasure
Principle.” His work on anger is compelling, as he has studied
the effect it has on our immunology system, which is our health.
Repressing anger makes us sick, and so does expressing it.
There’s a plethora of research showing that just recalling an
angering event causes the same reaction as if it were happening
again in real time. Why do this to yourself over and over again?
Wasn’t once enough? Skip the war stories, and skip the bypass,
yes?
“Confess it,” says Pearsall, meaning roughly that you
acknowledge you have it, and that maybe you aren’t “yourself,”
or thinking straight. You take a break. Breathe deeply. Count to
ten. Think it over. Move on.
YOU MANAGE IT, OR IT MANAGES YOU
Learning to manage anger is part of emotional intelligence. We
are never far from the two-year-old throwing a tantrum. “We
never grow up,” someone said, “We just learn how to behave in
public.” The difference is self-awareness and tools –
understanding the emotion, being able to stop, self-soothe and
think it through, and not letting it get the better of us.