“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”  ~Buddha

If you google anger, you will find topics galore about why you need to avoid it, how anger makes you sick, and how to manage this unwanted human emotion.  Anger gets a bad rap in spiritual circles, as if it indicates a person has not “done their work.” Right now, anger is flying around the political and cultural scene like a rabid wild beast, causing many otherwise temperate people to feel a form of anger called disgust. The very people who preach that anger is of the devil voted for an angry leader.  The news has become a forum for journalists and guests to openly display a kind of anger called outrage about people with differing views. It’s clear that anger is not making our world a better place in its raw and unexamined expression.

If you are confused about anger at this point, you are not alone.  Most people have conflicting views within themselves about anger, and most people don’t have a clue how to use if for the good.  This purportedly undesirable and loathsome member of the family of human emotions is not being seen or understood for what it truly is—an experience of separation from something we desire.  It is as natural as fear, sadness, or joy, and yet, it is relegated to the hazmat bin.

All of our feelings matter however.  It would seem to me, that rather than shunning anger and referring to women who express it as bitches, and men who express it as bullies, that becoming intimate with our own anger would be a path to wisdom in a world that needs it. 

Understanding what anger is

It is helpful to distinguish anger from rage.  Anger is an emotion that arises from the limbic system of the brain, and rage is an instinct coming from the most primitive part of the brain that has to do with survival.  Rage is most often destructive, has to do with wounds of the past, and anger that is not attended to can become rage. 

There is often something very legitimate that has happened for a person to feel angry, and in some cases people have free-floating anger from accumulated grievances, with nothing specific triggering it in the moment. There is usually a story associated with anger, such as something not being fair, right, kind, or legal.

Along with being an emotion, anger is often accompanied by physical changes, including an increased heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of hormones such as adrenaline preparing us physically for “fight or flight”. It is true that these physical effects of long-term anger can be detrimental to health and well-being, so being able to let go of anger is essential if you want to be healthy and happy.

When I work with people, I notice how reluctant most people are to admitting that they are angry.  They deny anger, but instead use words like irritated, upset, or frustrated, not realizing that those are all forms of anger.

Anger can also be a “secondary emotion” to feeling sad, frightened, threatened or lonely.  Anger lets us know that a boundary is crossed, and if we are attuned to our inner anger, we can use the intelligent part of our brain to take action when needed.  In fact, if we learn to recognize anger when it arises, and refrain from judging it, anger could become a barometer of our measure of self-care, showing us that it is time for a change.

The different faces of anger

If you want to use anger to become a better person, it’s important to identify the way you experience anger. You will find yourself in at least one if not more of these expressions of anger: 

Self anger:  No one escapes this one, since every human being has an inner critic.  This is the anger we feel toward ourselves for not living up to an internalized ideal.  It erodes self-esteem and creates barriers to healthy relationships. 

Resistant anger:  People with resistant anger avoid conflict like the plague, and believe all anger is unacceptable.  They tend to bottle up the energy of anger and not even recognize it for what it is.  This can lead to physical and mental illness.

Frozen anger: When people hold grudges and refuse to forgive, their anger becomes frozen.   These people are reluctant to let anger go, and hold it as a vendetta against those they perceived have hurt them.

Compressive anger:  Individuals with this type of anger are walking time bombs, as they push their anger down, until they can’t any longer. These people often have a hairline trigger, waiting to be ignited, and once angry, their anger spirals out of control and becomes explosive anger, or rage.

Addictive anger:  Some people are addicted to the adrenaline rushes of anger, and come to depend on them psychologically and physically.  This kind of anger provides a false sense of strength, and many people addicted to violent media or games thrive on this kind of anger.

Jealous anger:  This type of anger usually stems from childhood and is based on wounds of abandonment and loss, or rejection.  This anger takes the form of wanting to control and possess others. 

Conflictual anger: People with this kind of anger thrive on strife and disagreement and argue for the sake of arguing.  Often based on a deep insecurity, they have the need to be right to give themselves a false sense of worth. A criminal case can make or break your future and have some problematic consequences. If you're currently fighting a case, Gold Coast criminal lawyers will do whatever they can to protect your future by keeping your record clean.

Passive anger:  People with this kind of anger attempt to hide it, and lack the ability to deal directly with others about things that bother them.  They feel their anger, however, and may attempt to get even in other ways, that are rarely satisfying, thus leaving them angry.

Unbridled anger:  These people embrace their anger and feel the need to release it on a steady basis.  They lack the ability to contain it long enough to reflect on it and get to its source, and often do damage to others who bear the brunt of their angry expression.  This is often the result of anger being expressed that way in the family.

Manipulative anger: These people are often emotionally very immature, and still attempt to get what they want by threatening, crying, sulking or screaming. 

Righteous anger: People who have this kind of anger usually believe in some dogma or ideology that leads them to feel superior to others, which causes them to feel entitled to their anger. 

You can see that some of the expressions of anger rely on denial and avoidance, some on unbridled discharge, and others on displacement, as in yelling at a child when you are angry at your boss. Just because it's not obvious or owned, anger will have its effect.  There are, however, healthy expressions of anger that can be developed by transforming the raw emotion into a power for good.

How to transform anger into a power for good

We can develop a very powerful muscle of awareness when it comes to our anger.  To quote one of my heroes, Viktor Frankl, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

To expand this space, we must strengthen the inner Witness, which we can do through meditation, prayer, and various forms of contemplation.  If your tendency is to express your anger freely, learning to contain long enough to reflect is a muscle you will want to develop. 

Containment alone is not enough, as it could become repressed or passive, so we must know what to do with our feelings of anger once we are able to contain.  And above all, we must remember that no one can make us feel angry.  It is always our very own reaction to a stimulus, and we always have choice. 

I realize that if someone has been terribly wronged or someone we love has been brutally treated, our ability to choose is entirely compromised at first, and that the ability to open up that space requires an enormous amount of courage and heart.  Victim offender reconciliation programs have been in place for several years now, with the purpose of empowering victims, offenders and communities to heal from the effects of crime.  The results have been miraculous in some cases. 

Here are steps you can take that will help you use your anger to increase your self-awareness, your capacity for free will, and to develop empathy for yourself and others.  The ability to remain aware of yourself in the face of strong emotion is a skill that you develop over time, and is an expression of wisdom.

• Normalize the feeling of anger.  You must begin with the willingness to see anger as a normal, healthy, and helpful human emotion.  Refrain from judging anger itself.
• Look for anger in yourself.   I am not saying to look for trouble, but look to see if you are feeling angry toward yourself or anyone else.   Be curious about it, and in fact, every night before you sleep, check to see if there is any anger you have not acknowledged.  Own it!
• Name the anger and what you think it’s about. Exercise the capacity for self-reflection by being really honest here. If you are angry with your partner and taking it out on your kids, then step back and find the origin.
• Ask if the present anger is connected to the past.  This is really key, as we are often in an emotional blindspot it comes to our anger, where something in the present moment is triggering an earlier wound. 
• Look for other feelings connected to the anger.  You may feel disappointed, sad, tired, lonely, betrayed, anxious, etc. 
• Extend empathy toward yourself for the feelings you are having.  Let’s face it, no one likes to feel difficult feelings. Validate yourself for your reaction of anger which may be a cover for another difficult emotion.  Treat yourself as you would a good friend having a hard time.
• Decide what to do.  Action is only taken after you have been able to connect to self-compassion.  Sometimes there is a necessary conversation to be had with another person, and at other times, there isn’t anything to do, and it’s more a matter of deciding whether you will let the anger go.

Never underestimate the power of making a decision to let anger go, once whatever can be done is done.  You use the executive functioning part of your brain to do that, once you have felt and examined your anger, without judgment.  From my experience working with thousands of people, I can say that people who can truly feel and then surrender anger are the happiest people, and those who stuff anger and hold grudges are the least happy.   

You may need help with this if the hurt or loss or grievance is so great, or it links so deeply to an old wound.  When this happens, you use anger as a doorway to healing.

The more adept you become at working with your own anger, the better you become at dealing with anger in others.     When you own and integrate your own anger into the whole wise being that you are, you are able to recognize the pain that an angry person is in.  In fact, our capacity to hold another person without judgment while they are angry is a heroic act of love that has the power to diffuse conflict and create bridges of understanding. 

The Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh says this about anger in his book, Anger:

May I come to know my anger as a good friend whom I comfort when in need. 

May my anger transform readily into the the power to think clearly.

May I face the anger of others with the compassion they need. 

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