I find one of the most common things I counsel friends and clients on is anger. First of all, it gets a really negative rap, especially among women (and is cited as a reason to shame them for any form of its expression). Second, even when people embrace it, it’s been so long neglected that sophisticated approaches to this emotion are really lacking. I like reading Buddhist literature about “being with” anger, but this insight often assumes I am living full-time in an abbey. I want to share some ideas from a bit more of a street-smart angle (developed over 40-plus years inside a fiery temperament).
Let’s look at ways anger is useful!
- It’s an indicator that our boundaries have been crossed. This is NOT to assume our boundaries are automatically well-established, but it definitely is the indicator that we are at our limit about something. We can use a feeling of anger to help us see the limit within and examine whether it is something we need to explain outward or reflect on and change from within based on educating ourselves. For example, I spent a lot of my youth feeling angry at my parents. Over the years, I recognized this — that anger was my indicator. So I worked. Hard. On myself and through a lot of awkward confrontations, periods of no contact and reestablishment of boundaries. This work paid off. But it felt endless to the point that I didn’t expect any relationship at all, until it kind of just happened. This was possible because they are reflective people and because I stayed with and worked with my honest limits (listened to my anger). Time with them can still trigger, but a lot less often. I now have the space to look in and reflect, to say what I need to say and work with them proactively on the relationship so that we can remain close. I was lucky that they reflective and were working too. For those who don’t have the luxury of people working with them, the choice might be ultimately to cut away, for good.
- Anger is a force. It’s something we can use to destroy or to build walls. These concepts are also well bastardized but are useful at times in our lives. Sometimes someone is taking us for granted or is confused about how to show respect to other people. If this triggers anger, the energy of that anger can be used to explain the violation, or to distance and protect. The relationship doesn’t need to end, necessarily. But it does need to change. You can use the energy of anger to express and set up a boundary. It’s like if a tomato plant is falling and creeping all over. You can set up a lean for it and retrain it. If the relationship is to end entirely, anger is usefully channeled into bettering one’s self and clearing out the space left by that relationship for another one to seed and grow.
- Anger educates us about who and what we freely give our power to. If someone or something upsets us, we have given this person or thing power. Anger is a retraction of that power, either temporarily or permanently. We need to examine the power dynamics beneath the feeling of anger to make conscious decisions about whether or not we return power to that person or thing after they trigger the retraction. We need to explore why they have power with us and if this is a useful relationship in our life — either the way it is, or, if it needs changing, the way it could be. The power someone else has with each of us is worth evaluating. Perhaps they deserve less. Perhaps they take it for granted. Follow the feeling of anger to its source. Don’t rush it, shame it, suppress it or try to escape it. USE IT. You are not helpless — you have the ability to choose whether this cycle of anger is worth the person or thing in your life as it is, changed or at all.
- Anger is a way to get unstuck. Countless girlfriends talk to me about being hung up on an ex who, by most accounts, abused them somehow. They keep spinning all the good things and memories about this person, and it holds them in misery for way too long. Funny, if they get laid and it’s nice they may feel better but still they can avoid “burning down” that old structure with their ex. I find it is so important to tap the anger of an unjust past situation in order to clear it. To admit that the ex was actually quite massively preoccupied inside their own ass can be super empowering. But what so often prevents women, and men, from doing it is ego — it is just too devastating to see that someone really didn’t love the way it seemed. And YET the power remains with them until and unless the one stuck inside their ego-woven fantasy reclaims it. What may be humiliating for a millisecond is at the same time the ash bed from which the Phoenix rises. But first, there must be a good and strong fire. And this can be built on sobering all the way up about the differences between how each party handled the relationship with care, or with utter disregard. Most times, looking back, the signs are all there.
- Anger is the result of a self-centered focus. In the reasons above, we see how being self-centered sometimes can help set up boundaries and sort out whose issues are whose. But in everyday situations, we can also pinpoint times where it is better not to be so damn self-centered for the sake of our blood pressure, our hearts, our behavioral patterns, our relationships and our overall quality of life. A lot of people get angry in traffic, in grocery stores, in lines, in situations that are simply a part of life and beyond their control. They are angry in a temper-tantrum “why isn’t this going MY way,” kind of way. I have succumbed to such a pull many times in my life. Daily meditation has helped me to pause more often before I get so involved with these petty kind of triggers and instead say “okay, what is going on here in the big picture??” If we can work on ways to outsmart that mechanism that insists that everything goes our way, we’ll find a lot more moments of relaxation and connection than we find getting angry, acting antisocial and then feeling remorse and shame afterward — because it’s usually not such a big deal as our inner child makes it out to be.
