Do you want to know how to control anger? I think many people are afraid to feel angry. Anger is usually portrayed as a negative or harmful emotion. Sometimes people become violent when they are angry. I once had a friend say to me that he doesn’t get angry. The comment stuck with me and kind of rolled around inside my head, because I think everyone feels anger sometimes. If anger is an emotion we all feel, then let’s learn to understand it and express it effectively.
All emotions in themselves are neutral. They are simply sensations in our body. We give them meaning and judgement with our rational thinking mind. What can become positive or negative, as in constructive or destructive, is how we chose to express our feelings. It is not the emotions themselves that are good or bad, but our expression of them: our response to them.
Some people are afraid to experience anger because it can feel very explosive, and they are afraid of losing control: afraid of hurting something or someone.
For most of my life I believed that it was wrong to feel angry, and I always fought any angry feelings and tried to suppress them. My underlying beliefs were:
anger is wrong
anger is hurtful
anger is unattractive
people won’t like you if you get angry
Consequently, in the past when I felt angry I would try to think it away. I would try to rationalize it, or mediate it by attempting to see things from the point of view of others concerned. I would try to be understanding, and calm. The problem was, most of the time this didn’t actually resolve my angry feelings. It just shut them away behind a veneer of niceness. Not only did it not resolve the original angry feelings, but it also sent the message that my feelings were not important, and that my needs didn’t count, because the root of anger is usually a need you have that has not been met.
“It is hard to give ourselves permission to feel anger. It is crippling if we do not. By resisting the feeling of anger, we perpetuate it in our lives.” Gay Hendricks – Learning to Love Yourself
And anger can be beneficial. Anger can give us strength. It can give us courage to stand up for ourselves or others, or to fight for justice. It can help you to find and express your voice.
Usually when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition.
James Russell Lowell
But when they get angry, they bring about a change.
Both David R. Hawkins and Abraham-Hicks state that the emotional frequency of anger is higher than that of grief and fear. When someone who is sad moves into anger it can actually be an empowering step for them.
In their book, The Heart of the Soul, Gary Zukav and Linda Francis note that “Anger is an attempt to change others so that you feel more secure.” They also state that:
All painful emotions are expressions of fear.
When you are caught in a current of rage or remorse, or seek revenge, you cannot see that. You see only a cause of your anger, a loss that you cannot replace or an injustice that torments you. As you strike out in anger, withdraw in sorrow, or seethe at an injustice, you keep yourself from the central perception of what lies at the root of your pain. That is fear.
The Healthy Way to Deal With Anger
What is a healthy way to deal with angry feelings? It is firstly to accept that anger is simply one of your emotions, and to chose to let go of the belief that it is wrong or bad or negative. Then, love yourself for feeling angry, let it be okay to feel it.
Gay Hendricks teaches that if you drop your resistance to an emotion and allow yourself to feel it fully, then it actually passes through you relatively quickly, and I have found this to be true. Sometimes you can do this simply sitting alone quietly and allowing yourself to admit that you feel angry, and explore the feeling and let it roll over you. Some people find it helpful to physically work it out by going for a run, or hitting a punching bag. I have also tried a practice of letting it out by releasing gut roars from deep in your belly which was beneficial. Loud, but helpful.
Once you have allowed yourself to feel your top level anger, you can start to open to a deeper awareness of all the thoughts and feelings you are experiencing in the present moment. Love yourself with open acceptance of where you are at now. For example, you may say to yourself: I love myself for feeling afraid to feel anger, I love myself for feeling like I shouldn’t get angry, I love myself for feeling like a bad person for getting angry, I love myself for feeling ashamed of feeling angry.
When you accept your feelings as they are, you give them space to be and resolve themselves. As you accept what has come up as the surface emotion of anger, you may find that you are then able to become aware of the emotions that are underlying it which are usually hurt and fear.
Like all emotions, the feeling of anger contains a message for you. It tells you primarily where you feel like your boundaries have not been honored by yourself or by others, where your needs are not being met, and where you can bring more love and compassion to yourself. When you understand this, and understand that the physical sensation of anger when allowed to express itself freely lasts no more than 90 seconds in your body, then it feels safer to allow yourself to feel it, and feeling it becomes a very constructive experience.
If you are feeling anger in relation to a conflict with someone, then in this article you can learn 12 ways to effectively resolve hostility in relationships.
Photo by James Fitzgerald on Unsplash
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