There is nothing wrong with anger. It is just an emotion, same as all the others: sadness, fear, confusion, ecstasy, love, hate, etc. The expression of anger can be problematic. Especially, if we believe that anger is “bad” and try to suppress it or get rid of it.
I often hear about “anger management”. We want to learn to “manage our anger”. I am not sure how any emotion can be “managed”. It can be felt, but managed possibly not. Anger should be understood and felt, expressed appropriately or redirected.
From the beginning of our lives we are taught not to get angry. Angry kids are yelled at, punished, or distracted with food, toys, something else. We don’t teach our children to feel and express their anger. We tell them to calm down and stop this nonsense immediately. We don’t ask them what is going on and what made them so upset. We assume we know. We judge their feelings and tell them to change it to something else.
That’s how we learn that anger is “bad”. We even divide the feelings into “good” (happy, joyful, calm, content, loving) and “bad” (sad, angry, scared, lonely, disgusted). We want the “good” feelings to persist and “bad” to go away immediately.
But this is not how it works. We need to experience and feel all the feelings, not only the so-called “good” ones. Feelings are like waves; they come and go very fast.
According to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard brain neuroanatomist, author and popular Ted Talk speaker, they last 90 sec.
That is, if we let them come and go without “feeding them” with our story.
“Once triggered, the chemical released by my brain surges through my body and I have a physiological experience. Within 90 seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated from my blood and my automatic response is over. If, however, I remain angry after those 90 seconds have passed, then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run.” (Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor)
So, what do we do to let the wave of emotion pass through in 90 sec???
First of all, we have to learn to understand what we feel. It is interesting how often the simple question “what do you feel right now?” stays unanswered.
Interesting and quite clear to see, considering our childhood experiences (see above).
We can slowly learn to recognize that the tightness in our throat, or a knot in our stomach means fear. Or, that a hot flush in our face is a prelude to an angry outburst.
Once we recognize what we feel, we can try to understand why. What has happened just seconds before the tight knot or a hot flush in our body appeared? Was it a specific word, a behaviour, a situation that triggered the response? When did we feel it before? What happened then? What is the story behind our emotions?
Because we are humans, we constantly create stories in our minds. This is how we make sense of the world. We learn from the past and apply the learning to a current situation. It is like a shortcut: we see a danger and we know (from the past stories) that we have to run. There is no time for analyzing the situation over and over again and coming to a conclusion. The reaction must be instantaneous (that is the shortcut).
It works well in many situations (i.e. I see a bear and I know I have to back off); not so well in others (i.e. I hear a specific word and react with a flush of anger; I see a tall man and I react with fear). Those are just the stories I fuel my emotion with and “let that circuit continue to run”.
If we understand the story, we can feel the emotion and express it without “fuelling it”. Quite often we have to go way back to the past to understand the story and see how we used it over the years to “fuel” our feelings. Fuel and justify: “ you made me angry”, “you upset me”, “you made me feel worthless”.
Nobody can “make you feel anything”. You feel some emotion triggered by a distant memory of a situation, a person, a verbal exchange, and perpetuate it by your own story attached to it.
Think about a specific moment when you felt really angry as someone cut you off on a highway. Why were you angry? What was the story you were telling yourself? Was it: “they don’t respect me at all”? “They hate me and think that they are better than me”? Did you ruminate on the incident an hour later or told your friend about a jerk you encountered? If you did, you just fuelled your emotion with a story. You used the situation to confirm your old feeling of worthlessness, disrespect, inferiority maybe.
You didn’t let it pass through in 90 sec.
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