Let Anger Be Your Teacher While Learning to Become Its Master

Anger, I’ve found, is a double edged sword. On one side it has the ability to damage and destroy relationships, on the other it has the ability to open wounds and allow deep healing and understanding to take place.

Behind this sits the other important double aspect of anger. There is the part that demands action as the feeling of it flows through the body, triggering it into flight of fight mode; it is this aspect that can destroy lives and, to avoid this, I must master my response to its call.

Then there is the other aspect that is pointing to deeper learning. “The emotion arises in direct response to a perception that a personal (often subconscious) boundary is being challenged” says Teal Swan, “whether it’s physical, mental or emotional”. Anger is essentially the fear of pain, which is why it triggers our flight or fight response.

Uncovering and challenging both my fears and boundaries has much to teach in the quest for self awareness, growth and authenticity. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Gary Zukov relates “Authentic power is the ability to distinguish within you the difference between love and fear, and choose love no matter what it happening inside of you or outside of you.”

I find this can be pretty challenging when it comes to anger, because that adrenaline coursing through my veins wants me to act in defense of my fears. To enable me to act with authentic power, I think there are three steps:

• Set myself up for success
• Use the urge to act in my favour
• Look for the lessons

 
Set Myself up for Success

Anger is an emotion that has cropped up in all aspects of my life, particularly in relationships and the workplace, but nothing has made things clearer to me than becoming a parent because nothing has confronted me as much.

I’m with Alfie Kohn when he says “Even before I had children, I knew that being a parent was going to be challenging as well as rewarding. But I didn’t really know. I didn’t know how exhausted it was possible to become, or how clueless it was possible to feel, or how, each time I reached the end of my rope, I would somehow have to find more rope”.

I was sharing with some friends one of those moments where I ran out of rope and started yelling at my daughter for her refusal to get in the car this week. We started talking about the things that trigger us into yelling at our kids. One said straight away: sibling fighting, having to repeat herself endlessly to get simple tasks done, and people (not just the kids) not tidying up after themselves. That seemed like a pretty familiar list to me.

But as I thought about it, I was also aware that I generally only lose it if I’m not putting my whole attention on what is happening in front of me. So to Eckhart Tolle’s point, presence helps calm the emotional seas, stopping these situations of overwhelm building to start with.

Then I realised it’s not always possible to be fully present when I’m looking after the kids. Food needs prepared, clothes need washed and there are a whole host of other tasks that need to be attended to aside of the “mum, can you just…” demands.

A practice that I have used before, that helps tremendously though, is to give my unadulterated presence to each of my kids for ten to fifteen minutes each day, in the same way I do for myself when I do my daily meditation. I figure if I make this a regular thing it should have the same cumulative effect as meditation and help me to become more mindful in the difficult moments.

But while I can set myself up for success more often, there will be moments of anger in my life because my personal boundaries are still likely to get triggered or overstepped; both by little people who have limited awareness that others also have needs and wants and by adults who, frankly, have a somewhat traumatic relationship with their own.

Use the Urge to Act in My Favour
 
So how best to deal with that anger in the moment so as not to damage my relationships? Strategies I’ve tried - like counting to ten, screaming to let go of the energy, pounding a pillow - were ineffective. I’d always revert to yelling – and often it would get misdirected to those in the home if I’d had to suppress it elsewhere.
 
Recently, watching the docu-series Transcendence I was reminded about the mechanics of our flight or fight system, and how amazing it is when we are actually in mortal danger. But by constantly triggering it when the threat is not imminent or mortal, it stands in the way of my ability to look objectively at what is happening and live my best life.
 
Dr Libby Weaver’s advice is, as soon as we become aware of being in flight or fight mode, start to focus on our breathing. Slow it down, take belly breaths in and extend our exhalation. This is an effective way to calm our system and invoke the parasympathetic nervous system, from where we can operate more effectively. Here are some other methods that also work to soothe the nervous system.

Look for the Lessons

Once I’ve done that, I can take a real look at the anger and what it has to teach.

The first thing to notice is my own relationship with anger itself. I acknowledge that, despite my own disgust at the way I’ve expressed it on many an occasion, it did once serve a purpose. As a little girl taunted by classmates all the way home one day, when ignoring them hadn’t worked, exploding in verbal response and shoving a girl out of my personal space brokered no further issues.

Hearing my mother yelling in our house was a daily occurrence when I was growing up, and talking back a punishable offence. Finally, at fifteen, the dam broke and I retaliated after being slapped on my face and called a name. It served me to slap her right back and correct her, it stopped any further physical punishment (normal in those days) but there were many years of yelling and arguments that followed.

Having never really learned a more healthy way to express my anger, I have often felt disgusted at myself for not being able to express it better. And yet I also feel resistance within me to letting go of the part of me that expresses my anger in this way because the only experience I have of that is to accept powerlessness and let others walk all over me, something the child within vowed would never be an option again.

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “it’s always darkest just before dawn”, my dawning has arrived with the new awareness that I am not that child any more, and if I don’t want to perpetuate the same cycle with my own kids (which I don’t), it’s time to adopt a new strategy.

And aside of my awareness about the relationship with anger itself, this has also given me a fresh perspective on any issues that trigger my anger. There is always a lesson within that helps to understand and get to know the more authentic me.

So what is your relationship with anger? How do you express it and could you use it to fuel you towards a more authentic life?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may also enjoy Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear and What Can Your Anger Teach You About Your Gifts? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog