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.
--Gautama Siddharta
If you struggle with the presence of anger in your life, you know the hurt and pain it can bring to you and to others. When you look at that hurt and pain, the most sensible response seems to be to exert some control over your anger. When you start to feel the anger rising, your mind tells you that this anger is dangerous. It will review all the previous anger episodes and the damage they have inflicted. You cannot have this anger and live a meaningful life.
All of these messages of the mind are wrong because controlling anger does not work in the same way that control works in other areas of your life. Most likely, you have experienced situations that really are out of your control…getting a serious illness or being laid off a job because the company is losing money. You may have lots of feelings about situations like this, but it is hard to get angry because you know there is nothing you can do to make things different.
In their book, Act On Life Not On Anger, Georg H. Eifert, Matthew McKay, and John P. Forsyth say that everyone’s “anger stems from two main sources: their struggle to control other people and their struggle to control painful emotions such as anger and shame.”
You Cannot Control Other People
One of the five myths of anger is that your anger is caused by others. If you respond to the actions of another person with anger, it is easy to conclude that their behavior is the source of your anger. So, if you can exert enough control to change their behavior, your anger will subside. There are two problems with this. One, your mind is telling you that you have the right to try and control others. Two, your mind is telling you that you have the ability to control others. Neither of these things is true.
This struggle to control others can be overt. You may give unwanted advice or communicate your ideas by telling instead of inviting discussion. These are efforts to convince the other person that your perspective is the correct one; if they continue to see it differently, you may respond with frustration and anger. This struggle to control others can be subtle. You feel impatient or uneasy with other people because they are acting differently than you want them to; again, your frustration and anger will feel justified.
You Cannot Control Your Emotional Reactions
Over the years, you have learned how well control works to avoid physical pain. “Don’t touch the hot stove.” When you were young, someone told you not to do that, because you would get hurt. Or perhaps you put your hand close enough to a hot stove to feel the discomfort, and from then on, you were able to control your behavior, so you did not experience physical pain.
This strategy that seems so reasonable with things in the external world does not work with painful feelings happening inside of you. Remember the five components of anger? Before you act on your anger, you will experience some pre-anger feelings and some trigger thoughts. When these show up, you try to control them by avoiding them or pushing them aside. If these feelings and thoughts were outside of you like a hot stove, you could feel the heat and move away. But because they dwell inside of you, attempts to avoid or push away do not work; in fact, it can make them even more present and powerful.
The solution to dealing with your anger is to change your relationship with the thoughts and feelings that contribute to it. You cannot make people act the way you want. You cannot make the unwanted thoughts and feelings go away. You can find a way to be more deeply aware of them and even make room for them in your life. When you adopt this mindful, accepting stance, you are able to choose actions that are expressions of the values that give your life meaning, even in the presence of the anger.
If you would like to experience this new relationship with your anger, I invite you to contact me. You can learn more about my approach to dealing with problems like anger on my anxiety treatment page.