When I am working with people who struggle with anger, often in our sessions, I invite them to bring into their awareness a recent situation where they felt angry. I don’t want them just to recall it. I want them to really bring the experience to their full awareness.
You might want to try it for yourself right now. Make the event as real as you can. Keep the situation present with you until you actually begin to feel the emotions and bodily sensations that go with the anger. If you stay with it long enough, there will also be thoughts that fuel the anger. Keep reliving it the experience as best you can, until you are at a point where you feel almost taken over by your anger and you have a strong desire to do something about it.
When my clients reach this point, I will do several things. I might teach them some techniques that allow them to defuse from the thoughts and the feelings and bodily sensations of anger. I will help them experience how they can look at their thoughts instead of through their thoughts. I will help them realize that all of these thoughts and experiences of anger are different than behaviors you might express when you are angry.
Of course, this is an exercise that they are doing in my office. If you accepted the invitation to do the exercise, most likely, you were sitting at home in a room all by yourself. We all know that is not how anger usually happens. It flares up when you do not expect it. It catches you off guard. After all, you don’t wake up in the morning wondering how many times today you will get angry. It happens so quickly and so powerfully that it seems to come out of nowhere.
This is the toughest challenge you have with your anger: What do you do when the anger is right there, hot, raging inside of you?
Many of the exercises that I teach people in therapy are designed to prepare them for when the anger shows up in real life. The hope is that they can bring up some of these new skills when the anger flares up. And yet, in the heat of the moment, it can be hard to remember exactly what you are supposed to do. Which exercise should I use? How exactly does the practice begin? What do I do next? And all the time, the anger continues to grow.
So, let’s keep it simple. What do you do when the anger shows up? Do nothing and practice patience. In their book, ACT on Life Not on Anger: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Guide to Problem Anger, Georg H. Eifert, Matthew McKay, and John P Forsyth offer some specific guidelines about how to respond to the anger when it shows up in real life.
First, you can say and do nothing.
With all the thoughts and feelings rushing through you, it may not feel like it but you “do have a choice here. You can do what your mind and body tell you to do. As in the past, everything’s pushing you to act: you want to be right, and you want to straighten things out. You could do that—and what does your experience tell you about that choice?” (148, Kindle Edition). Instead, why not trying something that feels strange, almost unnatural? Stop, be quiet, sit still and see what happens to all the energy of this anger.
Second, you can watch the mind machine as an observer.
When anger shows up, your mind goes into overdrive. It has all kind of things to say about what you are feeling. It has ideas about what to do. It has ideas that justify why you about to do what you do. It has judgments and blaming about the person who is about to receive your anger. But remember, thoughts are just thoughts; they do not have to dictate your actions. You really can just watch what your mind is telling you from the perspective of a compassionate observer.
Third, ride the tiger.
No, this is not easy. Sitting “with the discomfort and doing nothing while you feel like exploding is like riding a wild horse or a wild tiger; it is very frightening” (149). So what can you do? Ride the tiger. That is, bring attention to the physical experience of anger. Where do you feel the pressure or the tightness in your body?
There is a lot of powerful energy that is present when you are angry, and it really is possible to approach that energy with curiosity and compassion. This is very different that acting on it, fighting it or trying to suppress it. If you can maintain this stance of curiosity and compassion, you gain enough emotional flexibility to respond from a place of meaning and values.
If you would like to know more about how to deal with your anger and other forms of anxiety, I invite you to visit my anxiety treatment page.