| Dealing
with Anger
by
Susan Dunn, MA, Emotional Intelligence Coach
& Consultant |
| “When
I was growing up,” Annette tells me,
“girls weren’t supposed to get mad. Just
as we were supposed to sit still, and not
speak unless spoken to, we were supposed to
look pretty and keep a smile on our face.
It’s no wonder I had migraines for so many
years. And when I did start dealing with it, I
had no idea what to do about it.” |
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“There was something wrong with her, I
think,” Anthony told me. “My ex-wife …
she never got angry, all the time we were
married. Not once.” He paused and looked
away. Then he added, “She just threw the
keys on the table one day and walked out. I
had no idea there was anything wrong.”
“‘Let it all hang out’ was the catchword
sometime around the late 70’s,” says
Martha. “After years of being told NOT to
express our anger, we were supposed to do so
all the time. I remember this period of time
as very unpleasant. We got it from all sides.
It was very, um, noisy.”
“In the 80s, they were telling women to
stomp around, talk loudly, and assert
themselves. We were supposed to ‘get
angry’ in order to compete with men in the
work world,” says Paula.
Anger … how we struggle with this primitive,
upsetting emotion. Denied to women, it was at
the same time the “all purpose” emotion
for a generation of men – the only
legitimate way they could express any emotion,
since tenderness, grief, shame and sympathy
were women’s territory.
We are more accepting now for both genders to
have all feelings (like we had a choice), and
yet we still don’t know what to do about
anger. “Anger kills” and the evidence
mounts daily how detrimental this emotion,
unmanaged, can be to our health -- physically,
mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Can’t we just do away with this emotion we
dislike so much? Reach some state of nirvana
where we’re always “happy” and nothing
bothers us? Not likely, and if we could,
we’d be missing a great source of
information.
The key is not to get rid of anger – or any
other emotion – but to learn how to deal
with it in a manner that’s not harmful to
ourselves or to others, and to heed its
message.
There have been more “fads” about anger,
than fingers on my hands, and I’ve lived
through many of them. So how are we dealing
with it now? What’s the latest?
Let’s get away from “fads” and get to
the nitty-gritty about this potentially
destructive, yet vital, emotion.
WHERE IT COMES FROM
Anger, in its rawest form, comes from the
primitive, or reptilian brain. While
“anger” encompasses many things when we
experience it, comes from many causes, and
contains many puzzling layers, at the bottom
it’s aggression.
Emotions from the reptilian brain are designed
for survival, and are stronger than our
thoughts will ever be. If we didn’t pay
attention to them, we might come into harm’s
way. They’re designed to preclude thinking.
When the insult comes, or the push, or the
threat, we react … just as if there were a
beast in front of us, threatening our life.
Adrenalin starts pumping and we move into
fight-or-flight. There’s no time to think,
or we’d be dead … at least the way the
emotion was originally designed to operate.
The trouble is, today there are few real
threats to our existence, but our bodies
don’t know the difference, and so we react.
CAN WE IGNORE IT?
We ignore it to our peril. We are our
emotions, and if we shut down one, we shut
them all down. If you aren’t willing to
experience the “bad” ones, you can’t
experience the “good” ones, to about the
same degree.
I’m reminded of a friend who told me in one
breath about the death of his mother, and the
birth of his first child, as if he were
reporting the Dow Jones for the day.
His inability to deal with his grief and anger
at his mother, rendered him unable to rejoice
at the birth of his daughter. Foregoing
pleasure was the price he paid for being numb.
Our emotions are our guides. Anger tells us
something is wrong we need to deal with. And
even if “you” choose to ignore it, your
body isn’t. It will talk to you in
migraines, back pain, ulcers, depression, and
fibromyalgia.
Anger compromises the immune system. Illness
ensues. It isn’t a question of whether or
not you can ignore it; you can’t. It’s
whether you’re mindful of it or not.
It will also talk to you in aborted careers,
shattered relationships, and damaged children.
“The sins of the fathers are visited upon
the sons,” refers to legacies of
dysfunction.
CAN WE ACCEPT IT?
We have a long communal history of judging our
anger and finding it “bad”. It’s hard to
accept. It makes us somehow “not nice.”
The physiological response to it doesn’t
feel good, and we wish it would go away. We
want to be “calmed down; at least those of
us who aren’t so addicted to it we’re
living in a state of hostility, on the verge
of going postal, walking time bombs,
coronaries waiting to happen.
However, the more we fight it, the greater the
hold it will have on us, and we compound the
stress. It takes energy to stuff it down and
that takes its toll. Besides it doesn’t
work.
The first step is to recognize and accept it.
“Nothing’s either good or bad, but
thinking makes it so,” said the poet, and
this applies to all our feelings, including
anger. They are. They happen. They’re there
for a reason, which should be noted.
Judging our emotions only compounds the
stress. Even in the Bible it says, “Be
angry, and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun
go down on your anger.” [Ephesians 4:26] The
New Living Translation phrases it, “Don’t
sin by letting anger gain control over you.”
It gains control over us when we do one of two
things – either ignoring it, or reacting to
it in knee-jerk fashion, and doing something
harmful.
What’s the alternative? Sit with the anger.
Experience it. Acknowledge it. Then move
yourself to the higher center of the brain,
the neocortex, and figure out what to do about
it, if anything. Respond, don’t react. Put a
pause in between feeling and action. Be
willing to do nothing, while feeling it at the
same time. But don’t ignore it.
Better Anthony’s wife had told him each time
she was angry and asked for changes rather
than just throwing the keys on the table one
day and walking out. Then it was too late.
There was too much water under the bridge, too
much resentment, too much to deal with.
When we stuff it down, it’s likely to come
out in the “kick the dog syndrome” as
well. Some unsuspecting person will be the
brunt of our resentment toward someone else,
or we’ll get drunk, or crash the car, or
trash our life in some way. Anger is energy.
LET IT PASS
One way to deal with anger is to learn to
forgive. This is a long learning process for
most of us, but, of course, we have plenty of
opportunity to practice it. Unjustices occur
all the time, and we have all been wronged.
Learning to let go of this anger is part of
Emotional Intelligence.
One reason this is a good policy is because
many of the most grievous injustices can’t
be undone. An apology wouldn’t be enough.
Therefore, we forgive, and we do so for our
own benefit, not the benefit of the
perpetrator. The anger will eat us up, while
having little effect on the object of our
anger, which means we are twice victims, and
more the fool.
USE IT (POSITIVELY)
Channel the energy. When your boss makes you
angry, go chop wood when you get home. Use the
anger over your divorce to flame through
graduate school. Get angry at the opposing
team and win the football game. Write poetry
when your mother dies. Master Rachmaninoff’s
3rd Concerto when your wife runs off with
another man.
NAME IT, CLAIM IT, AIM IT, TAME IT
This is another method for dealing with anger.
Name the feeling and claim it. It’s your
anger.
Intellectually speaking, someone could have
said the same thing to someone else, and it
would’ve had little or no effect. YOU are in
the equation! “Aim it” means know where
it’s coming from. Don’t slap your child
because your partner infuriated you. “Tame
it” means learning to self-soothe.
Developing your emotional intelligence can
help eventually to modulate your feelings. (So
can therapy.) You experience them less
strongly after time, if you work at dealing
with them as they come up.
DON’T REPRESS IT, DON’T EXPRESS IT,
CONFESS IT
This is Paul Pearsall’s formula. He has a
Ph.D. in psychoneuroimmunology and is the
author of “The Pleasure Principle.” His
work on anger is compelling, as he has studied
the effect it has on our immunology system,
which is our health.
Repressing anger makes us sick, and so does
expressing it. There’s a plethora of
research showing that just recalling an
angering event causes the same reaction as if
it were happening again in real time. Why do
this to yourself over and over again? Wasn’t
once enough? Skip the war stories, and skip
the bypass, yes?
“Confess it,” says Pearsall, meaning
roughly that you acknowledge you have it, and
that maybe you aren’t “yourself,” or
thinking straight. You take a break. Breathe
deeply. Count to ten. Think it over. Move on.
YOU MANAGE IT, OR IT MANAGES YOU
Learning to manage anger is part of emotional
intelligence. We are never far from the
two-year-old throwing a tantrum. “We never
grow up,” someone said, “We just learn how
to behave in public.” The difference is
self-awareness and tools – understanding the
emotion, being able to stop, self-soothe and
think it through, and not letting it get the
better of us.
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| About
the Author |
©Susan
Dunn, MA, Emotional Intelligence Coach and
Consultant, http://www.susandunn.cc
. Offering coaching, business programs,
Internet courses, teleclasses, ebooks, and EQ
coach training and certification. Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc
for more information, or to sign up for FREE
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