Deconstructing Anger
This past weekend my brother and I had a great Zoom call and among many things we talked about anger. We agreed that our kind of anger was modelled by our parents…and likely by their parents. So, there is a kind of heredity to it, at least in part. Some people experience “cold” anger some people experience “hot” explosive anger. Cold anger is the tight lipped, cold shoulder, walk away, close the door never talk about it kind of anger. It’s still there, it is just hidden.
Recently I was given letters from my mom to her girlfriend, written while my mom was still alive, of course. Here was a woman “talking” to her girlfriend and I was “listening” - it was a perspective I had not really had with my mom when she was alive. In one particular paragraph my mom talked about the anger that her mother had and consequently “gave” her, and what she did about it. I do remember my mom telling me something like this; she had apologized to me for giving me her anger.
I also remember appreciating my mom’s apology but sadly it didn’t automatically dissolve the anger ‘gift’ inside me, and it’s not the kind of gift you can give back as if you never had it. That imprinting in the neural network is pretty strong. But, I also know that it’s mine to deal with, my biology, my mind, my body, connected to her, yes, but still up to me to deal with now. It can be very difficult for many people to even start to take responsibility for their anger because many times it is something they just don’t understand, they don’t even know where it comes from. Anger can be confusing and scary.
What I know about anger I have learned from my own experience and from what I have read. Here are some anger truths that I have figured out, I hope they help. Please share your experiences too, and do a lot of reading! As a first step it’s important to ask yourself, “why am I angry?” See what comes up for you and keep asking until the answer rings true.
Anger happens when you (or your identity or what you identify with) are/were:
being threatened
being hurt - emotionally and/or physically
not able to/not allowed to/prevented from:
express/ing your true voice or be/ing yourself,
feel/ing safe with someone,
feel/ing vulnerable and trust/ing that everything will be ok,
defend/ing yourself.
Anger can be triggered whenever you re-experience any of the above. It’s a bit like a learned protective mechanism - it is a reaction to STOP the hurt from hurting or even to STOP it from STARTING to hurt a little bit and avoid hurting completely and forever (easily triggered folks can relate). This avoidance feeling can be so strong that anger can also be used BEFORE anything might possibly happen and is often buddied up with its pal, Fear. You know, when someone gets mad at you before you even did anything??? It’s a mix of anger and fear.
When you turn the anger toward yourself (as opposed to onto someone else who may have participated in hurting you) with thoughts or actions you can become depressed, feel helpless, unmotivated, emotionally & physically hurt, and confused.
I do believe that anger can be passed on in a way. It makes sense that the behaviours like this, unless they are dealt with before you become a parent, you inevitably pass them on through your own behaviour. Perhaps they are passed on to a lesser extent as each generation goes on (I hope). I know that I sometimes feel like I am dealing with ALL the oppression of my grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother etc…with how angry I get when I see a person being oppressed. However, I have hope to stop or slow this kind of generational ‘gift’ giving.
When you experience anger you can try to analyze (usually only after being angry because analyzing is a bit higher brain function than anger), learn how to walk away, count to ten, and breathe, white knuckle your self into control and do your damned best to make sure THAT situation never happens again…these are all coping mechanisms. You may be protecting others by using them but people can still see the anger (you are not able to truly hide anger) and most importantly you are still feeling it.
As a person who is quick to anger the ONLY practice (in my 30 years of study of the self) I have EVER found to get me out ahead of the anger is regular MEDITATION. After about four months into regular meditating I started being able to have space between the trigger and my anger reaction…I was able to respond instead of react. In fact, sometimes I felt like I did not even need to respond…something that normally made me angry became something I observed. It is as if the full pot of simmering water was now no longer full of water and no longer simmering, so the threat of it (me) boiling over was no longer there.
Meditation can transform Anger into Equanimity. As your awareness grows, you start to no longer feel anger, instead you begin to see everything for what it is - there is no need to control or hide any emotion because you can effectively and naturally navigate situations that used to trigger you. Your true self is emerging. Try it yourself. Start meditating daily (I give suggestions on how to build up your duration in one of my earlier posts) and experience the results. Contact me if you would like help learning an easy way to do it on your own. xoxoChristinexoxoxo
