Smart ways to deal with anger
T
wentieth century Australian nurse Elizabeth Kenny said, “He who angers you conquers you.”
Anger is one of the most powerful human emotions, and it has to be treated with tremendous care.
It can be destructive, but it can also help us to reach powerful insights.
Though reasons for anger vary greatly from situation to situation and from one individual to another, they often rise up within us when we perceive threats to ourselves or those we care about. Sometimes the threats are real, and sometimes they are not.
Other times those who seek to control us will consciously or unconsciously provoke anger in an effort to gain the upper hand. This is what Elizabeth Kenny warned about.
Anger, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. Between the stimulus that causes anger and our response there is a gap. We do not need to respond immediately. We can stand back, assess the situation and then choose our response.
We can also learn to listen to our anger. Often it is warning us about some sort of danger. The danger may be something within ourselves that needs to change.
Perhaps we are too competitive, having to win at any cost. We need to ask ourselves if this belief is serving us, if we need to do some work on ourselves to gain more equilibrium. Perhaps we are holding on to erroneous beliefs which we need to challenge, such as our own prejudices.
At other times something is triggering our anger. Perhaps we are hungry, or we are overwhelmed in a stressful environment. We may need to take a break, go for a walk, or have something to eat. It is also possible that we simply need to get more rest.
Anger can also be warning us that something is not right in our interactions with others. It is helpful to ask ourselves, “I wonder why that person did that.”
Perhaps they are just having a bad day.
Perhaps they are unaware of what they are doing. Sometimes, however, they are indeed trying to hurt us, and the best thing for us to do may be to walk away, if even temporarily.
How does one learn to develop these anger management skills? Counsellors can provide us with the support and guidance that we need in learning to understand ourselves and our reactions.
There are also many tools that we can use, with or without the support of a professional.
Two which I have found very helpful are journaling and meditation.
By writing things down for our eyes only, we are able to reflect on what happened and the possible causes.
We may start out very angry at another person, but as we ask ourselves questions and scrawl our answers, the situation becomes clearer. Our own thoughts also come into focus. In journaling, there is no reason to resist our anger, and if we allow it to have its moment we realize that it is actually trying to teach us a valuable lesson.
The other tool is to meditate. Though I do not understand what is precisely happening, studies consistently show that regular meditation allows us to respond with mindfulness, and makes us less likely to react in a way that we will later regret.
The fact of the matter is that we lose credibility and respect when we display unbridled anger, and we do indeed hand our power over to others.
When we channel our anger with awareness, however, we realize the important lessons it is trying to teach us. We are able to more easily tap into our amazing potential, and use our innate goodness to make the world a better place.