Anger is one of the most difficult things I get asked to help with. People want to stop being angry, they look to outside agencies to have some magic cure that will stop them losing their tempers. As if I had a bag of fairy dust that I could sprinkle on them and amazingly there would be no more anger, just a sweet placid person who was kind to their fellow man and animals..... Dream on!!
Anger is an essential part of our make- up, we need anger and it’s derivatives to be able to function. If for the moment we can distil the feelings we have into four; love, sadness, fear and anger we can see that if those four are at the trunk of the tree, with its roots going firmly back into our pasts, then all the branches on the top are a muddle of all those feelings diluted as the tree grows. The seasons represent the changing lives we lead; so that sometimes we feel clean and fresh and can tackle new projects. The summer leaf represents the working through and enjoying the fruits of those spring labours. But as we all know nothing is static so change comes into our lives again, maybe more difficult and we feel some loss whilst we tackle the oncoming rush of activity. This ends with the tough time when we are stripped down to the bone emotionally and there is only are essential self having to deal with whatever gets thrown at us. But life of course goes on and the cycle will be repeated over and over again throughout our lives.
So if we only have those four main feelings, and I believe those are the four we are born with, after all a new baby doesn’t have nuances of feeling, they are either happy and smiling and gurgling, or they are angry and sad and throwing all their toys out of their pram! If they are ignored then fear sets in and they react accordingly by getting withdrawn of whatever.
It is only as we grown that we get the nuances of emotion, but again I’m not sure we do, I think we get the nuances of behaviour, the stuff we are taught and trained to do.
Children are very black and white, there is right and there is wrong, and there is nothing in between. It is only as adults that the shades of grey are applied. Children know that it is wrong to steal, quite rightly. Adults also know that, but how come we have that towel from the hotel in our suitcase, or the roll of sticky tape out of the stationary cupboard at work in our desk drawer? These nuances of behaviour come about depending on how we see the world. And the acquisition of that towel or pen doesn’t even come into the radar of what’s right and wrong. We just think we all do it so it’s ok, never mind the cost to the hotel or the company you work for.
But this is not a discussion about the rights and wrongs of anyone’s behaviour, we all have consciousnesses and I leave it with all of us to decide on the level of that sort of behaviour is acceptable to each. As it’s not my job to judge, nor to give anyone a lecture.
To return to anger, if anger is at the base of a massive branch of feeling then what else shoots from it? Well if we didn’t have anger we wouldn’t have any drive, there would be no ambition, as it is these two things that get us out of bed in the morning to work. This doesn’t mean that we all need to have ambitions to be CEO of a national company, it may be we just have the drive to make money to put food on the table. So that is why we get up, not some taking over the world mentality, although the people that have that are valuable otherwise we would have the companies that make the world go round.
If we didn’t have anger then we wouldn’t know the difference between right and wrong. It wouldn’t matter how people behaved because we wouldn’t care. There would be no feelings of injustice inside us when people get away with whatever they are getting away with, whether that’s the sticky tape or massive financial fraud.
Would we have compassion if we didn’t have anger, and I don’t think we would, as caring for others outside of our loved ones is about a level of outrage at the injustice being down to our fellow man.
We certainly wouldn’t be able to have any armed forces, not that anger is used to train anyone, more to do with when a war starts people believing that their cause is right and wanting to defend it.
There are many examples of how we need our anger to motivate us in life, it’s just we don’t think about the feelings we are having as being necessarily related to anger in the first place.
But as I have already stated I think that this is the root of many feelings that make us up to being the people we are. So if I am correct, how can we do without it?
Of course when people say they want anger management they are not talking about these normal drives. They are talking about not being able to control their tempers.
To my way of thinking, it is very difficult indeed to give someone anger management, as one persons temper will not be the same as an others, there cannot be a one size fits all. What there can be though is an understanding of what affect that release of temper can have and a learning of healthier ways to channel it.
This loss of temper is what we treat other people to, that yelling at the next person in the pecking order. So man shouts at woman, woman shouts at kids, kids shout at younger kid and younger kid kicks the dog...... dog puts up with it and wags its tail!
Of course this is a very simplistic view and loss of temper can be a lot more damaging than that for all concerned.
But if we can stick with this model, without taking anything away from the horrors any one person can experience as a result of someone else’s loss of temper which I know can be totally horrific and in worst case scenario can result in murder.
Why do people get so angry, well there aren’t enough pages of paper to write down why anyone would get mad about the myriad of things they get angry about? So rather than make a list I want to assume that we all can get angry and show healthier ways to deal with that anger than metaphorically kicking the cat.
Let us assume then that the person who is going to lose their temper has had a rotten day at work, the boss has been a real pain, the work they’d spent hours doing had to be re-done. This meant they were late leaving, so the traffic was at its worst, the train is delayed because of a jumper on the track. They are supposed to be going out for a quiet meal with their partner that evening and it doesn’t look like that will happen. They get home and the kids are in hyper manic mood. There is no food for the evening because they were going out. So by this time depending on the person’s ability to deal with anger, they may be at screaming point.
Now into this equation put in their learnt behaviour from when this person was a child, maybe they witnessed rows from then, maybe they saw violence being used against another parent, so that a level of violence was seen as normal in their mind.
So walking into this chaos after the day they have had, makes them flip and they start screaming at everyone around, maybe they use physical violence to one of the people in the house, and so the roundabout goes on. And what should have been a pleasant evening escalates into an evening of horror for all concerned.
I could of course have written many other hypothetical examples, but sometimes it is just the day to day stuff that puts us over the edge. In that we may know we have unresolved anger issues related to our childhood, which most of the time we keep under wraps and learn to control our emotions by stifling those temper urges. But on this day our person who normally as a matter of routine carries around a complete arms length of anger and who when normally gets cross is able to just be cross in the moment was under so much strain this particular day that something snapped inside them and they were unable to control their feelings in any way.
Road rage is a really god example of this, we wake up late, there’s no milk for breakfast, you can’t find a clean shirt, you’ve got an important meeting at work and you leave the house like a tightly coiled spring. And some doddery old man is driving at 30 miles an hour in a 40 mile zone. You are hooting the horn, flipping him the finger, trying somewhat recklessly to overtake and feeling it is all that stupid sod’s fault that you are late. The next day you get up on time, there is plenty of milk, your clothes are ready for you to wear and the boss is out for the day. You get in your car relaxed and ready to go, you get behind the same man, who is still driving at 30 in a 40 zone, but that’s fine you can enjoy the calm on the way to work.
Same situation but two very different ways of experiencing it, totally dependent on how your worlds is at any given moment.
Is there a healthier way to deal with these and all other situations where we get angry? And of course the answer is yes.
It doesn’t matter why we have rage, whether it goes back to our childhoods, because let’s face it all children have problem parents! In that there were always times when we didn’t think our parents did it right, which is why we change how we bring up our children so as not to make the same mistakes. It’s of course a salutary lesson to know that our children will be feeling the same about our parenting methods one day when they become parents themselves! Or whether, that anger seemingly relates to our partners, or our work colleagues, or even our children.
In Freudian terms he would suggest that anyone we have feeling about, negative or positive actually has echoes back to our childhood relationships, as we repeat the same patterns we learn at our parents knees with everyone else we come across throughout our lives. He calls this Transference. And he goes on to talk about counter transference when the person opposite you is also doing this and then we muddle along having relationships together. Obviously I have paraphrased Freud here rather badly. But it isn’t my intention for this book to spout psychological theory as I want you to be able to understand it and use it without having to resort to getting a degree first!
So how are we going to deal with our rage without hitting the divorce courts, or getting the sack from work?
Well if you’ve stayed this far then I’m hoping that you are starting to understand that anger is an essential component of life. But is not an essential component is taking that rage out on other people.
So what can we do?
The answer simplistically is to get a punch bag!
What has to be done is the knowing that anger exists in us and finding a none damaging way to let it go.
Anger is an emotional and a physical energy; just think what happens to us when we get angry, our hands go into fists, our jaws tighten and it becomes difficult to be as articulate as we usually might be, let alone any adrenaline that might be being released into the body to prepare for the fight ahead. Certainly when I’m angry the words that come out of my mouth are expletives and I’m incapable of stringing a normal sentence together. But I can swear fantastically well!
So finding a safe place to belt hell out of something and yell at it is the best way to let go of our rage. I regularly fell out with my youngest son, and rather than endlessly yelling at each other I learnt to go in the garage put on the boxing gloves and go and beat metaphorical hell out of him there. Really telling what a little so and so I thought he was, till I’d stopped being cross. I would then return into the house and he’s probably just say something to me, and I’d be sweetness and light to him because all my rage had pulverised him into a heap on the garage floor!
The important thing to do with rage is to use your body and your brain to let go of it, whatever method you find that doesn’t involve getting physical with another living creature. It could be pilling all the cushions you have in your living room in the middle of the floor, clearing a space getting down on the floor and starting to thump them, whilst at the same time start to say, why me? Or it’s not fair, or stupid...... and as long as you build your voice up whilst your thumping and getting to the point where you are screaming expletives you will feel better.
You could try tearing up cardboard boxes you have lying around in the garage, because they fight back! And remember to yell.
What you’re needing to do is something that lets go of this energy inside you but that isn’t creative, so stripping wallpaper off walls ( as long as it needs doing!) is another good one. Using a sledge hammer if there is a wall that needs to come down. Almost anything that destroys the rage inside you, even if you do create an awful mess; it is so much healthier than punching your nearest and dearest, or taking that anger out on you.
What do I mean by that?
Well not all rage is outward, a lot of times anger is directed inwardly, and we damage ourselves by holding on to our rage and that then manifesting in a stress related disorder. This rage will be a legacy of our childhood, stuff that we have never dealt with. Or sometimes it can be in relation to an event that happened in the past.
There have been some terrible manmade disasters in this world, such as the Lockerbie disaster, the Hungerford massacre, 9/11, and so many more. It always frustrates me when these terrible things happen when you hear that counsellors have been sent in. No one needs counselling at the point of the disaster; sure they need advice, on funerals. They may need de-briefing but counselling in its accepted sense is not required. What does happen though is some months or even years later after the event when life should be sorting itself out that people suddenly can no longer cope. And they are assailed by emotions that they believe they should have dealt with already. This is a very good time for some anger work to take place as they hit out their emotional pain and anger at what has gone on in their lives.
Of course not everyone wants to behave like a screaming banshee even if I know it will do them good. So another method, is to write letters not to be sent. Writing down our anger and telling someone what for is another very therapeutic tool. As long as the letter isn’t sent, which would cause an awful lot of trouble that no-one needs. Then writing down what a plonker someone is really works as a way to let go of rage.
Basically any method that uses the whole body and mind will work, digging the garden, running, smashing all your china, although that works out a bit expensive! The important thing is to be able to let the voice out of your head and not keep in inside going round and round driving you round the bend.
By starting to use these letting go methods then a great many of the sticking plasters used emotionally to keep us safe become redundant, whether those have been depression or compulsive eating disorders, or obsessional behaviour. They will all benefit from us letting go our inner rage.
After all if you were given a choice about hating yourself and destroying yourself with any of the stress related disorders or learning to shout FUCK at the top of your voice whilst beating hell out of your pillows whilst making the bed, which would you rather have?
Anger is part of us, we have no choice but to have it, what we have a choice about is how we use it. Whether we use it to destroy our relationships or ourselves, or whether we learn to stop fearing it and learn to let it go in a healthy non damaging way, well that is out choice.
There is always choice, and being a victim of our inner rage is not healthy for anyone.
Go on, run up and down stairs right now yelling the best swear word you know! And at the same time think about who you are yelling it at, whether it’s your mother/father/ partner or the guy that short changed you in the shops this morning. Isn’t that better than sitting stuck in a chair self hating cause you can’t deal with it.
