Anger is a destructive emotion; if it’s allowed to build up, it can destroy your health and your relationships. People are always trying to ‘manage’ their anger, or as I like to say, ‘stuff’ their anger. Our culture emphasizes civility or at least politeness when the other person is in the room. The result is passive aggressive behavior, stuffed anger, and mounting resentment.
My clients are always taken by surprise when I tell them that anger doesn’t need to be ‘managed,’ it needs to be eliminated! If anger is taking over your life, job, or relationships, you need to know that you have a choice about your anger. It may sound too simplistic, but the truth is, all you need to free yourself from anger is to make the choice. I’ll show you how:
Anger: One Option on the Emotion Menu
Have you ever heard a story and thought, ‘I’d be so angry!’ and the other person reacted completely differently? Imagine two kids playing on the playground and a class bully trips the first kid, who stands up, turns around, and punches the bully in the stomach starting a huge fight and landing them both in the principal’s office. Now imagine the bully trips the second kid, who stands up, walks straight to the teacher, sending only the bully to the principal’s office. What is the difference between these two? Certainly, you can dive into the topics of how each child was raised and whether or not friends egged them on. But, the reality is, both children had a choice, and each chose their response.
Just like on the playground, you can choose to react to situations with anger or any other emotion you choose. Anger is not a required emotion, even when you think you’ve been mistreated. Believe it or not, you could actually choose to think that something is hilarious rather than feeling anger.
So, your mother-in-law who drives you crazy; she says something and your blood pressure soars and your stomach ties in knots. This is your habit response. Instead you could choose to think, “I have the funniest mother-in-law in the world, there she goes again!! That is hilarious!!”
Often we aren’t aware that we actually choose our emotions from a menu and that one specific emotion is not required. I ask my clients to try different emotions on for size.
Try choosing a ridiculous emotion as a reaction next time someone gets your blood pressure up. My favorite example is to choose paranoia as your emotion rather than anger next time someone gets you fired up! Decide that the other person’s actions are part of a conspiracy against you and experience the paranoid response.
Of course, this will feel ridiculous. But, it will kick start you on the journey to realizing that you CAN choose your responses.
Assumption of Anger
Anger is often a response to feeling wronged in some way. But simple inequity or injustice is rarely enough to bring out anger; many times your own assumptions about the situation are the real triggers to your anger. For example, a friend owes you money and hasn’t started paying you back. The facts don’t evoke emotion but you might add the story of “they don’t care about me,” or “they are selfish.” These add a lot of assumed emotion and make you angry - what I call giving your story some umph.
The story we tell ourselves adds fuel to the fire - there are the facts of the situation and there is the story we add to it to evoke emotion. Telling yourself stories of intent or circumstance that aren’t based on facts puts you in the world of assumption.
Recently, I spoke with a client who was frustrated about work. She had so much built up anger that she was ready to quit her job. She described how no one in the company cared for her because of their lazy work ethic and the leadership’s unwillingness to hold others accountable.
This may sound familiar, and many would sympathize and even say she’s justified to be angry. However, she was making it all about herself by assuming a story about the others’ intentions. I pointed out that it really wasn’t about her at all. It was about the leadership accommodating the poor performance of other workers. The workers were just doing what they could easily get away with. The leaders are not leading well. It had nothing to do with her.
That small tweak in the story she was telling herself made all the difference in the world. Her anger disappeared – anger, which was really masking the hurt. Her anger was replaced with, “Okay - this is what I’m dealing with. What is in my control and what isn’t? What can I do and what must I let go?”
Understanding the stories you tell yourself and the underlying assumptions can help you choose an emotion other than anger, even when you feel wronged.
What’s Your Anger Hiding?
For many, anger is the easy choice. Whether it was taught to you by your parents or it’s always worked for you and gotten you your way, many people use anger as their first response. However, if you really want to eliminate anger from your life, you need to understand that anger is usually hiding some other emotion; an emotion that you are too vulnerable to express. Anger is almost always covering up fear, guilt, sadness, shame, embarrassment, etc.
In the first example of the kids on the playground, the first child that punched the bully was probably feeling embarrassed more than anything and lashing out in anger was how he chose to respond. When you are angry about your mother-in-law’s comments, you may be really feeling sadness or embarrassment. And in the example of my client who was unhappy at work, her anger was covering up the hurt she felt from her coworkers actions. She felt rejected and unimportant. But once she realized that those feelings came from her own assumption and not the facts of the story, she could move past that anger to something completely different. She didn’t need to ‘manage’ her anger or to ‘push through.’ She simply needed to choose a different story to land easily on a different emotion.
Anger is a part of life that we all struggle with to some degree. In fact, if you are reading this thinking you aren’t an angry person, you may want to look at the anger you are trying to ‘manage.’ Many of us do an expert job at keeping our cool and putting on a happy face, and our culture encourages this. But I believe there is a better way to live. Stop stuffing and managing and choose to eliminate anger from your life. Your heart, mind, and body will thank you.
