Expressing
Anger
“Expressing
anger is not always the best way to deal with it. In expressing anger we might
be practicing or rehearsing it, and making it stronger in the depth of our
consciousness. Expressing anger to the person we are angry at can cause a lot
of damage.”
Thich
Nhat Hanh (Peace Is Every Step, p.59)
I
peruse Facebook once a day, and sometimes I’m delighted with the videos, personal
photos and messages, but sometimes, I’m shocked with the rawness of the anger
expressed there. Sometimes folks are so mad they can hardly make their words
hang together coherently. There is a lot of free-floating anxiety and fear
around the pandemic and its effect on the economy. Our politics and social
outrage are spilling into the ethos and polluting everything they touch. Some
of us are just lashing out at whatever moves because it feels good and we need
to displace some heat. But, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, “expressing anger is
not always the best way to deal with it.”
I used
to tell my counseling clients to take a tennis racket and beat a pillow until
their arms were tired. That at least gets rid of the physical desire to punch
somebody. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much about the anger beyond the moment.
The next time the situation or the person arises, the anger will be right
back. Beating a pillow is a good work out; it tones arms and shoulders but not
much else. To actually deal with our anger, we have to spend some time locating
its roots, and pulling them up one at a time.
The bad
news is that the people who make us angriest are those who hold an element of
us within them. Sorry. But it’s true. For instance, there’s a woman I know who
is a true “Southern belle.” She is sooooo sweet, and ingratiating, and accommodating,
and manipulative. I just can’t abide being in the same room with her. I assume,
therefore, that she is holding up a mirror for me so that I can see those
qualities in myself. Makes me want to grit my teeth and curse, but I know it’s
true.
The only way to truly get rid of anger
is to delve into it. What is its true source? Like a mountain stream, anger
starts out as a little trickle and gathers speed as it rolls downhill. By the
time it gets to the point of gushing out, it has gathered all sorts of debris—limbs
and rocks and junk that has been thrown in there instead of being dealt with
appropriately. We might still be angry from something that happened decades ago;
we may have thought that old anger resolved, but in a moment of pique, there it
is—full blown and madder than hell. Sometimes we transplant anger from one
situation to another. Usually we like to plant it in softer, easier to manage soil—let’s say, from a parent who disappointed us, to a child who cannot fight
back. That’s probably the most destructive use of anger.
Anger, even when it’s righteous and
well-founded, can be destructive to everyone it touches. Understandable as it
may be, and well-deserved, it can go from a spark to a wildfire very quickly.
It would be good for us to check in with ourselves when we feel anger building
inside and ask ourselves, “What is this all about?” It’s easiest to blame
someone else, but also non-productive. The anger belongs to the one who feels it, so
that’s where we should look. What are its roots? Who’s tending them?
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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