What is your relationship like with anger? Anger is often categorized as a “negative emotion.” I disagree. When practicing mindful awareness of emotions, I encourage the opportunity to view all emotions through a lens of nonjudgment. When you bring this mindful focus to an emotional experience, rather than labeling it as good or bad, or positive or negative, can you instead get curious about what message the emotion has to share with you?
If you can view an emotion as information about your internal experience, and when you can view all emotions as information, this allows that sense of curiosity to create understanding and awareness of what is occurring in your body as a response to the emotion.
Many emotions may be experienced within your body as uncomfortable. The response we have to this discomfort can indeed be perceived as negative, which is why anger often gets a bad rap. Rather than feeling the discomfort and labeling the emotion as negative or bad, try wondering what may be causing that feeling state and what you can learn from it. You can discover that your relationship with anger will become healthier with practice and time.
Anger is an incredibly valuable emotion that shows up in response to having had something occur that your internal system perceives as unjust or wrong. The internal experience that is often perceived as negative with anger is that we are often taught that acting out our anger is bad, and therefore the emotion is bad. Try considering the message of your anger instead and the message of the discomfort you may experience in your body when feeling angry. The message of anger is often asking that you speak up for yourself, stand up for a cause or someone else, set a boundary, or call out a boundary that was impeded upon, or does your anger want you to simply say NO.
When you can act on the need of the emotion of anger in a way that is strong, firm, and from a space of conviction and assertiveness, it can reduce the discomfort internally. This can be understood well in concept; however, it can be much more challenging in practice. The challenge is that being assertive, saying NO, setting boundaries, and standing up for yourself, someone else, or something you care about can trigger another uncomfortable emotion: fear. Many of us struggle with assertively expressing anger, or are fearful of the response to the assertiveness or boundary setting from others.
The good news is that you can learn how to be assertive. Anger is felt in the body with a somatic surge that many experience as discomfort due to not know what to do with that energy. You can learn to use this mobilizing energy of anger; when the mobilizing energy of anger is channeled in a healthy, thoughtful way, it can be directed into a space of courage. You can arrive out of the anger by moving through your fear and accessing courage. Courage asks that you remain grounded and steady and direct the anger in a way that creates an opportunity to respond to what has triggered the emotion of anger in an assertive, direct, and clearly communicated way.
When you think about the early messaging you received in your life about anger, how was it handled and expressed by your caretakers? Anger can flip on our fight-or-flight system, triggering a feeling of being unsafe or in danger, and activates your inner defense system in a way that the behavioral response may be more extreme than the circumstance necessitates. When anger has been bottled up, one opportunity to expel it all at once can certainly happen and get the best of us.
If you notice that you’ve become angry, can you remove any judgment around the emotion itself and begin by getting curious about why the emotion of anger is showing up for you in this particular circumstance? Try asking these questions to understand and process your anger:
What does your anger want you to know?
Is there a boundary that you feel has been crossed?
Do you need to set a boundary, or restate your boundary?
Are you saying yes to someone else but no to yourself?
Are you feeling as though someone is treating you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, unappreciated, or put down?
Is someone asking something unreasonable of you?
Is someone hurting you in any way?
Is there an injustice you are struggling to make sense of or figure out how to handle?
These are all useful questions to consider, and from there you can determine how to best channel the energy of your anger into a form of communication that makes the most sense and allows you to remain the most grounded—and become as courageous as possible. Once you can process why the emotion is present, you can create a plan of how to best move forward.
If you have been modeled anger in a way that was frightening, it was acted out through aggression in words, behaviors, or tone of voice (or maybe all of those at once,) or maybe through passive-aggressive behaviors rather than directly, assertively, and courageously expressed for much of your life, this may feel like a radical way of viewing anger. It is not. It may take some time to fully notice or be present with the emotion, especially if it’s one that you’ve gotten good at numbing, avoiding, or suppressing. It is worth the time, effort, and practice to lean into noticing, being present with, processing, and releasing your anger in the most healthy way possible for you.
Anger has been so misunderstood because it triggers the fight or flight system, and most of us tend to repress or suppress our anger for fear that it will not be received well if we do speak up in an assertive way. Many people often feel more comfortable, or safer, holding in their anger than speaking up directly or standing up for themselves, setting boundaries, or saying no out of fear of how they will be perceived or treated. Many people, especially those socialized as women, have been taught that anger isn’t ladylike. Expressing your feelings in an open, honest, rational, and grounded way is the most empowering way to live. Learning to understand, nurture, and express your emotions will help you learn to communicate in effective and meaningful ways.
You may feel the more you get in touch with your anger, the more challenging it can be to release it when you can’t have the outlet of communication. This is where physically expelling the emotion can be very useful. Tense and release exercises, deep breathing, journaling, intentional movement, screaming into a pillow, and/or talking through your emotions with a trusted person such as a therapist can help create a practice of releasing anger so that it doesn’t fester in a way that causes suffering for you. Remember, emotions you bury, you bury alive (repression/suppression). Emotions you process are released for good. This creates emotional freedom and a healthier, happier mind and body.
The next time you feel angry, try using the above questions, get curious, tap into your courage, and see if you can find a new way to respond or release your anger. Practice self-compassion along the way because you will mess up, you will lose your temper at times; you can use this as guidance for practice, learning, and growth. Remember, feelings are not good or bad; they are information that is incredibly powerful when we notice, listen, and respond in a way that feels healthy and right for our individual selves.