What is a healthy measure of anger? There are some people who would insist that we must resist and suppress and stamp out any little bit of anger that’s in us.
The problem is, anger suppressed isn’t really dealt with, and it comes out in other ways. Anger needs to be felt and processed. Not only for our own health, but so that we don’t end up spewing it at those around us.
But also, anger almost always includes valuable information. It can be information to ourselves that a boundary is being violated. It can motivate civic activism.
Feeling angry can be a real drag, especially as a peace activist. But, I am learning to get better at experiencing it when it comes. Take a deep breath, identify what it’s about. Try to leave a huge buffer between feeling it and actually verbalizing anything about it publicly.
Ideally we can fully process our anger and then distill out what is the constructive thing that we want to do with it.
But, I find we don’t always get the luxury of a time-buffer between “feeling anger” and “speaking to another person.” Fortunately, the old folk remedy of “counting to 10” is often enough. (There are some old sayings that exist for a reason.)
But it’s usually possible to take a deep breath and have a few seconds in order to formulate an appropriate tone of communication. Which might or might not include any angry words at all.
Obviously if somebody has deployed the ride-on mower onto your yard without your permission, you might actually need to yell and scream right then and there to get the situation stopped.
Counting to 10 helped me just now, made the difference between me going off on someone who was cutting a tree, and me asking a calm question. Neighborly relations were preserved, and actually understanding was increased, and my worry (which was rooted in lack of information) got resolved.
I started out saying anger, but ended up using the word worry. One thing that I find is that usually when I’m angry, there’s almost always something underneath it like a primal fear or worry, which ultimately is self-centered. Once I sift out the primal self-centered part, though, there’s usually some constructive legitimate component too, which I can then channel out into my communication with the relevant people.
This is an ongoing process for me. I still all too often start talking before I have fully processed an emotion. So, I keep practicing, and am also helped along by observing other people who are a lot better at this. (I have a lot of mentors who don’t necessarily know they are my mentors.)
I don’t know a single religion that says it’s OK to increase the suffering in the world. We want to reduce the suffering in the world. Anger, expressed inappropriately, increases the suffering of the people around us and often of ourselves too.
But glossing over or suppressing valid emotion that contains information can also increase the suffering in the world, albeit in a less obvious and immediate way.
I look at how the mainstream environmental movement has really limited it’s effectiveness by having a culture of speaking calmly and rationally all the time so as not to offend and turn people off. Spouting science very clinically and counting on that to motivate people’s passion. Hey, when your house is burning, it’s OK not to worry about offending people! Get them to stop the fire!
It struck me that there are all different flavors of anger. If emotions are like all different flavors of ice cream, each emotion furthermore has sub-flavors.
There is boiling hot anger, and collected cool anger. There’s very physical and very internal anger.
About 10 years ago, at an interfaith event for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Day here in Daytona Beach, I got to hear an incredibly stirring sermon at a hugely packed Baptist church. A major theme was what Dr. King referred to as “The value of a bothered man.” The preacher was one Rev. John Gunn out of Jacksonville. Every cell in my body was on fire. (If you ever get a chance to hear Rev. Gunn preach, go!)
Sometimes managing anger is a matter of managing one’s attention. I noticed that if I keep putting my attention on something that’s bothering me, I can either get more and more frustrated, or I can go into a very creative solution mindset. It all depends on the kind of attention I’m using.
There’s a reason why there’s a whole chapter of my book titled “Get your mind in order.” The mind is Ground Zero!