A Different Perspective on Anger
When Anger is an Appropriate Response
While I was at training the other morning, one of my sparring partners was, he was beating me up to be fair, he was dominating, and he started cranking my face with his shoulder. It’s a bit of a shitty move but definitely effective. I could still breathe, so I wasn’t going to tap, but he had me pinned to the floor and I couldn’t move, and he just kept going harder and harder with the crank trying to get me to submit.
After a while, I felt all this anger begin to swell up inside of me and I exploded, I lifted him off of me, pushed myself free and I caught his arm and submitted him. We went again and I was still full of all this rage, I wanted to make a point, and I submitted him again immediately.
Now, if there’s anywhere that anger is acceptable and an appropriate response, it’s probably in martial arts. Particularly when someone is trying to smash your face in. But it’s got me thinking about my anger.
To be honest it scared me a bit at the time. I don’t often get angry. Mostly I believe it’s more useful to keep your cool and react in a considered way. But in some ways wish I could tap into my anger a bit easier. Anger is a powerful and important emotion – it provides huge amounts of energy when we need it, to protect ourselves and our loved ones.
Anger is an appropriate response when you or your loved ones are threatened. I felt threatened, so I responded with anger. Appropriate response.
But I’ve definitely also repressed my anger for much of my life. Sacrificed myself to keep the peace, or because I’ve been scared of the repercussions. Most people either suppress their anger for these reasons, or they over-indulge their anger and use it as a shield, because it hides the vulnerability that lies underneath.
But the more I’ve come to understand the emotional wounds we all carry, and how they play out in the way we treat each other, subconsciously to protect ourselves, the less often I see anger as a necessary response. Most of the time, if someone snaps at us, often seemingly unnecessarily, it’s their own pain playing out.
When we respond to that pain with more anger, it comes from our own unhealed wounds. It validates and compounds their pain, and escalates the emotions of the moment. In most situations, the correct response to someone getting angry should be, “Hey, is everything alright?” Offering compassion, because there’s most likely something else they are dealing with that’s driving that action.
How Our Past Hurts Change Our Behaviour
A couple of days ago I was talking with a guy who runs programmes for underprivileged kids in this area. Trying to keep them off the streets and away from gangs, helping them find purpose and belief in the possibilities of life. He gets them into boxing and sets them up with mentors and work experience. Amazing stuff.
But he was telling me about how, when he first goes into class rooms to talk about this stuff, the kids all respond in one of two ways – either they shut down and disengage, they go quiet and don’t want to get involved. Or, they get aggressive and attack, trying to intimidate him and cause trouble.
He said it took him a long time to work out why they were doing that. It didn’t make sense – he was going in to help them, give them opportunities for a better life and they were trying to run him out of the room.
One day it clicked, and he realised that, they had been let down so many times in the past that they just expected it to happen again. Yet another person comes into their life, gives them hope and then fucks off. And they were either ignoring him and not engaging because they didn’t expect him to stay around, or they were actively trying to push him away because they didn’t expect him to stay around!
So sad. And when he said that to me, what was even more sad was that I thought back to some of my past relationships and could see, without a doubt, the same pattern playing out. Both from my ex-girlfriends, and my own behaviour too. Convinced the other is going to let us down, so we push them away first. They can’t walk away if you drive them yourself.
How fucking sad is that? We pre-disqualify each other because of the unhealed pain we’ve suffered in the past. And the more invested we are, the more risky it gets, the more chance of us getting hurt, the more likely we are to sabotage. It’s heartbreaking.
Now, as I said, the more I understand this stuff, the less I see anger as the right response in most situations, unless you are properly threatened. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t suppressed anger already trapped in our bodies. Potentially towards other people who treated us badly in the past, but also towards ourselves because of our mistakes. And when we allow ourselves to feel into and express that anger, often we find that, underneath it, is sadness and grief. It’s a shield for our unprocessed pain.
I’ve spoken before about how, last year I was holding onto a lot of anger and resentment towards my dad, blaming him for not being more present and a better role model when I was a kid. But when I really tapped into those emotions, I realised that underneath it was grief over the relationship I’d just lost, and shame at myself for not showing up better and being stronger.
When we hold onto anger and resentment for things that happened in the past, often, if we really allow ourselves to go into those emotions, we can find that, underneath is a feeling of dissatisfaction with some aspect of our life.
Like me blaming my dad for not being more present was actually because I was ashamed at myself for not feeling like enough of a man. When we focus on this anger and blame of others for not showing up in the way we needed, we are blinding ourselves from the parts of us that still need to heal and grow.
If I had already done the work to feel confident enough in myself, would I still have been holding onto anger at my dad for not being a better role model? If I had stayed true to my values and showed up with integrity in my relationship, would I have held onto resentment towards my ex for not being more supportive when I couldn’t even tell her when I was struggling?
When I say this to people, I often get the response that I’m being too hard on myself and taking the blame for other people’s actions. And actually, the more I’ve taken responsibility, the less I’ve felt like I’m being hard on myself. I feel empowered. I can’t control what other people do to me, but I can control what I’m going to do as a result.
When we blame others for what they did to us, we keep ourselves a victim of life. It doesn’t mean that you deserved whatever they did to you. The people who hurt you the most are holding onto even more pain of their own and I wish them healing too.
But when we consciously choose a perspective that takes full ownership for everything we experience, we can use every opportunity as a chance to see where we still need to work on ourselves.
A practice I’m currently thinking about, which is really not pleasant but certainly eye-opening, is to spend some time deliberately thinking about how much pain and suffering I would have had to have gone through to make me commit some of the horrifying acts of violence we see in the world.
To be in such a dark place that you want to punish the whole world for your pain. It’s terrifying. Like even think for one moment, if you’d watched as someone tortured and murdered your family. What do you think you’d actually be capable of in retaliation?
Sadly the world is getting more and more violent, compounding as we retaliate and punish each other for the pain we’re holding onto. We need to be able to respond decisively to protect our loved ones if necessary, but even more so we need to all do the work to begin healing and letting go of our unprocessed pain so we can stop passing it on further.
Techniques to Process Repressed Anger
There used to be a meetup in London called Rage Club, where you could go scream and slam cushions around, punch things, draw frantically to express all those pent up emotions. Sadly I don’t think they run it anymore, but the fact it ever existed at all says a lot about our need for deliberate spaces to work through this stuff.
Boxing classes, great. I used to get a lot from running, just hitting the pavement full pelt to burn off some of that frustration. I also go to a regular mens group that includes a breath work for emotional release practice, culminating in about 30 guys screaming their lungs out.
There’s a lot of catharsis in that, and it’s actually hard to find space where you can fully let go and get that all out without being worried about people hearing you or whatever. Josh who leads that practice often runs free breathwork sessions over Zoom, you can check him out here and keep an eye out for upcoming events.
Also see: Rick William Anger Release Process
Further reading: How Grief Opens Us Up to Life
You Are Not the Target
I’m going to quote a long passage from a book called, You Are Not the Target, by Laura Huxley. It’s an amazing book, written in 1963, and so much of what she says about how the energy of emotions is transmitted and also stored within the body has only relatively recently, finally, started to become widely accepted.
It really demonstrates the way we unconsciously project and pass on our anger and pain to one another, and are so often completely oblivious to the real cause. Here we go…
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“Scene: A suburb on the outskirts of a great city.
Time: Early morning.
At the entrance of one of the houses stands a pot of fuschia in dazzling bloom. Mounted on a motorscooter a teenager comes roaring down the street, hurling folded newspapers at the front doors. One of his shots goes wide and strikes the fuschia a devastating blow. The shattered plant droops sideways, the flowers trailing in the dust. There are no witnesses to the disaster, and even the delivery boy is unaware of what he has done. Thus is forged the first link in the chain- an accident, unintentional, innocent and therefore meaningless, or it should be. Let us see how it continues.
A few minutes pass. Then Mr. X, the owner of the house, comes out to pick up his paper. What kind of man is he? What will he feel when he sees what has happened to the flowers of which he was so proud? How will he act? Mr. X stoops for his paper and sees the broken flowers. His pride and joy, the result of months of tender care -all destroyed. Deliberately, he thinks, by that little devil. Filled with rage, he stamps back into the house. In answer to his wife’s inquiring look, he launches into a violent diatribe against the whole race of boys particularly that boy across the street. Mr. X is certain that the boy has purposely broken his flowers. “How do you know?” his wife asks. “Who else would it be?” Mr. X answers. And he goes on to say that Mr. Y, the boy’s father, is always making trouble. The son looks exactly like his father-so who else could it be?
In this bitter, resentful mood Mr. X goes down the street to open his neighborhood drugstore. Unfortunately, Mr. Y, the father of the suspected boy, goes in the drugstore to buy a cigar. Mr. X does not say anything about the fuschia, does not ask about the neigh- bor’s boy. Had he asked he would have been informed that the boy had gone away to camp two days before. Instead Mr. X puts on his professional smile and congratulates himself on his self-control. But-_cunningly-_his repressed resentment finds a way to self-expression. Honest, precise Mr. X unconsciously shortchanges his customer.
Mr. Y, now at home again, opens his billfold to give his wife some money and realizes he has been shortchanged. At the disagreeable prospect of having to go back to the drugstore and confront Mr. X with the error, he is angry and indignant. He takes it out on his wife by complaining of her extravagance.
Mrs. Y goes out to shop. Among other items she stops to buy a brassière.
In the dressing room she is dissatisfied with her figure, and with the brassières she is trying on; underlying both annoyances is her memory of her husband’s complaint against the druggist, his unfairness to her, and a general anxiety on the whole subject of money. All of this adds up to a state of irritation, which she unthinkingly directs at the saleswoman who is unable to provide her with a satisfactory brassière.
I am the saleswoman.
At this point the negative chain reaction has touched me. It was initiated by a cheerful youth earning his pocket money by delivering papers in the early morning. It traveled from link to link, and now I am aware that a strong dissatisfaction, a powerful negative energy is being directed toward my person. My client’s dissatisfaction may really be with her own figure, or the brassières, or anything in the world, but at this moment it is focused on me. What can I do about it?
I see four choices: I can pretend to ignore the unpleasantness. If I do this, certain muscular tensions and chemical changes take place in my body, changes of which I remain unconscious and which I have no power to direct. Psychologically, I am lying to myself.
I can remonstrate with the woman and tell her to go and buy her brassière at some other store. I can be nice to my customer. OR I can acknowledge the impact of this negative energy and transform it to my advantage.
Let us see what happens in each instance. The first is a denial of reality which, if we make a habit of it, may have serious emotional and physical results and is one of the causes of psychosomatic ill- ness. Besides, we cannot cope with reality if we deny it.
The second may give me a moment of satisfaction but it may have two bad consequences: one for my job and my business reputation, the other for the already disturbed woman.
If I really do not feel any animosity, if being “nice” does not make me a martyr in my own eyes, if my blood pressure does not rise and my muscles do not become tense – in other words, if I really understand the incident and am not hurt by it – then being nice benefits us both and it is indeed a good solution. But unfortunately it is a rare one.
Here is an occasion to apply the principle of transformation of energy. How? I feel the impact of the negative energy. I have trained myself to catch this energy, as though it were a ball. I transform this energy and use it for a purpose I have chosen.
To be able to do this one must practice. This is the subject of the recipe’ “You Are Not the Target.” Our world is filled with free-floating energy, and we should become aware of the many ways in which we use it, both creatively and destructively. A work of art is a clear example of energy used creatively. So is every human action or emotion that generates good in any direction, in any situation, in any degree. If you evoke a happy smile in a sad child, or if you build a magnificent dam, you are doing the same thing on a different scale: you are using energy creatively.”
How to Transmute Emotions for More Positive Outcomes
That passage has been stuck in my mind for years. How much pain and suffering could we avoid if we were able to trace back the path of our frustrations? Like, for example, how often do we inadvertently punish our partners or our kids for things that we’ve brought home from work?
As Laura points out, all emotion is energy. And when we can be conscious enough to respond instead of just react, we have the chance to decide what to do with it. At its simplest, that might mean being aware enough to not take it personally when our partner seems to overreact and use it as a sign to check in with what else they might be struggling with.
Being conscious and grounded enough to interrupt and diffuse that energy flow is a gift for everyone around us, and one of the most healing things we can offer – releasing that energy from the chain instead of reinforcing it.
We’ve also all heard countless stories of athletes and performers who turn the comments of haters into fuel that drives them to win. This is the same. And every musician and artist funnels their pain and heartbreak into their work. That’s literally its purpose. So when we can consciously choose our response to any given situation, we really can turn lead into gold.
How to Deal With People Who Try to Take Advantage
The most common question I get when I talk about this stuff is, what about those people who are just out to take advantage? How do you respond to them?
This is not easy. As we begin to live from this place, people will be drawn to us and want to take whatever they can get. This desire to consume and control is a mask for feelings of unworthiness and insecurity. And as I’ve said, the people who behave in this way are the ones who have the deepest wounds, possibly more than they are able to face.
The more we can become aware of that and not take things personally, the more we can have compassion for their pain, the more we will be able to maintain grace and actually help them heal. Accepting people exactly as they are, however their pain manifests itself, releases the shame that keeps them stuck.
But that also means us having to stand in the fire of whatever protection mechanisms people have built up to hide that part of themselves. And sometimes we will still need to step away for our own protection, or even it might require our own anger if our boundaries are being ignored or our safety threatened.
As I said earlier, the more strong and stable I’m becoming, the more I only focus on my own actions, the less I’m affected by those of others. If you have no expectations it is very hard to be taken advantage of.
And the backwards law of that is, the more you give of yourself, freely, to everyone, without needing anything in return, the more will come back to you. Because when you stop reacting to anger with anger, or fighting any other emotion, you take away the tension and resistance that holds it in place, and it just melts away.
Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear your perspective and if there’s anything else you’d like me to talk about then let me know in the comments too.