Learning to harness our anger's energy

MIND MOVES:We are more fragile than we think we are

ANGER IS energy. It is a force within our minds and bodies that can be harnessed to achieve good or misdirected to cause harm.

It helps when we know we are angry. The moment we can say to ourselves, “I am angry!” it is less likely that it will overwhelm us. We may not feel happy that we are angry, but knowing we are angry allows us to connect with it and feel grounded.

When we are unaware of our anger, it can slip out in some form of meanness towards others. We may react thoughtlessly with a cutting remark, or be excessively slow in responding to another’s need of us. Or we smile sweetly to someone but speak ill of them behind their backs.

Many of us are afraid to admit that we are angry. We fear the force of this emotion. We keep a tight lid on it in case acknowledging it could result in a tsunami of rage that would permanently destroy our credibility as rational human beings. We fear others may belittle us if they see just how angry we are. The irony is that when we suppress our anger, it can grow in strength and distract us for days.

A common way to deal with anger is to take it out on easy targets. We can all relate to the scenario where someone brings their anger home from a frustrating day at the office and “dumps it” on completely innocent beings – the pet dog, the exuberant child, the concerned partner.

At some level such behaviour is understandable, but displacement of our anger can do immense harm to our relationships, at home and at work. When we allow our anger with person A to spill over into our interactions with person B, we run the risk of hurting that relationship and sabotaging everything we are trying to build with them.

This is why it’s smart to be in touch with your own anger and not to be afraid to acknowledge that it’s there. Anger is our emotional response to what we perceive and experience to be unfair.

Another way to think about this is to see anger as a response to something that violates what we need and expect from the world around us. We want others to treat us in a certain way and we feel hurt and angry if they don’t.

Our expectations may be entirely reasonable and it may be important to confront this openly with that person. But it may also be the case that our angry reaction to another person exposes something we were expecting from them that is unreasonable to begin with. Sometimes it’s simply that they have touched an old wound in us that has nothing directly to do with what they have said or done.

Whatever triggers our anger, we find ourselves in a state where we feel unsettled and distracted. It’s hard to think straight or to concentrate. In some instances, we turn our anger against ourselves, blaming ourselves for being too sensitive. But this doesn’t get us anywhere.

Better to see our anger as simply an expression of our sensitivity to the world around us. We are much more fragile than we think we are. There is nothing wrong in feeling the way we do; anger is inevitable in living with others.

We all let each other down from time to time. Relationships where anger is not allowed or addressed inevitably lose their vitality and die. When we are angry, we either address whatever rupture has occurred between us, so that we can achieve a better understanding of each other, or we allow our anger to grow and fester and turn into an abiding resentment.

Ruptures are painful experiences for any relationship. But they are the places where bonds are either broken or deepened into something more durable and alive. The ultimate outcome pivots on our willingness to stay engaged and not run away from the jagged edge of our discomfort.

In the heat of the moment, we may forget what it is that ever made us want to be close to this person. When tempers cool, we have to decide whether what we are trying to build with the other is worth the struggle – and accept the hard truth that true intimacy is often forged in the white heat of anger.

Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – The National Centre for Youth Mental Health (headstrong.ie)