My Blog

Anger

21st January, 2019

Anger is a very difficult emotion. I remember in my core clinical training that we had a workshop on anger, and the facilitator informed us of how we lost the ability to process anger as we got older. He gave an example of how a two year old would through a tantrum and express anger and then it would all be over, yet us adults tried to hide it and his morphed into something else, larger and more destructive. In my naivety I thought this was a really good point and told myself from now on I would ‘do anger better’. Maybe I did for a while, but now its its 20 odd years later and I have come to a place where  I think that perhaps anger is not going so well in my life.

As I reflect on the difference, I think anger is related to a sense of control. These past few years I have lost a sense of control as I have experienced a number of significant losses. I am not sure that I have dealt with these in the right way all the time, but I know that when anger impacts there is the event that angers me acting as the trigger closely followed by the impact of all those really painful losses, disappointments and hurtful experiences. The impact is phenomenal when its hits and I often find myself in a very destructive and painful place.

I think what has become so difficult to acknowledge is the fact the the events that take me to the angry place these days are sometimes perceived and not real, and I guess this is the thing that I need to be mindful of. The scar tissue .. the memory of past hurts are so raw and sore still that I trigger into a response that is defensive, informed on memory rather than reality and it hurts not only me, it hurts the people around me.

I read lots of quotes around anger and the past. A recent one was by the writer of the Buddhist Boot Camp, Timber Hawkeye: 

“ Emotional maturity means not being upset today by something that upset us yesterday. “.

It really struck a note and made feel inadequate all at the same time. How I wish I could do that! How I wish I could approach anger in a Zen like way, but I am not there yet.

Where I am is: noticing what is going on for me. Noticing that I am being triggered. Noticing that I am angry and that I will go through a process that will not be very nice. Thinking of what I need to move out of that space in a way that doesn’t rob myself of more of my life, and hurt the people I care about. I am getting to know more about the things that are still rumbling inside of me and trying to look after them so that I can live better with them. Its not nice and its messy but it is what it is.

I guess what I know for sure is that I am tired of giving so much of my life over to unresolved anger, its draining, destructive and such a waste of a precious resource… my life! Work in progress.