Working With Anger-C

Recognizing We’re Angry

Before we can transform or eliminate our anger, we must be able to identify it. While sometimes our anger is self-evident, other times we don’t recognize we’re annoyed, irritated, hostile, or belligerent until those emotions are strong and we’re speaking or acting aggressively.

One way to identify anger is to notice our physical sensations. If we feel our stomach tighten, jaws clench, or heat surge in our body, it could signal we’re becoming angry. Each person has different physical feelings of anger and we need to observe and make note of what ours are. Sometimes it’s easier to identify the physical sensations that go along with anger rather than the anger itself.

Another way to identify anger is to watch and observe our moods. When we’re in a bad mood, we can ask ourselves ”What is this feeling? What happened to start it?” Sometimes we can notice patterns in our moods and behavior. These can give us clues about how our mind operates and what our anger clings to. Some people speak of repressed anger as if they were angry all the time but didn’t know it. They have an idea of anger being actively present in them under the surface all the time, ready to explode. This kind of self-image can be harmful, for then they believe their anger is an inseparable part of who they are, and they stop trusting themselves.

What Makes Anger Arise

The deepest cause of anger is our ignorance of misconceiving reality. Just as an apple seed needs other conditions such as water, sunshine, and food before it can grow into a tree, the seed of anger is fed by other factors such as how we’ve been conditioned, our habits, the wrong kind of attention, and objects we find unpleasant. So anger doesn’t arise from one factor alone, but from a complex of factors, beginning with our ignorance which has a wrong way of seeing reality, and including other causes from the past and present. A single traumatic event in our life may have made the seed of anger more easily activated, but it’s not entirely responsible for it. Understanding how anger arises from many factors can interrupt our habit of trying to find “the cause” and therefore help to diffuse our anger.

The Seed Of Anger

Anger is not always present in our mind. When the mental factor of anger is manifest in our mind, we’re angry. When that anger goes away, the seed of anger is still in our mind-stream, but this is the potential for anger, not the mental factor of anger. While the potential exists to get angry in the future, we may not be actively angry in the present.

The seed of anger has been with us since birth. Anger and its seed are not the nature of our mind. They are like clouds that block the open spaciousness of the sky. When we generate the wisdom of understanding the nature of reality, we are gradually able to erase anger and its seed from our mental states.

The Habit Of Anger

We all have emotional habits. Some people have a strong habit of becoming angry. Their energy easily goes in that direction because they haven’t cultivated patience by applying the antidotes to anger. We may have a habit of expressing our anger that makes the situation worse. This makes our mind more familiar with anger and deepens our habit of acting out aggressively. Then our habit may start to take over. By reframing challenging situations and generating compassion for others, we can learn to remain calm, yet speak clearly and forcefully in difficult circumstances.

While most of us don’t consider ourselves capable of writing screenplays, when we look closely at what goes on in our minds, we find that we write melodramas all the time. These soap operas, with ourselves as the stars, ensure we have a steady flow of problems to worry about. This is one job from which we need to resign!

Working with anger by changing the viewpoint from which we describe a situation to ourselves transforms our inappropriate attention to appropriate attention and has healthful effects on our mind and relationships.

Anger and Attachment

While anger is fueled by inappropriate attention exaggerating or projecting negative qualities, attachment is fueled by inappropriate attention exaggerating or projecting positive qualities. Attachment is often among the factors giving rise to anger, for the more attached we are to something or someone, the angrier we are when we are denied that. As our expectations become unrealistic, we become increasingly prone to disappointment and anger.

When attached to something, we project onto it more worth than it actually has. Then, we cling to it, thinking we must have it in order to be happy. The “object” of our attachment may be a material possession, place, person, goal, or idea. We may also be attached to being right, being good, or doing things a certain way. Not all cases of wanting are attachment. With a balanced attitude, we may wish to develop love, compassion, wisdom, and patience. Such virtuous wishes are founded on accurate understanding and seek happiness from internal mental development.

Anger and attachment are based on inaccurate projections and operate on the assumption that happiness and suffering come from external sources—objects and people who, by their very nature, are temporary and cannot provide the lasting peace and happiness we seek. Thinking about the impermanent or temporary nature of the person or thing to which we are attached helps us to release the disappointment, hurt fear, and anger that attachment causes.

Contact with certain external factors may contribute to our becoming angry. These may be persons, ideas, conditions (such as illness), or situations. When we are first training in patience, avoiding contact with these is advisable. Avoiding people at whom we tend to get angry is not always possible, but we have to do the best we can. If we feel ourselves getting angry around a person, we can leave the situation, telling them that we will get back to them later, when we have calmed down. In this way, we avoid saying or dong things that make the situation worse and that we later regret.

We need to choose friends who help us process our anger in a constructive way. Our aim is to subdue our own disturbing emotion. Later, when our mind is calmer, we’ll reflect on an appropriate course of action. Working with our mind first is more important than blindly trying to fix an external situation with an uncontrolled mind.

Taken from Working With Anger, Thubten Chodron, 2001