ANGER: Is it often an own goal?
If you kick a stone in anger, you’ll hurt your own foot.
Korean proverb.
A friend once remarked, determined to put anger into some kind of perspective, 'It's simply strong emotion negatively expressed.' Is that I wonder? Alas, 'negative expression' can run anywhere from murder to creating life-long rifts between families, countries and the world at large. And just at the moment there seems a lot of it about. On the other hand, strong emotion, positively expressed can be A Good Thing. Think US students marching against the current gun laws, for instance. But it seems to me getting the right balance between the two can be tricky.
Why do you, I or anyone else on the planet get angry at all? We're human is the simple answer! It's part of the package, part of the animal kingdom, part of being in a body at all. However, as this is a blog, and I'm not pretending to be a psychoanalyst, I can only report my own findings in this area.
To express negative emotion harmlessly, try swearing! This can work quite well for physical pain release. In fact swearing is a tried, tested and researched method for lowering pain. 'I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear,' psychologist Richard Stephens at Keele University is quoted as saying. Since I quite often stub my toe or cut my finger or do mindless and unintentional injury to myself, I can testify to its efficacy!
If swearing doesn't work, try The Angry Spoon! This is a new innovation of mine if I've run out of expletives. A wooden spoon given a few thumps on solid granite, works a treat! But these are not the deep, heavy negative expressions of anger that result in violence and hatred.
From what I've learned over the years from my own observations - and from A Course in Miracles which has helped me a lot - we're never angry for the reason we think. I'm talking here of the kind of anger that erupts into rage that, for a few sometimes fatal moments, can be truly ungovernable. I've only been that angry a few times in my life, once as a child at boarding school being bullied – heading off the offender with a loo brush solved the problem. Years later, in my fifties, I got so furious on one occasion with an intransigent French bank clerk I woke up next morning with a bright red eye. I'd literally burst a blood vessel! The last and third time, was a few years ago where I found myself using a tirade of unprintable words at an equally uncooperative estate agent!
Are silent irritations or unexpressed wounds precursors to anger? Irritation is much milder, and may not induce either cursing or bashing stones with a wooden spoon, but I suspect if you have enough of it, and on a regular basis, the consequences can be startling. It can certainly transform itself into something quite explosive. So the husband, or wife, who always leaves the lights on when everyone’s gone to bed may suddenly find themselves, one chilly evening, the recipient of ungovernable rage at some apparently unconnected incident – for instance, merely happening to leave the front door ajar whilst bringing in the groceries. Yet the unconnected incident in itself might well reveal another far more profound unease.
I tend to use myself as a guinea pig. When I dig around in my psyche for the reasons I might be feeling angry, I come up with a sense of deep frustration - because there’s nothing I can do about a particular situation. I’m blocked. I can't see a way out. For the big things in life - other people’s anguish, the plight of the homeless, the hungry, the profoundly wounded - for all those problems for which we personally are unable to find an immediate solution, then it’s hard not to feel angry sometimes. And blame others – which can range from our nearest and dearest to the head of any government you care to mention. At such times, I'm learning not go off in a tirade of that rather dangerous emotion, 'righteous anger.'
The Buddha is quoted as saying, ‘You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.’ That, I've found to be utterly true. Anger can turn us into a boiling, bubbling, seething cauldron of emotion that does us no good at all. Whether it's unfulfilled expectations, feeling helpless or remembrance of old wounds, I've found its negative effect on my body is highly unpleasant. To the point now where I disperse it as quickly as possible. Because for me, and probably for many of us, there's only one person at the root of any anger I might feel. Alas, it's me - I can be quite angry with me just for being angry at all! So love, tolerance and patience towards our own shortcomings – and those of others - is the only way I've found towards a sense of tranquility.
To paraphrase former general Colin Power don't just, 'Get mad then get over it.' If possible, avoid getting mad at all - especially if you regularly stub your toes!