Anger is not your Enemy

Have you ever felt like your anger is controlling you? 

Like it suddenly just comes up out of nowhere, and you explode - saying or doing things that you’d never normally say or do? 

Maybe you’re frustrated, or confused. Maybe you’re scared. Maybe you think that if you could just learn how to control your anger, everything would be ok. 

I don’t blame you at all for feeling that way. In fact, I think it’s a pretty damn reasonable and understandable response to fear what feels unknown and scary! 

Because the thing is - humans are hardwired to fear the unknown. It’s part of what keeps us alive. Our brain can prepare for the familiar, and so our brain very much takes the “devil you know versus devil you don’t” approach to life. 

So what does this have to do with anger?, you may be asking.

When we don’t understand something, we often instinctively fear it. And when we fear something, we have one of two options: judgment, which is when we label something bad and shut down from learning. Or curiosity, which is when we want to learn more. And often, when we learn more about something, it becomes less mysterious and frightening. The more we understand the nature and purpose of each of our emotions, the more we get to know them - and the less we have to fear from them. 

So I have a question for you: is there anyone you remind yourself of when you become angry?

To help you answer, I’m going to provide a hypothetical example of a made-up client and I running through this question.

• [Me]: Is there anyone you remind yourself of when you become angry?

• [Client]: Yeah, actually. My mom. I love her so much, but sometimes it was hard growing up with her. Whenever she would get upset, it was like the whole house would feel it. She never learned how to control her anger. And the rest of us had to walk on eggshells around her because of it. 

• [Me]: So your fear is not actually of your anger - your fear is of becoming your mom. Of alienating and hurting the people you care about. And that leads to your belief that if you learn to dominate your anger, you won’t be like your mom. 

You’ll notice in this example that we were able to come to a theory about this hypothetical client’s relationship to their anger: that it wasn’t actually their anger they feared. Their actual fear was much more deeply rooted than that: the fear of becoming like their mother, which for them equates to alienating and hurting their loved ones.

In this hypothetical scenario, the client is focused on “controlling” anger. They hold the belief that if they can control their anger, this control will fix things. And this client is definitely not alone in that belief. Many of us have been taught to belief that anger is something unruly or even dangerous that we must strive to keep under lock and key. That if our anger gets out, bad things will happen. Which results in many of us feeling like if we don’t cage our anger, it will end up running wild - and people will get hurt.

But the only reason we hold this belief is because we have been taught to pair anger with aggression. We’ve been conditioned, through extensive and repeated life experiences, to believe that “angry” automatically means aggressive or harmful. 

And look, I’m not going to lie to you - obviously anger can become aggressive, and it can be used to hurt. But that’s not automatic. Aggression is not the only side of anger. The emotion of anger is so much bigger and more complex and nuanced than just that one facet of it. 

I work with coaching many of my clients to notice when they’re placing moral judgments on neutral things.. The emotion of anger is a great example of this. I often hear clients use binaries like “good or bad” or “right or wrong” when it comes to anger. They are placing a moral judgment on an amoral, abstract concept. Anger is neither good nor bad, right or wrong. Anger simply is. Anger is neutral, and it’s a natural part of the human experience and the human emotion spectrum. 

I often have clients say something akin to the following when we get to this type of work: 

[Client]: All right Erica, so if anger isn’t actually bad, then why do I feel so bad when it comes up in me?? 

Great question, hypothetical client! It reminds me of this saying: “what you resist will persist.” 

Like for example - have you ever tried to hold a beach ball under water? That sucker will physically resist you until it comes right back up to the surface. Our emotions are like that. They do not like being shoved down. And for good reason. Every emotion we have as human beings is hardwired into us for a reason. We didn’t accidentally get any leftover emotions. All of our emotions serve a purpose. 

In the case of anger, anger’s purpose is directly linked to our survival. Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Anger helps us notice threats, and gives us fuel to defend against them. Without anger, it would be impossible to effectively protect not only ourselves but the people and things and causes we care about. 

So rather than imagining your anger is some wild beast that you must take to heel under your dominion, try this instead. 

Imagine your anger is like fire. 

Fire is incredibly powerful but also incredibly versatile. If you’ve been wounded, it can purify and cleanse the wound. It can cook food so you can be nourished. It can provide light in the darkness. And yes, it can also incinerate and destroy - which isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes you need that destructive form of fire to protect yourself or the people you care about from threats. Or as fuel to overcome things. If you look at any major civil rights revolution in human history - it was birthed from anger. Anger at injustice. That anger was used as fuel for forward movement.

It’s like how a blade can be a weapon. But in the hand of a surgeon performing an operation - it becomes a tool for healing. 

We can choose what we use our anger for. 

How will you use yours?