Getting Over Getting Mad: Positive Ways to Manage Anger in Your Most Important Relationships (4 page)

I'm sure you've noticed that whenever you have a boil, a burn, a toothache, a sliver, a disappointment, or a deep heartache, it draws your attention. Your mind is distracted, and you can't fully concentrate on the task in front of you. The pain is there poking at you, interfering with whatever you'd rather be doing.

It's usually better to get the cavity filled before it starts keeping you up at night, and it's usually advisable to figure out what's troubling you and fix it right away. Ignoring yourself, like ignoring a leaking faucet, eventually causes more trouble.

Many of us learned to take care of others before we care for ourselves. We meet our obligations to others willingly, but are stressed by all the pulls on our attention. Faith, a sixth-grade teacher, mother of two boys, owner of two cats and one dog, wife, and caretaker of her elderly parents, makes sure that the kids are happy, her husband and animals are fed, her parents have been driven to their appointments, the lunches are packed, her phone calls returned, the papers graded, and the house picked up before she allows herself to sit down. On the kitchen wall is a calendar; each day is filled with appointments, after-school activities, and social obligations. Faith wants to squeeze in exercise or an outing with her girlfriends, but seldom finds the time. Her husband, Stan, a contractor with twenty employees, provides very well for his family—a four-bedroom home, a boat, a cabin, vacations, cars, and private schools. He volunteers at church and is on the go from early morning until he falls asleep on the couch at night. He's lucky if he gets to go fishing with his buddies once a year. Stan and Faith haven't taken a vacation alone since their ten-year-old was born. They give great dinner parties, they have a wide circle of friends, but they snap and pick at each other. They don't hold hands anymore.

Faith and Stan are experts at paying attention to what outsiders need, but they're irritable with each other. When Stan is stressed or frustrated, he's critical, puts Faith down, and is sarcastic. Faith's style is different: she doesn't know when she's upset. She smiles and remains pleasant except when she's exhausted; then she sulks and complains. Both feel guilty.

If you're a person who expresses anger destructively, whether by being aggressive or withdrawing, your spouse will react negatively. When you deny upset, your partner gets a confusing message. They sense that you're upset, but you say you're not. If you're aggressive, others might
return the aggression, or they'll ignore you and think, “There he goes again.” They'll stop taking you seriously.

You may be asking yourself, “Is it true that paying attention to myself will bring me clarity and resolution?” If you admit to yourself and to someone else, “Yes, I am angry that I have to give another dinner party,” or “Yes, I'm angry that I have these financial responsibilities,” you'll at the very least feel better for telling the truth. And that is the beginning of finding a solution.

Taking good care of yourself is the cure for resentment. When you say “No” to outside demands or obligations that you don't want, grudges and bitterness vanish.

There's a little devil in all of us. And when that little devil is mad, she's determined to settle the score. A lovely, intelligent women rented a car, disguised herself with a wig, drove to her ex's place, and flattened his car tires. She felt perfectly justified in doing so; in fact she bragged to me about it. Have you ever done something like that? The little devil in us wants revenge. We've been harmed and we demand retribution. When the little devil sees red, he makes sure to have the last word and settle the score.

Healthy boundary-line anger comes and goes quickly unless it's mounted for revenge. All of us have used anger to make a case against someone we didn't like. We've used anger to manipulate, gain power, to get our own way. We've plotted, schemed, and kept the argument going. Then, instead of coming and going, anger settles; instead of overflowing with love and good spirit, hostility takes over. Hostility is the dark side of anger, and it's very dangerous to your spirit.

When someone pokes fun at you, does it make good sense to pitch it back? When your little devil meets her little devil, two wrongs don't make either of you right. When Larry laughed at Joe's cowboy boots, Joe laughed back and said, “I guess my boots are out of style in the city.” When Larry continued, Joe firmly said, “You and I disagree on how I should dress.”

When others are laughing at you, judging you, making you wrong, instead of getting angry back, you can say, “I see what you mean, and others might agree with you, but this is how I do it.” You can hold your ground without being mean; instead of behaving like a demon, you can retain your integrity. Instead of hissing, “You shouldn't say that,” you can say, “This is what I think.” With these responses your adversary's little devil calms down. When someone humiliates you, try an angelic retort that's gentle yet firm: “We don't agree,” or “Maybe you're right,” or “Let me think about that,” or “I don't see it that way.” You can stick up for yourself, you can walk away, you can ignore it, and you can smile.

The best retort to a put-down is to agree with part of it, ignore the rest of it, and don't take it too seriously.

It seems that there are chronically angry people everywhere. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, policeman, Web designers, teachers, students, laborers, millionaires, and street people all suffer from the same affliction. You can tell it by the way they snap at the smallest irritation and explode at the tiniest inconvenience. They bubble over with hostility. People are chewing on everything, full of negativity. They act as though life comes with guarantees, and when something doesn't suit them, they sue.

Some people like being mad. It makes them feel powerful and in control. If they stopped being angry they might be sad, in emotional pain, afraid, or full of despair, and since they don't like feeling vulnerable they carry a chip on their shoulder. The most dangerous people are the ones who don't even know that they're angry yet are very hostile. They no longer recognize angry feelings; they live in a permanent state of uproar.

Uproar is a way of making one's own concerns more important than anyone else's. It's the angry person's syndrome. An angry person imagines an insult and immediately hurls insults right back. They overpower others with threats and loud voices.

When my clients who are in permanent state of uproar speak about themselves, practically every other word they use is should. “I should do this,” or “He should do that.” When the messages that you give yourself are filled with “shoulds,” you're bound to feel upset. Looking at life from the point of view of “should” will not help you—-it will only make you feel angry because you'll so often be disappointed. Can't and have to are two other thought-forms that cripple us and lead to uproar.

To move out of uproar, it helps if you change what you're thinking and saying. “Possibility thinking” is more relaxing. Change your “It's not possible” into “Maybe it is possible.” Change your “I can't” into “I could,” or “Maybe I can.”

To extricate yourself from uproar you need friends, people whom you can really talk to, who've been there themselves and are ready to share how they have overcome their destructive tendencies. You might find these kinds of friends in a support group or an anger management class. The greatest friend you can have is one who understands your pain and anger but doesn't let you become a permanent victim of it. He pulls you out of the muck, stops your incessant complaining. He tells you the truth and demands the same from you. She asks you to drop hostility and
replace it with goodwill. She brings out the best you.

Notice that anger is one letter short of danger. A little anger is helpful; too much anger is hurtful.

All anger—even the irrational kind—has a significant underlying cause and an important message for you. Just as you can learn many spiritual lessons through love, you can learn powerful spiritual lessons through anger. Knowing yourself is a joy; a large component of knowing yourself involves listening to the deeper messages that come with anger. When you look at yourself from a spiritual vantage point, you'll discover that anger can lead you to gratefulness. It can take you to your soul.

For anger to transform you, however, you must be willing to struggle with existential questions and existential anger. When you face the fundamental reality that life is unfair, you'll confront the inevitably of loss and death. You don't like things to go wrong because it reminds you—at least on an unconscious level—that there are many things in life you can't control. That's why when you get a flat tire you kick the car, when you lock yourself out of the house you throw your wallet, when you break your favorite antique vase you swear. Anger and loss are part of life, as are personal disappointment and family turmoil. Life doesn't go smoothly, things go wrong, you can't control others, you can't control your beloved; eventually you and your loved ones die.

Fortunately that's not the entire story. There is the other side. When you get a flat tire you may feel angry because you'll be late for your appointment, but you can feel grateful that you have a car. When you lock yourself out of the house, you might feel frustrated that you have pay the locksmith to make a house call, but you can express your gratitude that you have a roof over your head. When you break your antique vase, you can be sad for the loss and thankful that you were able enjoy it for awhile. When your sweetheart dies, you can feel grateful that you were blessed with so much love.

Much of the twisted and toxic anger that we see displayed through violence, aggression, and war is due to this ever-present struggle—unconscious though it may be—to come to terms with the inevitability of loss and death. Marne, upset over her mother's untimely illness and death, found herself snapping at her sister-in-law until she realized that she was mad at the medical system and God. When she looked deeper, she found that her anger at God was preventing her from accepting the kindness of the many people who wanted to comfort her.

To find the spiritual lessons that anger can bring, we must be willing
to see the bigger picture; we must shift our focus away from our inconvenience and upset toward the joy that is always present in our lives. We must step back from our anger so that we can be grateful.

Life and loss, beauty and death, love and anger are closely intertwined. When you react to everyday annoyances as if the world has just come to an end, it's a signal for you to explore life's bigger questions, to search for the spiritual nugget.

The more anger a situation causes you, the more you need to look for the spiritual lesson it holds.