Anger and Rage

Anger is one of the toughest emotions to deal with and unlike other emotions it is almost impossible to deal with with whilst you are experiencing it. Over time and with practice you may be able to control your response to anger and stop yourself from going into a full blown rage. Even when a person is experienced at understanding and working with their emotions it can be challenging to examine the emotion of anger in the moment. A good alternative to aim for would be to recognise that your angry emotion has been triggered, give yourself some time to calm the emotion down and then once you can think clearly examine the emotion and your response to it in a calm way without further inflaming the situation and increasing your emotive response.

Often anger is the first emotional response we have to feeling let down, attacked, frustrated, scared or unfairly treated. Anger can be a mechanism we use so that we don’t have to experience the feelings that have been triggered. It is not a conscious decision.  Something triggers us, it makes us feel bad and so anger and rage is our response.

Understanding your angry emotions can help you to gain more control of your actions and responses. It can also assist you in healing old wounds that are causing your anger to become triggered.

Think of anger as your own private gatekeeper to negative beliefs and feelings. Once you have been triggered the gatekeeper comes out fighting ready to defend your position. The gatekeeper has a whole bunch of reasons and justifications for your actions, which usually revolve around how it is not your own fault, how these things always just seem to happen to you or how other people have let you down.

If you are in a safe environment and you are not in a situation whereby you are likely to cause harm to yourself or others try asking your anger why it is so annoyed. Be prepared to hear about how it can’t rely on others, how they never listen or how it is all their fault.

Once your anger has exhausted itself explaining why you are not to blame try to look a bit deeper into how it feels.  Note what triggered your angry response and ask yourself (beyond the initial emotion) how this made you feel. For example perhaps you were triggered because you felt threatened or attacked, did you feel vulnerable or scared, not respected or listened to.  How does the emotion feel now, what is behind the anger, do you feel sad or hopeless are you scared of being abandoned or rejected, neglected or out of control? Listen to what your emotion is telling you about how it feels.  

Don’t make any judgements or assumptions about how you feel it may sound childish or not be in line with your normal thinking and this is fine. Remember this emotion is part of you but it is not actually you. Keep examining your feelings for example if you feel sad, ask yourself why sadness is there, perhaps underneath the sadness is a fear such as being abandoned, beyond the feeling of being abandoned is a belief that people you love always leave you. Make sure you treat each feeling with love and kindness as you would a small child send your own love back to each feeling as it comes up and when you can feel the emotional charge diminishing imagine your feeling is dissolving into the colour white or violet and move onto the next one.  Keep going until there are no more feelings coming up.

As well as feelings your anger may be hiding fears. The first thing to remember when dealing with fears is that they are never true. A fear is usually based on false beliefs or a small seed of something loosely based on the truth that is then distorted out of all proportion to become a fear. Try to reassure yourself that your fears are not true. You may also have some beliefs, these may be based on your past experiences or on things that others have told you.