An article on anger management, written by a psychologist, was recently brought to my attention as offering good, sound, reliable advice on the subject. (Ref: psychologytoday.com/blog/hig … -literally )
In it, the author advised that the latest advice on dealing with anger is to suppress it. There followed some strategies to achieve this.
(The article is actually quite sound, or would be if the authors had told us that the people they based their research on were A Little Bit Cross rather than Really Angry as in Trashing-your-own-house Angry, or Doing-yourself-a-damage Angry — though, on second thoughts, they still remain very short sighted because anger suppressed as they recommend will in the end rise from A Little Bit Cross to Out-and-out Rage.)
Suppressing anger does not work. In fact, it will make the condition worse. Just as a steam boiler under mounting pressure will eventually explode, so too will someone who does not “let off steam”.
The strategies provided for suppressing anger will also not work. At most they will provide brief, temporary respite for mild cases. But eventually they will stop having even that effect. They will stop working because they do not stop a person’s anger from growing. Once a person’s anger has built up, has increased as it will inexorably do over time, then these strategies will be too weak to have any effect at all.
In short, the advice contained in the article is worse than useless. And I should know. I’ve learned not merely to “manage” my anger but to “cure” it. Here’s how I did it:
- The first crucial step was to realise that my anger had a cause. My anger was justified.
Psychologists pass anger off as a “personality problem”. This is utter humbug. We live in a highly competitive society in which everyone is competing with each other. Each is trying to put the other down in order to “win”. A competitive society is one which generates anger. So, to realise that my anger had a cause was a great relief to me and the first major step on the road to recovery.
(Although my anger had a cause, I came to realise later that I was just as competitive as the next person i.e. I was just as guilty of generating anger as anybody else. Developing the ability to be cooperative, not competitive, has been dealt with as part of a larger programme of personal development of which managing my anger was a part.)
- Nevertheless, my anger was harming me, was making me ill. As well as an external cause of anger, each of us has internal causes. The next step was to identify those causes which were: (A) a fear of authority, (B) inarticulacy and (C) confusion.
Being inarticulate, not being able to say what is on one’s mind is, I think, a common source of anger. (Living in a competitive society exacerbates this problem with inarticulacy. In school, for example, we do the subjects we are good at and drop those we are poor at. So, if one is inarticulate, one drops subjects such as English instead of keeping them on.)
My major fear, as I said, was a fear of authority. Each person will have their own particular fear which needs to be identified. (My fear was identified through my dreams.)
As to confusion, that is more common. In a competitive society one rarely gets one’s questions answered. So, for example, one is naturally concerned for one’s health. You hear of a scientific report that has just been published suggesting that drinking tea increases risk of cancer. A few months later a different report is published which contradicts the first. As a tea drinker, one is naturally concerned. Which report does one believe? Does one continue to drink tea and risk cancer or does one stop drinking tea? How about converting to coffee? Is coffee carcinogenic? I could enumerate hundreds of such examples from politics, to science, to health, to academia in which no one is able, or willing, to give a straight answer. That is the sort of thing I mean when I talk about confusion.
Having identified the internal sources of anger, the next stage was to start working on them.
(3) Improving one’s articulacy is a matter of practice. Write, write, write, write. Keep on writing and writing. Write some more.
To lose my fear of authority, I had to work on developing more “bottle”. This was done largely at work. I learned to speak (or write) out, to speak my mind, to “challenge” those in authority e.g. my boss. This started in small ways e.g. learning to say “no”. With each success my confidence grew. Speaking or writing my mind improved my articulacy and therefore my confidence also. I took more and more risks speaking out and was more willing to challenge colleagues at any level, in or out of the staffroom, if they tried to tease or put me down etc, etc. An unexpected consequence of being outspoken was that, far from alienating colleagues as I had feared, my standing in the workplace improved enormously. I was earning a great deal of respect. This gave me more confidence. When I applied for promotion to middle management, I got it. It took bottle to then demote myself back to being un-promoted, but I was perceived as strong for being able to do so and my standing continued to improve.
Ultimately I pushed boundaries so far, was so outspoken, that I was formally disciplined by my employer. The outcome of the hearing was that I received a “verbal warning”. I regarded that “verbal warning” as a Badge of Honour (and still do). After notification of the disciplinary hearing, but before it actually took place, I had worked up sufficient bottle to, in effect, tell my boss where he could stick it, and handed in my resignation from what was a then a secure, permanent job. (I did not have another job lined up when I resigned. I was, as it were, casting myself adrift, something I never had the bottle to do before.)
As to dealing with confusion I experienced, the way of dealing with it is to become independent of outside authorities such as science, doctors etc. This involved developing the full use of my senses and my intuition, to interpret my dreams and to use these, as well as personal experience, to make sense of the world around me. So, for example, I have since stopped going to the doctor and rely completely on all the aforementioned for health advice.
Although meditation does not directly address problems with anger, it is invaluable for reducing one’s emotional temperature overall. I learned to meditate.
All of the above had the effect of reducing my anger levels. But there was still a way to go.
(4) After working on all of the above for perhaps a decade (yes, a cure takes hard work and effort, but a cure is, ultimately achievable) I achieved sufficient detachment from my anger as to undergo a change in perception. My self-awareness increased to such a degree that I was able to appreciate that people who generated anger — the teases, the people who put you down — were actually doing more harm to themselves than to me. People real what they sow. This had the effect of further reducing my anger levels.
(5) In the film Kingdom of Heaven, newly crowned king of Jerusalem, Guy de Lusignon, wants to break the peace between the Christians and Muslims. He releases his deputy, Reynald de Chatillon, a well-known fomenter of trouble, from prison with the instruction: make me a war. Reynald clutches his sword to his chest and replies: “It’s what I do”. The scene then shifts from prison to the aftermath of battle. As Reynald surveys the carnage he says: “I am what I am. Someone has to be.”
To raise one’s level of detachment such that one can accept that people “are what they are”, to accept them for what they are instead of judging them, is the level I have now achieved. I do not expect people to understand this but it is possible to not just accept people but to appreciate that everyone has their place in society’s eco-system just like the flea, the dung beetle or the lion has its place in the natural world.
(6) Humour. Lightening up. Playing the fool. Not standing on one’s dignity. Upgrading from Half-wit to Complete Idiot. Not taking life seriously.
This is the stage I am at now. It has taken me 17 years to get here. (There’s no quick fix to learning how to deal with anger.) My current ambition, therefore, is to become a Complete Idiot.
(7) The aim of this final stage is to recognise that anger is good. It is just another tool in one’s psychological toolbox and once you know how to use it well, use it intuitively, it is one of the most valuable. Another way of looking at anger is that it is like a bear. Treat it well, do not abuse it, and it will work for you. Treat it badly, and it won’t.
So, at the moment for me the out-of-control anger is still too close, but I am learning to love my anger and the final step is to love my anger and give it free rein.
