Exploring Our Anger

Rev. Amy Russell - 2008-09-14

Anger is an emotion that we don’t like to talk about. Polite people don’t show their anger and so when we are angry a typical response is to deny it, suppress it, swallow it, turn it into something else, like tears or laughter. Or some express it in ways that hurt others and themselves - in destructive ways. But many of us were never taught healthy ways of expressing it or finding ways to resolve it within ourselves.

All of us experience anger – and it’s not inherently a bad thing. In fact, it’s a healthy emotion that allows us to protect ourselves against danger. Anger is what motivates us often to take steps in our lives to move ourselves out of bad or abusive relationships

However, anger can be a very dangerous emotion. It can control us, instead of us controlling it. We see on the news every night about families where anger has killed. This shows us that anger is a dangerous thing when we don’t know how to control it. And then there is even danger when we suppress our anger. There’s been research that shows that some diseases might be the result of suppressed anger, like cancer or heart disease. A recent news article noted that people who were prone to anger were 2.6 times more likely to have a heart attack suddenly than those who tested at the lower end of an anger test.

In the reading today from a young adult novel called Touching Spirit Bear, by Ben Mikaelsen, we hear the story about an angry, young, teenage boy, Cole, who was sent away to an isolated uninhabited island as a sentence for his violent crime of beating another teenage boy. Cole had a difficult life. His father beat him and his alcoholic mother ignored him. He had anger stored up in him that would just explode. It would explode in violent destructive episodes. A probation officer who was Native American, suggested to the court that Cole be sent to a “Justice Circle”. A “Justice Circle” was a Native American tribal court that found alternative ways of dealing with criminals in their tribes. Although Cole was not a Native American, the Justice Circles had become adopted as viable options for dealing with criminal behavior in Minnesota. The Justice Circle for Cole, composed of community members, family members of the victim and the accused, and a Native American judge, sentenced Cole to a year alone on an Alaskan island.


This experience of living alone and learning how to survive on a deserted wintery island almost killed Cole. In his habit of violence, he had tried attacking a bear and was instead severely mauled by the bear. He would have died had the probation officer not come back a few days later to check on Cole and rescued him. He survived and after his recuperation, he went back to the island to complete his sentence. But when he went back he was a different person. He learned much about his anger from his time on the island. As we hear in the reading, the Native American who was teaching him, taught about how his anger was always with him, but how he did not need to focus on his anger, but instead could focus on the beauty that surrounded him. This wasn’t an easy lesson for Cole, however. It took waking up each morning and hiking to a freezing cold pond and sitting in the freezing water. He was learning to meditate- to focus on the heat inside him instead of the cold outside. Cole’s teacher also taught him to carry a huge rock representing his anger up a rocky cliff, and then gently pushing the rock or his anger down the cliff to learn to let go of his anger. These exercises or meditations over the period of a year, helped Cole to control his anger and understand that although his anger was always with him, that it didn’t have to control him. He stopped blaming his parents and the world for his life because he learned that he had control over his life, no one else did.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes about how we store anger, joy, all of our emotions in a deep storehouse within us. These emotions are what make us who we are. He describes these emotions as seeds within us that are dormant until we “water” them with our attention. He says that when we touch or “water” a seed, then it manifests itself into our awareness. We can water our seeds of joy and we will feel happy. And we can water the seeds of anger or suffering inside us and then we will be unhappy. During that time, we are quite aware of the anger that is present within us, but not so aware of the joy that is still within us. Or we can pay attention to the joy and happiness inherent in us, and we will experience a joyful life. And when we are joyful, we won’t be aware of the seed of anger that is still dormant within us. Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that it is our choice – to be angry or to be joyful.

Now he is not saying for us to swallow our anger- something that a lot of us in our polite culture are very good at. He reminds us that “mindfulness” is that Buddhist practice that helps us be aware of what is around us and within us. When we’re mindful, we are aware of our feelings, aware of our breathing, aware of everything in the moment that is making us who we are. He describes a “mindfulness of anger” practice. When you are angry, he says that you might say to yourself “I’m aware that I’m angry, and I’m aware that anger is in me.” Hanh suggests that we take care of our anger as though it is a little child that needs soothing and nurturing. We should embrace and recognize our anger, he says. “Anger is in you; anger is your baby, your child. You have to take very good care of it.” He says that once our mindfulness is aware of our anger, the “energy of the Buddha” is alive in us and it cares for our anger.

Now I know as well as you do that this is easier said than done. We all have times when we are not aware of how our anger is controlling us. The important thing to recognize, Hanh says, is that you can be a victim of your own anger. As an overwhelming energy, you need to use another kind of energy that can recognize and take care of your anger. And that energy in Buddhist terms is called mindfulness – a careful awareness that allows you to both embrace your anger and control it.


But all of us remember times when our anger got the best of us. They aren’t times we are proud of. I can remember a night when my daughter was a teenager when I was so angry, I just didn’t know what to do. This was when my daughter was fifteen and I was still driving her around to her various social engagements but she was trying to stretch the limits of her parental control. I was supposed to pick her up at 11:00 outside the house where she and her friends were going to be returning after a party. I was there on time and waited patiently in the driveway. As minutes ticked away, my patience grew thinner and my anger seed was getting bigger and bigger. She didn’t show up until midnight when I was furious as well as worried. I screamed at her that she was grounded for a month. That she didn’t think of anyone but herself, etc., etc. You get the picture. She screamed back and when we got home as she was stomping off to her room she shouted that I wouldn’t have to worry about when she got home any more because she would be moving out as soon as she could.

Luckily, there was something inside me that night as I lay in bed tossing and turning that made me realize how my anger was controlling the situation instead of my love for her. The next morning, I told my husband about how angry I was at my daughter’s behavior. He pointed out that I needed to remember who my daughter was at her best and try to deal with that person. Then I calmed down, and went up to speak to her. I was able to tell her that her punishment still stood, but that she needed to know that I always loved her, no matter what. Being able to do this with her, even when I was still angry, enabled me to get through her adolescence without creating a destructive relationship that would later be difficult to change. But believe me, it was not easy.

In the seventies, there become a popular pop psychology that recommended that we “vent” our anger. This was a therapy that told people to take a stick and hit a tree or to hit each other over the head with some Nerf bats. The theory was that if you released your anger by venting it, that it would go away. Recent research has proven that in fact, what venting your anger does, is in fact, is rehearse your anger – or practices your anger. Practicing your anger in fact feeds it or as Thich Nhat Hanh says it “waters” your anger seed and makes it grow. You might feel good temporarily because you have tired yourself out, and you might not have any more energy for anger. However, what sometimes produces anger is our lack of perception about a situation, or our feeling of a lack of control in a situation. When we give in to anger and practice it, the energy for our anger grows.

There have been several studies on this subject. In one study of couples who yell at each other they found that the couples did not feel less angry after this release of anger, but more angry. The study also found that verbal aggression could also be a trigger to physical aggression. The study concluded that “letting off steam can make the atmosphere very hot and humid”.

I think that we’ve all had the experience of trying to “let off steam” by various means – yelling, kicking something like the dog, or having a few drinks – thinking that we’re going to make ourselves feel better. I remember going through a horrendous experience. As a manager in a large corporation, I had been directed to lay off several of the people who worked for me. Later, I was demoted as a manager, since the company was doing downsizing. After I was told the news, I quietly slipped out of my office and went home. I cried and threw things for a couple of hours. I was exhausted afterward, but I didn’t feel better. I felt worse and even angrier. I’m not saying this was bad or wrong of me – it was perfectly natural and I’d probably do it again. But it wasn’t until the next day when my boss took me out to breakfast and explained why the company had to do this to stay afloat and that it had no reflection on my performance that I began to feel better and began to respond with ways to deal with my situation.


It is in understanding that our anger is soothed. When we are angry at another person, it is often our deep understanding of that person that helps the most. Buddhism says that with deep understanding of another, compassion is born, and we become liberated from our anger with this freedom.

But often when we are angry at someone, we want to punish them by doing or saying something that will make them feel bad. We think that doing this is going to make us feel better. We seem to have a habit of blaming the other person for our anger, and immediately wanting to make them feel bad. This seems to be human nature. We even see countries acting out this practice.


Anger is not a bad emotion as we’ve said before. We use our anger to protect ourselves and those we love from destructive forces. Being compassionate and practicing mindfulness does not mean letting other people walk all over you. If there is a dangerous person in society, we must use the anger of society to prevent this person from violence on others. Our compassion for this person would prevent this person from using his/her anger against others.

Anger as an emotion is important to respond to when we see injustice. Our anger for the injustice that we see in the world motivates us to work toward ending that injustice. As we look at major players in the fight for justice, we see angry people. Gandhi was angry. Martin Luther King was angry. Jesus was angry. These were people who were angry about the way that others were treated in society. They used their anger to speak against injustice. This is what a Buddhist would call an “enlightened anger”. This kind of anger is the kind that uses compassion and anger together to help others.

But this is not the kind of anger that hurts others. In the story about Cole, the angry teenager, we see a person who was controlled by the anger inside him. Although many would say his anger was justifiable. He was angry at the way his parents treated him. But he used that anger to hurt and destroy others. Often our anger is misdirected toward other targets than the one who may have caused our anger. How many of us have yelled at our kids when we had a bad day at work, or were mean to our partner when we’re really angry at ourselves?

In Thich Nhat Hanh’s book called Anger, he describes a process for dealing with our anger when we know who are angry at and what we’re angry about. This is a process that his community in Vietnam called Plum Village uses when two people are angry at each other. In this process, he suggests that the person who is angry agrees to “refrain from saying or doing anything that might cause further damage or escalate the anger”. The person also works on acknowledging their anger – not suppressing it.

The community has taught each person a practice of mindfulness meditation – which involves meditating on the breath. The person is encouraged to tell the person at whom they feel angry within 24 hours with a calm and peaceful voice. They can do this in person or in a written note. Then they ask for an appointment with the person later in the week so that they can work on the problem after they have both meditated about it. The person who is angry is encouraged not to pass over their anger and belittle it. Then they are encouraged to look deeply into their lives to see how this anger came about. They might look to see if they have hurt the other person in some way, or whether the seed of anger within themselves is the primary cause of the anger. They are asked to think about the other person to see if that person is suffering. If they discover in their looking deeply at the problem that they have somehow had a part in the problem, they might want to write a note or call to apologize immediately. When the time comes to meet with the other person, if they don’t feel calm about the problem, they are encouraged to postpone the meeting.


The other person involved in the situation also practices the mindfulness meditation and the deep consideration of the problem to ascertain his/her involvement in the problem.

This may sound like a pretty lengthy process for some of the times when we’re angry and we just feel like we need to just say why we’re angry. And I think it works very well in some relationships to simply state as calmly as possible when you’re angry why you are angry directly to the other person right away. But sometimes we can’t do that. Sometimes we need the time described in this process to let our “anger seed” shrink down, before we can see the situation more clearly. I think having a defined process like this in a community would be a wonderful way to deal with situations before they happen.

Sometimes my anger seed has been watered and I can feel it taking over my life and coloring all my actions and words. Often when this is true, I can’t recognize it though, and I might need someone who loves me to remind me that I’m seeing the situation with my anger nature in full bloom. It’s time like these that it’s helpful to me when someone I love will “water” my joy seed as Thich Nhat Hanh describes it by telling me that I am a loveable person and that I can be happy again.

The stick that the Native American guide gave to Cole in the story had a left end of the stick that represented his anger and a right end of the stick that represented his happiness. Often when we’re busy breaking off the left end of the stick, it’s helpful to remember that there is still a right end of the stick as well.


References
Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger, Riverhead Books, New York, 2001.

Ben Mikaelsen, Touching Spirit Bear, Harper Trophy Publishing, New York, 2