Anger

I had occasion to be angry a couple of times yesterday. Well, perhaps not as angry as that guy over to my right, but pretty angry.

I have a lot of shame around anger. I have been angry a lot in my life, and consider myself to be a recovering angerholic. I have done a great deal of damage with my anger, some of which could be healed and some of which could not.

I also love to eat at my anger. Dammit, I deserve to comfort myself with white chocolate and pizza. (Some people use a stiff drink, but I have lost that privilege for life, I'm afraid).

So, yesterday I was angry. Neither event was really all that deserving of such a response, which clues me into the idea that I am pretty stressed about all of the things that are going on in my life just now. Nothing bad, mind you (well, for the most part), but both good and bad stressors have added up to my having rather a short fuse.

Many of the Buddhist teachings make clear that anger is both a precious energy and that it has no inherent validity. Interesting paradox. The first is true because, as I have written here previously, anger or other intense emotion focuses our energy. If we are truly in a threatened state, this energy is very useful. We can run, lift, think, speak and do many other things with greater focus and more directed force. But it also has no validity because it assumes that we are all separate beings and that my anger can be directed toward you without having any effect on me. We all know this isn't true. Yesterday, it really did feel as if I had been poisoned; I could feel it working its way through my body as it dissipated. Very disconcerting.

The key, though, was that I let myself simply feel the anger with a minimum of acting out. Yes, there was a bit of a hissy fit and a slightly misguided email, but I really didn't create any of the wreckage I have so often in the past. It has been the work of at least two decades to reach this point, where my anger isn't used to simply level all that stands before it. When I felt the anger yesterday and acknowledged how it felt in my body rather than in my mind, I was able to let go the impulse to act on it. Contrary to popular belief, acting on or "venting" anger is not essential to it passing away. In fact, acting on anger has been found to rehearse the anger and therefore reinforce the same expression of anger another time. As with all negative emotions, if we allow it to arise and pass away, it will, and quite quickly, too.

And I didn't eat over it, either, though I was sorely tempted to. This blog is an amazing deterrent; I knew I would have to fess up and decided I would much rather say I hadn't. I also know that when I act out in that way I am short-circuiting the process through which I learn how to let my anger arise and pass away without having to do anything about it. Oh, yes, this is sometimes hard, and I am a prone as anyone else to believe I am "letting them get away with it" when I don't lambaste someone who has aroused my ire. But, really, when has that ever had a good outcome?

It arose. It passed away. I survived. I wrote an explanatory email. I moved on. It's all good.