Understanding & Exploring Anger

Anger is a powerful emotion that can take you over. It can also be a source of deep reflection that leads you deep into the workings and the transformation of your own mind. The first step is to notice the difference between the emotion you feel and the reaction it triggers.

Transcript

Hello everybody,

Welcome to Mindfulness Live.

This week we're talking about anger as a path to insight,

To growth,

To self-knowledge.

Anger is usually just considered bad and when we feel angry we feel we need to stop and the whole world tells us we should stop and it just feels bad,

Bad,

Bad.

But it's not,

It's much more subtle than that or it can be.

I mean it can also get out of hand and we'll be looking at that and some anger stories and some anger meditations.

So make yourselves comfortable,

Take a nice breath and let go.

And breathe.

As soon as we pay attention to the breath it becomes really quite delightful.

It's a wonderful thing just to follow your breath.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm not doing it all the time,

It's so great.

But it does require this conscious mental factor of attention.

Present efforts,

So we stay with the breath.

Watching it as it comes in.

Feeling a pause and then watching the out-breath.

Feeling the sensation of breathing,

Opening,

Closing your chest,

Your nostrils,

Your throat.

Being aware of this moment.

It's just an ordinary moment with your breath coming and going.

And as you stay in the moment you become more aware,

Not just of the breath,

But of your state of mind and your state of body.

So feeling your posture,

Are you upright,

Are you slouching?

Feeling the tactile sensations from your body,

The pressure as the air moves in and out.

Perhaps pain,

Discomfort somewhere in your body,

An old injury,

Or perhaps just a clenching of muscles,

A tightness,

Stress,

Tension.

Maybe in your jaw,

Maybe you grind your teeth,

Maybe in your shoulders you're a little hunched,

Or in your neck it's tight,

Or your stomach which is clenched.

There's always some tension and it's not necessarily bad,

But it is to be known.

We want to know how we're feeling when we're feeling it,

Because that's mindfulness.

And the breath comes and goes.

Feeling your posture again.

Feeling that tension,

Which perhaps has relaxed a little now,

Because you became conscious of it.

Feeling the air come and go a little more easily.

Feeling your mind open.

Your defence is full.

You're open to what is,

To learning and growing.

And seeing exactly how you are and how you react.

Now taking three more breaths,

Open your eyes.

We're always talking about emotions here and feelings.

And the reason is because without being conscious of them,

We tend to sort of ignore them or push them aside or just interpret them the way we want to.

We don't give them the full attention that we could do.

So first of all,

Before we start talking about anger,

I want to talk about emotion itself very briefly,

Because there's a big misunderstanding here,

Which is that if I get angry and then I have an outburst,

That's the anger.

That's my emotion,

Is that outburst.

We tend to say that he's very emotional,

Okay,

Or he's very upset,

Whatever,

Call it whatever you want.

But we call that outburst the anger.

It is not.

That is not the emotion.

Okay,

This is the reaction to the emotion.

This is a little bit subtle,

But as you get used to it,

It's an idea we need to get used to.

So something happens,

Somebody insults you,

And it hurts.

Okay,

You feel hurt.

That's the emotion.

It's as simple as that.

It doesn't go any further.

Okay,

Well,

There's a development which goes further,

But the anger triggers your response,

Okay,

Which is your learned response in most cases.

And so you deal with your anger in your usual way,

Which is maybe shouting and screaming.

Maybe it's going completely silent.

We all have different responses.

I want to make that distinction clear that the emotion and the reaction are two separate things.

So there are three things involved.

There's the stimulus,

The feeling and the response.

I want you to think of that stimulus,

Feeling,

Response,

A simple triad.

Now,

Getting back to anger.

There are different reasons I can be angry.

The other day,

I talked about reading the news and getting angry.

And sure,

When I see innocent people being killed in Ukraine,

I get angry.

I just feel angry.

When I learn about the state that our environment is in,

And the way that people are holding back from making any changes,

I get angry.

I'm actually part of the problem.

Okay,

The problem is human beings and their insistence that they're more important than any other species on this planet.

And I sort of fall into that category,

I'm afraid.

I do feel that way,

Deep down,

And I act out of that sort of presumption.

We are more important,

We have to look after our own race.

We're the cause of the problem.

That makes me angry,

And yet,

I'm the cause of it.

So that's sort of weird.

This is a sort of objective anger.

This is not a bad thing on the whole,

Depends how you react to it.

But the anger itself is necessary.

We need to be angry sometimes at the decisions our politicians make,

Or the things that are happening in the world.

We should be angry at the people who declare war,

Who kill each other.

I mean,

It's totally the appropriate response.

So we don't want to lose that.

But there is this prevalent attitude in many societies.

I mean,

I used to think of it as being a Christian thing,

But it's not particularly Christian.

It applies to almost all moral codes,

Not just religious,

But moral codes that anger is bad,

Shouldn't be angry.

And that's sort of people generally accept that all around the world.

And so when we feel this anger,

A justified anger,

There's a tendency to doubt ourselves,

To doubt our right to have that anger.

So we sort of tend to suppress it.

We don't really want to go there.

We don't want to invest in them.

We want to understand it.

As I say,

It's a quite objective anger that's justified.

Now,

There's another sort of anger which can be triggered.

And that's a personal thing.

So,

And it can be,

There's so many factors which take it out of,

That make it unpredictable,

In a way.

For example,

I grew up trying to accept what my teachers were telling me about life and death and heaven and the afterworld and hell and all that stuff.

And I tried to believe it and I tried to understand it,

But I just kept having these questions.

And I'd ask the questions and they were very inconvenient questions.

And I was basically told to shut up and sit down and be quiet and be a good Christian and believe what I'm supposed to believe.

And I was a little kid and these were my teachers and they had canes and things.

So I did that.

I sat down and I shut up for a while until it sort of burst out of me again.

Now,

Fast forward 60 years or 50 years or several decades.

Okay.

And what is this situation now?

So somebody,

I ask an awkward question.

For example,

Why are we still using oil?

I mean,

I know why,

But I'm just saying.

So somebody turns around and says,

What a stupid thing to ask.

Now,

I'm not just getting angry because they use the word stupid.

I'm getting angry also because all of that stuff from my past,

Where I wasn't able to ask those questions,

It's all coming up again.

And so when I get angry,

It's a nuclear explosion because it's not just that somebody called me stupid.

It's that for the last X number of decades,

People have been in my mind,

Not necessarily in fact,

Just the thought of it.

Well,

My questions are always inconvenient.

No one ever understands them.

I'm always getting into trouble.

Maybe I shouldn't do this.

So now I don't even know what I'm feeling anymore.

I'm just all over the place.

Right?

I'm angry.

I don't know why I'm angry.

I sort of come up with a reason because he called me stupid,

But it's not real.

So now this is our opportunity.

When we can step into this,

When you have sufficient mindfulness practice,

That you can step into this whole process and look at your mind,

Look at your feelings and see what's going on.

You can start to deconstruct this and put it all in perspective.

And this is invaluable stuff because the main thing that we want to distinguish here,

I mean,

There are lots of distinctions to make,

But the main thing is am I angry because I feel personally slighted or am I angry because there is a real injustice in the world?

And of course,

Most of the time,

The injustices we're concerned about are the ones against ourselves,

Which is when we do take it personally and which is when we're liable to get it out of perspective because we have all these buried feelings and memories and things which we didn't do right,

Which come back to haunt us and fill us with shame.

Well,

I should have stood up for myself,

But I didn't because I'm,

I'm no good at this,

This sort of thing.

So this compounds the anger.

And now we've got sadness in there and we've got self-doubt and see how powerful anger is.

It can take us all sorts of directions.

But at the same time,

It also reveals to us an enormous amount about our own minds and how we work.

So the first thing to remember is that anger is a normal response to certain events.

It's an important response.

We should be angry sometimes.

When you accept that or in those moments when it becomes easy to accept,

Because it depends how hot that moment is.

When you accept that,

Then you start to see more deeply into it and you say,

Well,

You know,

This person was insulting,

But I'm also adding to it.

And this is how it works.

And oh,

That's where that anger,

Oh,

And I always feel whenever anybody says stupid,

That rings a bell for me.

Okay.

So I start to learn exactly where my triggers are with this,

You know,

What sort of anger will trigger what sort of responses.

And then I can start to measure them.

Well,

Is this appropriate or is this not?

And in this way,

I gain more understanding.

I gain more control of my mind.

I'm not plagued by anger.

I still get angry,

But I don't get angry to the point that I don't know what the hell's going on anymore.

I don't get myself filled with so many conflicting emotions and denial and blame and shame and embarrassment that I don't know where to look.

That's how I grew up.

That was my experience for years and years.

And it was it was blinding.

I would say it's emotionally blinding.

I did not see where I was coming from.

And the result was that I don't know,

As far as I was concerned,

I was having an ordinary normal day.

And then suddenly I was going crazy.

And everyone was looking at me like what's with him?

I didn't understand.

I thought I was an angry person,

Inherently angry.

And that's the way I was.

Which,

You know,

Betrays our fundamental belief in this whole process of mindfulness,

Which is my belief in my own ability to change.

So if I think that I am inherently angry,

Well,

That's it.

It's inherent.

It's who I am.

It's not something I can change.

That's the danger.

It can be very convincing sometimes because facing anger,

Oh,

It's such an effort.

It's easier just to be quiet,

To shut up,

To say nothing.

But the trouble is,

And let's say this is a perfectly legitimate situation,

You make me angry,

You call me names,

You're out to hurt me.

And I should feel angry,

Totally justified situation.

But instead,

No,

It's not worth the trouble.

I can easily rationalize it.

He doesn't understand anyway.

So what's the point?

Okay.

But meanwhile,

Inside my own self-image is being compromised.

I'm basically agreeing with this person saying,

Yeah,

It is really stupid.

You shouldn't really have done that.

You don't really have a right to be angry.

You should not be angry.

You're a bad person.

Okay.

So all this stuff is going on simply because I prefer not to address my anger because it seems like less work to not address it than it is to address it.

But by not addressing it,

It goes underground and it continues for years and decades and quite easily a whole lifetime to the day of your death.

So pay attention to your anger.

Look at it,

Try and understand it.

Make that first distinction.

Is this a justified anger or is it something that comes from deeper inside,

Some sort of instinctive response?

I always get angry at this point or with these sorts of situations.

The next thing is how much can I actually look into it?

Can I release myself from that reaction?

In other words,

Can I feel the anger or that person hurt me?

Not go to my usual response,

Which is to shout back,

But also not go to my other usual response,

Which is to bury it and do nothing.

So I'm going to take that anger and say,

I'm angry.

And then I'm going to look at it and I'm going to see what that's doing to me.

And maybe a part of me will say,

Stephen,

You have to respond.

And so I will figure out a way to respond and I will.

And maybe it's good.

Maybe it's bad.

I'll find out by trial and error.

There's no other way.

There's no other way you have to take risks.

And this is why so many people bury their anger,

Because they don't want to take risks.

But,

You know,

You're on the wrong planet if you don't want to take risks.

There's no way around it.

OK,

Make yourselves comfortable.

Take a nice breath.

And let go.

And now you're in your place.

In your mindfulness space.

Where you are private,

Alone,

And attentive.

And you imagine yourself in a situation which has made you angry in the past.

And you ask yourself,

Was my anger justified?

Was it a good reason to be angry?

Or was I just blowing off steam?

And if you're not sure,

Say that.

I'm not really sure.

And then ask,

So what does my anger tell me?

Not about the other person,

But about me.

What part of this angry exchange is my responsibility?

Is a result of me being here or saying something or doing something?

And to what extent is it from the other person?

Maybe it's conceivable that I've done nothing at all,

That it's completely unjustified.

Is it?

Or isn't it?

It's for you to judge.

And ask yourself at this point,

Do I have any weaknesses or soft spots where I go?

Shame?

Embarrassment?

Avoidance?

Am I just covering up here?

Am I trying to weasel out of it?

Or am I really a part of this situation?

Part of this conflagration of anger?

This exchange?

And does my reaction seem to be out of proportion?

Is it a small thing which I'm making a big event out of?

Or the other way around?

Is it a big thing and I'm trying to downplay it?

These are all common human ways of reacting to the emotion of anger.

These are possibilities in our own minds,

In our own mental patterns.

And as I look at it in this way,

And as I probe,

Does the feeling subside?

Does my mind become clearer?

And if it does,

Will I remember this?

Can I impress that on myself?

When you sit with your anger,

It gets clearer.

You actually become peaceful in a funny way.

There's an outlet,

There's a way which doesn't involve suppression or denial or lashing out.

And finally,

Am I standing up for myself?

Am I allowing myself to be steamrolled,

Insulted,

Diminished,

Put down?

Am I pretending to myself that this is harmless,

That it doesn't matter?

These are some of the ways in which we can question the anger and the reaction to the anger.

And part of that reaction is our self-image.

Very often,

I don't deserve to be angry.

I'm not important enough to be angry.

I'm not right enough to be angry.

And when it's all very overwhelming,

There's too many things to think about,

You go back to the breath.

Back to this moment,

And see how you're feeling now.

Breath comes in,

And breath goes out.

And as you breathe,

You know that you are not simply sentient.

You don't simply know what's going on.

You're a part of what's going on.

You're involved.

And you react.

And reactions are normal.

Reactions are necessary.

But sometimes they're not conscious.

And when they are conscious,

You learn.

When you're not conscious,

They learn.

The reactions become automatic.

They happen easily,

Without resistance.

Take over.

Cloud your mind.

So staying with the breath,

Staying with the moment,

And asking yourself,

How do I feel?

Not just once,

But again and again.

Because your feelings are always changing.

Always shifting.

Always triggering different responses.

Some of which are healthy.

Some of which are not.

And you're the only one who can see.

You're the only one who's there.

And even then,

Only if you're conscious,

Are you really there.

Otherwise,

It's those automated patterns that control your life.

And now,

Taking three more breaths,

Open your eyes.