How to stop being angry

I have written before about chronic anger and its consequences. Our readiness to fight, both as individuals and as a country, has cost us dearly, both financially and in terms of personal unhappiness and loss.

In this brief note I would like to consider how and under what circumstances we might be willing to stop being chronically angry. We should also give some thought to the real-life consequences in our personal lives of simply stopping being angry as a response to every situation.

Anger is always a response to frustration. On the most primitive level it is a way of giving notice to our caretakers that something is wrong that we ourselves cannot correct. The hungry or wet baby demanding attention is the simplest example. We learn at the very earliest stages of our lives that rage can bring resolution, comfort and relief at the hands of something or someone outside ourselves.

That same mechanism endures through life. Exactly how we express our rage and frustration varies in its sophistication, but never departs from its basic nature: a demand that the external world arrange our relief or satisfaction. It is also an acknowledgement of our own experienced helplessness. We demand that others/the universe relieve our pain and grant our needs, and in the act we acknowledge that we ourselves are unable to provide that relief.

Sometimes the very expression of our frustration, intended to bring us relief, itself stands in the way of our getting what we want. Screaming at your mother when you are hungry works fairly well when you are one, but much less so at age 16. It is the expression, however, that requires modification; the underlying need remains the same as it always did.

I recall stubbing my toe on a rock as a child, and the anger I felt, which led me to first kick the rock, which hurt worse, and then to throw the rock as far as I could. My anger was at an uncaring universe which I could not control. My powerlessness increased my anger, and I reasserted my power by first kicking and then throwing the rock. I doubt if all of that prevented my toe from hurting, however.

We get angry when people and things don't do what we want. In the primitive parts of our brains we expect that anger itself to result in changes to meet our needs. Rarely does that work. But how do we drop the anger reaction and find more effective ways to get what we want? Sometimes the anger is at situations or people who no longer exist. In my work,  being angry at an abusive parent or ex-partner who no longer is alive is a distressingly frequent example. We cannot turn a dead abusive parent into a loving one.

One of the key elements in dealing with chronic anger is that it contains hidden at its core an element of hope. Anger is our earliest form of magic, and we never quite believe that it will simply not work. Hidden inside us we believe that the anger will cause the other person (or thing) to change, especially when we don't have a clue as to how to make it happen ourselves.

A friend once confessed to me that he was often (or chronically) angry at his girlfriend because she was unaffectionate and unromantic. However, when he expressed his frustration and anger things did not get better, but rather worse: she kept her distance and avoided his company for a while. On the one hand he understood that his anger and sulking did not make him more attractive or desirable. It certainly didn't spark any romantic feelings on her part. At the same time, he felt that not letting her know how he felt meant that she wouldn't know he wanted her to change. He felt helpless to get what he wanted. He recognized that her feelings about him were not in his control, and to some degree not even in hers. But the element of  hope he felt encouraged him to keep trying, in spite of its futility.

We know when someone important to us is showing anger or resentment toward us it is because they want something from us. It's easy to feel defensively angry in response. We can get caught in our helplessness. What's the alternative?

Sometimes we have to give up hope that we can get what we need. That's not an easy decision to make, but without it we cannot grieve for what we are missing or have lost and begin to move on. Our anger can be an avoidance of grief. Indeed anger is considered one of the early stages of grief, even though it is clear that it is a separate emotional response. We don't want to accept our loss.

But perhaps some losses should not be accepted. Accepting loss and grieving for what we don't have is not always a good answer. Grief involves a acceptance of an unchangeable circumstance, but passivity is not always useful. Sometimes we need to be assertive and even angry to fight for what we want, nor just accept the situation. America would still belong to the British Empire if we had not done so.

It's hard sometimes to accept that there are important things in our lives that we cannot change. It's hard to know which things should be fought for and which should be let go. This latter is a discrimination that can only be made cognitively, not emotionally. "Moving on" always requires grieving.