I don’t know if anger, rage, and frustration are getting more common, but it certainly seems like they are.
As we find ourselves snarled in impossibly heavy traffic, overloaded with life’s complexities, dealing with technology that we think should work but sometimes doesn’t, and struggling to survive in a precarious and heartless economic system, it seems a lot of people live with hot coals of irritability burning inside them, and that these hot coals have more than ample opportunity to burst into the flames of anger, or to erupt as emotional explosions of rage.
Techniques from meditation can help us to damp down the flames of our ill will.
1. Stop, drop, and love
If you find yourself caught up in resentment and anger toward someone, the simple solution is just to stop whatever you’re doing and to start cultivating metta. This definitely works. In my own practice I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve gone from being irritated with someone to feeling appreciative of them — sometimes in the space of just a few minutes — when I’ve cultivated lovingkindness toward them. Many times, of course, the ill will is more entrenched, and the best I’ve been able to do is to soften the anger a little. But even that’s progress.
You can do this when you’re walking, talking, or driving. Just introduce a current of well-wishing: may you be well, may you be happy, may you be free from suffering.
If anger arises in meditation, switch over to cultivating metta. Sometimes people think they “shouldn’t” stop the practice they’re doing, based perhaps on a desire to avoid the restlessness that comes from chopping and changing practices. And while changing practices just because your mind is flighty isn’t a good idea, in the case of anger arising, just let go of any notion that you “should” continue with the meditation you’ve been doing. Anger can be a very destructive emotion, and it’s wise to treat is as an emergency situation. So switch to cultivating lovingkindness.
This doesn’t necessarily mean doing the full five-stage metta bhavana practice. If you’re annoyed with someone, you can just call them to mind and wish them well. You can keep doing this for as long as necessary. You may find that after a few minutes you can return to the practice you were doing, or you may end up working on developing lovingkindness for the rest of the sit.
2. Adjust your attitude
The way we’re looking at the world can set us up for experiences of ill will. For example, when we’re expecting perfection, we’ll get frustrated, because perfection doesn’t exist. Most people who are habitually angry have something like this going on. We often expect perfection from ourselves, from others, and from our technology, which, when you think about it, is both unreasonable and a recipe for misery.
So you can look at your attitudes, and see if you’re inadvertently creating the conditions for irritability to arise. It’s useful to think in terms of accessing qualities playfulness and humor, which you can do via imagery or a memory of having those qualities.
2. Accentuate the positive
Also along the lines of how our views condition our emotions, when we’re angry with someone we generally focus only on their faults. If you remind yourself of positive things about the person you’re angry with, this helps undercut your irritation with them.
It can also be helpful to remind yourself that you have faults as well.
4. Guard the gates
Exposing ourselves to unpleasant stimuli also sets us up for experiences of ill will. Hanging out in internet forums where there’s a lot of negativity, or watching a lot of outraged discussion on television may make you more prone to ill will.
The Buddha called this practice “guarding the gates of the senses.” He compared it to posting guards at the gates of a great city. If you want a peaceful city, then keep vagabonds and ruffians out.
This reminds me of the computer programmers’ saying, “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” which means that if you put in nonsensical data, then your computer will output nonsensical data. In this case, it’s our minds that are the computers. We need to be aware of the fact that certain forms of input lead to the output of angry emotions. If you want to reduce the output of anger, then cut back on the input of anger-generating stimuli.
5. Summon a Super Hero
Superman or Batman won’t swoop down to save you from your anger, but calling to mind a patient friend can help you to act with greater forbearance. One of the problems we face is with having a limited menu of behavioral options to choose from. When you’re prone to anger, it’s because anger is just so damned easy to use as a tool. You’re in a frustrating situation, you reach into your behavioral toolbox, and anger leaps into your hand.
Thinking of how someone who is patient and kind might act actually enlarges the range of tools open to you, so that you don’t fly off the handle. A while back I read about an interesting study where some students were asked to think about a professor before taking an exam. Those students who thought about the professor actually performed better on the quiz!
6. Practice self-compassion
This last technique is the one I find to be the most powerful of all. When you get angry, you’re actually reacting to a sensation of discomfort. There are stages involved in getting angry. First we see, hear, think, or otherwise perceive something. Then our mind categorizes the perception as wrong, bad, threatening, or otherwise unacceptable. This produces an unpleasant feeling, which is often centered in the solar plexus. And that unpleasant feeling acts as a signal, triggering a response of anger. The anger itself is designed to scare away the thing we identify as being the threat to our well-being. This works great if you’re a alpha wolf who’s facing a rival for pack supremacy. Snarl just the right way and your rival will slink off, chastened. It works less well in intimate family relationships or at work, where anger creates bad feelings and resentment, or when you’re frustrated with a slow website, where anger accomplishes nothing useful at all.
The “gut feeling” part of this process is something we often don’t pay attention to, although we should. Our anger, frustration, or rage arises so quickly that we’re immediately caught up in angry thoughts and emotions, and usually we don’t really acknowledge that we’re in pain.
But I’ve found that if I pay attention to the fact that I’m in experiencing discomfort, then the whole superstructure of angry thinking and angry emotions simply collapses. The whole point of anger is to defend you from feelings of pain by removing their source (the angry wolf snarls at its rival, and the rival backs down). But if you mindfully and compassionately pay attention to your discomfort, then there’s no need to get angry. The pain is being dealt with creatively.
Having paid attention mindfully and compassionately to my discomfort, I find not only that my anger subsides entirely, but that I often feel compassion to anyone who may have done something I felt annoyed by — like my children clamoring for my attention when I’m busy, or a driver who’s cut me off.
As I pay attention to them, the embers of hurt remind me that just as I suffer and want to find happiness, so others suffer and want to find happiness. I find that the slow burn of hurt, while it lasts, becomes fuel for kindness, rather than for anger.
Anger is nothing more than a strategy for finding happiness in the midst of a challenging world, but it’s not a very effective strategy. Mindfulness and compassion work much, much better.
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[…] regularly inspires me with his perspective. This piece about recognizing and engaging with our feelings of anger is a great example of that inspiration and permission to acknowledge […]
I’d like to ask how you would differentiate between avoiding anger and switching to metta…
It seems your suggestion may work if done with skill, but it could also backfire if one only ends up avoiding the anger and not coming to understand it.
Anger, I think, is too often avoided rather than understood and while stewing in it in such a way as to inflame it, is not a good thing, neither is not exploring it…
Anger is not in and of itself destructive. It is only our response to it that may be. Anger, in fact, has a healthy role and if we don’t come to understand anger, both it’s dark and more constructive sides…we will not mature in a wholesome fashion.
Our culture often dangerously avoids anger. I’ve learned a lot by allowing myself to feel my anger and I don’t have nearly as many issues with it as I once had. I needed to become intimate with my anger as a victim of trauma by the hands of others, it was a necessary part of healing and letting go.
Shadow work, as Jungians call it, is very important I think.
Bout time you read my book – detox your heart – ha ha ha – good research – i also read the dalai lamas book on anger – and thich nat h.. book on anger – for research on my own – so i didn’t regurgitate the same stuff in the same way – not that i could with two such eminent people writing on anger — i feel like people like us – who are not so illumined like the dalai lama etc — have to write from our personal experience – and really show our readers how we have worked with anger in aspects of our lives– this is our unique way in – unique to us – which people love – good luck with the book – i will look forward to reading when it is on the book shelve —i know it will be a good one – as i know you have worked with anger in your life – and continue to do so —-so happy writing… may all blessings be yours
Anger is brought about relationships and passive aggressive behaviors.
Relationships are often disturbed by passive aggressive behavior, you may have gone wrong some day with your partner and you thought you resolved the issue yet the one of you actually did not let it go, she/he continues to act weirdly. . In an intimate relationship, this often turns into emotional abuse. Without counseling, a pattern develops and the person may sabotage intimate relationships, friendships and work relationships.
“I think there is very valuable information in the ebook, Stop! That’s Crazy-Making! How to Recognize, Respond to & Recover from Passive-Aggressive Behavior & People, which you can find in PDF format at https://www.forrelationshiphelp.com/products-page/ebooks
Finally… After endless searching and reading on this topic I finally find something that is useful, that reaches me. The perspective you place the issue of anger in here really opens up my eyes. I only hope I can implement metta now.
“As I pay attention to them, the embers of hurt remind me that just as I suffer and want to find happiness, so others suffer and want to find happiness. I find that the slow burn of hurt, while it lasts, becomes fuel for kindness, rather than for anger.
Anger is nothing more than a strategy for finding happiness in the midst of a challenging world, but it’s not a very effective strategy. Mindfulness and compassion work much, much better.”
Hi
I want to understand something. I am a quite a calm person, my response to anger is always to think it out, be quiet and slowly let it go. Usually it works.
recently I got into an almost full lift that started beeping when more people followed. the others got out and the beeping stopped so I stayed. One person started shouting at the lift attendant for letting ppl in. because of her continued tirade, others joined in. I never responded and finally left when my floor came. I had two children with me too at that time.
My question is this:
was it right not to respond and feel a bit bad for some hours after the incident or should I have responded.
Over years, I have learnt to let the resentment against such verbally abusive people go. Earlier it would take longer but the time is shorter now. Yet, is it right to not respond and feel resentment or is it better to respond and feel a bit better at responding and not being passive. (i have rarely tried that option)
was it a right example for the children?
Hi, Ni.
I think there are options other than those you’ve considered. For example you could not respond at the time, and then afterwards you could cultivate lovingkindness for the person who was shouting. You could have given an example of compassion and understanding to the children by saying something afterward about how the person who was shouting might have had a difficult day, or how they might well suffer in their lives if this is the way that they behave toward others, or by expressing sympathy for the lift attendant.
It may well be that staying silent at the time was the right thing to do. It’s hard to know. Often when someone is angry, confronting them, no matter how kindly, will simply provoke more aggression. So sometimes it’s better to remain quiet, and perhaps to show some friendliness and sympathy, even with just a look, to the person who has been on the receiving end of the abuse.
Thank you Bodhipaksa. Your views helped. I really felt that I got off the lift but people who live with that anger in them or such an angry person…. Find it difficult getting off their ‘lift’. Btw how should ppl who live in angry environments deal with that anger without replicating it themselves or becoming submissive.
You know, it’s very hard to say. It makes a big difference whether the angry people in your environment are family, friends, colleagues, bosses, etc. Sometimes you can point out that anger is unhelpful, sometimes it’s helpful to be angry back, usually it’s helpful to empathize with the other person’s frustration, sometimes you need to bring into the conversation something that the other person is ignoring, sometimes you need to tell the other person you’re hurt (or are otherwise troubled) by their anger, sometimes all you can do is to ignore what’s going on. I don’t think there’s one right answer.
for years anger has poisoned my life, relationships peace of mind. I even lost the relish for life. from this moment I yearn to practise loving kindness, please pray for me that I too could become loving and compassionate. Then i could also say about the teachings of our divine light.
Hi, Remya.
Please do start with cultivating lovingkindness for yourself. We all need to begin with forgiving ourselves.
This is very interesting and I think applies to most interactions with most people.
But what do you do if it is someone who is trying deliberately to hurt and upset you? What do you do if this is someone who you have asked to stop saying hurtful things but who still does it?
There are some things you can control, and some things you can’t, Emer. If you can’t choose to stay away from this person, and you can’t get them to change their behavior, then everything I’ve suggested above helps you to be more in control of your own reactions.
I found this post particularly useful today Bodhipaksa, thank you.