Letting Anger Go

I learned a really hard lesson this week. I mean, that’s life, a series of lessons and challenges, but this one hit me hard enough that I felt like it would be worth sharing.

Anger. What a deceptive emotion. How good does it feel to be angry? To feel the injustice or unkindness of another person’s actions and have all those thoughts burst through about how you didn’t deserve it and they don’t understand or respect you.

Anger is one of the hardest emotions for me to let pass by. And I think it’s because it feels so justified. It’s hard to logically tell yourself this isn’t helpful or healthy when anger is making you feel so good. It brings up all the ways you’re right and they’re wrong. It centers you as the main character and boosts that ego. It justifies every little thing you’ve done, making you feel indestructible.

But it is consuming and it is negative.

This week I had someone push all my buttons. They undermined me. They accused me. They expressed doubt in my abilities. I mean, the fuel for my anger was abundant.

And I stayed mad, for days. It was the only thing my brain would return to. I thought up replies that varied from articulate and brutal to petty and mean. I imagined them saying or doing even more to hurt me.

But then I did what I always end up doing. I met up with them to talk it through.

And that’s because the only way I get my Feeling Brain to shut up and sit down is by listening to the other person. Due to my psychology education, listening to people with an objective, active mind that is fully empathetic to what they’re saying comes as second nature to me. I’ve trained my mind to be fully present with the person in front of me and put my own thoughts and emotions aside when I listen. I knew it was the only way to get the anger in me to stop so I could move on.

So I listened to them. I heard their concerns, their thought processes, and their intentions. I also heard their own hurt, their fears, and their emotions. And it changed the whole situation. No longer was I a victim to cruel intentions, but rather just a person affected by someone else’s big messy life. And I could understand and relate to that.

But the worst part came afterwards. When we had walked away from each other, I had to sit with how that past anger looked in light of the new information. And man, did it make me feel bad. I felt ashamed of every angry thought, every self-justification and ego boost I had given myself.

And I learned from that. Anger is one of the most seductive emotions, but it never ends well. Either you’ll be like me, and have to face those thoughts soberly and realise how messed up it was. Or you’ll never hear the other side, never reconcile the anger and have to live with that toxic mindset until you can face it and heal from it.

In psychology, anger is understood as an extremely complex emotion, all tangled up with past experiences, identity, and beliefs. And that makes it a very difficult emotion to release, since it’s all tied up in your psyche. My suggestion would be to actively challenge it. Start looking for beliefs, aspects of your identity, and experiences that contradict what anger is telling you. Just as the experience of anger is tied up in your mind, working on those aspects of your mind can help you release the anger. I faced the person, but that isn’t always an option. So find what you need and pursue that. Don’t let anger brew in you any longer.

If you relate to this and want help unpacking anger and how to move forward from it, remember that I’m only a button away. Feel free to reach out and book a session with me to see how we can work together to analyse the anger in your life in order to untangle and remove it, releasing you to be a better, free person.