How to Overcome Destructive
Anger
Anger can make us feel out of control. …….. three tips for taming our temper.
Warriors basketball player Draymond Green has
a reputation for being a “hothead.” In June, he was suspended after Game 5 of
the championship series for flagrant fouls, which may have contributed to the
Warriors losing the title. Recently, he made headlines after being arrested for
slapping a fan at a bar, an infraction that could incur fines or jail time.
It’s impossible to know what prompted Green
to lash out in these situations without getting inside his head. But, if he’s
like the many hundreds of people I’ve worked with over my 40 years as an anger
management specialist, it’s likely he feels out of control around his anger,
and may not even understand its root causes.
Like all emotions, anger serves a purpose,
typically alerting us that we are suffering from some form of distress. This is
important, because although anger can be uncomfortable mentally and physically,
it can also motivate us to address our underlying needs, desires, or perceived
threats. It’s unprocessed anger that can lead to conflict,
social isolation, problems at work, substance abuse, depression, shame, and
even incarceration.
In my new book, Overcoming
Destructive Anger: Strategies That Work, I
outline what I’ve learned about the nature of anger—what triggers it, how it
affects our bodies and our minds, and what we can do to manage it effectively.
Luckily, there are ways to maintain a healthy dose of anger without letting it
rule you—whether you’re an average person trying to manage the stresses of
everyday life or a star basketball player.
The
anatomy of anger
Not everyone processes anger by punching
someone or being aggressive. Some people express anger passive-aggressively or
direct their anger toward themselves; others deny their anger, or become silent
and withdrawn. None of these are healthy reactions. But because many of us are
predisposed toward anger—either because of our biology, how we were treated by
others in the past, or what we observed from family members, partners, friends,
or even the media—we may not have learned other ways to cope.
Anger usually begins with a triggering event
that challenges your internal harmony and well-being. It may or may not be
related to another person’s behavior—it could also be due to circumstances,
such as a sudden illness. A trigger may involve a single negative event or a
series of events that combine to affect your mood. Or a trigger can even be
imaginary, based on something you anticipate happening in the
future.
Whatever the trigger, how you respond to it
is the result of a series of expectations you have about how
people should behave or about how life should play out, some of which may be
quite unrealistic. For example, you may feel that your friends should always be
available to help when you need them, or that you should never have to feel the
effects of aging. If you have these expectations, then experiencing the
unavailability of a friend or arthritic pain in your joints may trigger you to
respond in anger.
Anger can also result from how you choose
to appraise a triggering event. You may think the event has a
deeper, more general meaning, such as when your spouse comes home late from
work because of a traffic jam and you interpret it as uncaring or
disrespectful. Being more aware of your thought processes here can help you
avoid getting lost in stories of what your spouse’s behavior might mean.
Usually, anger is a reaction to other
uncomfortable feelings below the surface, such as hurt, disappointment,
sadness, anxiety, embarrassment, or shame. Even if these uncomfortable emotions
are not acknowledged in the moment, they may still be there.
Sadly, too many people tend to want to flee
these feelings before they fully understand them—and that’s where mindfulness
comes in.
Three
skills for managing anger
To manage anger in a healthier way—and to
prevent it from turning destructive—involves self-reflection, using skills from
three broad areas of understanding and practice: mindfulness and mindfulness
meditation, self-compassion, and self-awareness.
How can these help? Mindfulness and
mindfulness meditation help you examine your own experiences without reacting
to them or becoming overwhelmed. Practicing mindfulness and meditation can help
teach you that your thoughts, feelings, and physical reactions are only
temporary rather than a fixed part of who you are. This gives you increased
freedom to choose how to react to them.
For example, through mindfulness—acceptance
of your moment-to-moment experience—you may be able to say to yourself in a
moment of anger, “This is a feeling I’m experiencing right now,” creating the
sense that you are the observer and in control. This awareness allows you to
ponder the choices available to you in responding to anger. It can also help
you to be more accepting of your thoughts and feelings, so that you don’t have
to push them away.
Support for this comes from studies showing an association between mindfulness and the
ability to differentiate between different emotions—an ability that, in turn,
helps you better regulate negative emotions. In a 2011 review of mindfulness research, authors Daphne Davis and
Jeffrey Hayes of Pennsylvania State University found that mindfulness “predicts
relationship satisfaction, ability to respond constructively to relationship
stress, skill in identifying and communicating emotions to one’s partner,
amount of relationship conflict, negativity, and empathy.” In addition, “people
with higher trait mindfulness reported less emotional stress in response to
relationship conflict and entered conflict discussion with less anger and
anxiety.”
Once you are mindfully aware of your
experiences, self-compassion involves being sensitive to your own suffering and
accepting yourself without judgment, as well as seeing yourself as deserving of
nurturing and care. It embodies neither self-pity nor self-indulgence, but
rather a healthy affirmation of oneself. Practicing self-compassion allows you
to recognize anger as a signal of underlying pain that must be addressed.
Furthermore, it can help you to judge your emotions less harshly, another way
to mitigate anger.
Research by self-compassion scholars, such
as Kristen Neff, has shown that self-compassion increases emotional
resilience and stability, and decreases negative self-evaluations,
defensiveness, and the need to see oneself as better than others. In a series of
studies on self-compassion, researchers found
that “people high in self-compassion appear to cognize about negative events in
ways that reduce their impact” and that “self-compassionate participants had
more self-relevant thoughts that reflected self-kindness, common humanity, and
mindful acceptance” than those who were low in self-compassion. All of this
bodes well for decreasing anger.
When practiced together, mindfulness and
self-compassion skills “reduce reactivity, strengthen autonomy, promote
emotional sensitivity, enhance understanding of historical sources of our
hurts, and provide guidelines for safe, effective communication,” says Harvey
Aronson, author of Buddhist
Practice on Western Ground.
There are other self-awareness skills that
can help us look deeply into each experience and further our capacity for
healthy anger. For example, I often ask my clients to fill out an anger log
(after they’ve calmed down) to get them in touch with the types of situations
that trigger anger for them and the feelings and thoughts that precede and
follow a triggering event. The anger log can make you more skillful at altering
the course of anger progression by giving you information about where you get
stuck.
By reviewing your thoughts and being open to
new ways of thinking, as well as understanding your personal histories and
emotions, you can learn how to be more compassionate for yourself and others.
A
healthier kind of anger
Of course, one of the challenges to reducing
unhealthy anger is that sometimes anger feels positive in the moment you
experience it. Anger can give you a cortisol rush that makes you feel alive and
energized. It can also help you avoid taking responsibility for your own
decisions, since anger is a way of blaming others for your suffering. Plus,
anger can temporarily give you what you want: It can distract you from pain and
threatening feelings, while making others feel anxious or
threatened, thus allowing you to gain the upper hand. No doubt Green is privy
to these positive impacts.
But regularly directing anger at someone is
likely to make him or her less supportive of you in the long run and possibly
withdraw, leaving you more isolated and vulnerable. Feeling and expressing
anger frequently is a drain on your body and health—not to mention your work life and relationships.
If we make a commitment to ourselves to aim
for healthier expressions of anger, we do a great service to ourselves and to
others. Mindfulness, self-compassion, and self-awareness can lead us toward
greater compassion for those around us, and to more authentic, happy
relationships. It may take some discipline to look at anger this deeply, and
there may be setbacks along the way. But, in the end, understanding and
managing anger will lead to a more fulfilling and authentic life.
It may even save your basketball career.
By Bernard Golden |
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_overcome_destructive_anger?utm_source=Group+B+GG+Newsletter+August+3%2C+2016&utm_campaign=Group+B+GG+Newsletter+July+20+2016+&utm_medium=email
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