“What to do when we feel angry” is a question that many people have. The central uncertainty of anger often seems to be whether to express it outwardly or not. If we keep the emotion bottled up inside, the reasoning goes, it will eat away at us, and also other people will get away with walking all over us. But if we let our frustration out and “blow up”, that might start a rupturing fight, and in the end people might find us difficult and demanding, and pull away.
Many people who approach meditation practice hope or imagine that doing so may help them with this dilemma. And, indeed, thankfully, it can.
When we are mindful of the experience of our anger, we notice and fully feel the places in our body where the emotion is happening. Doing this often allows us to relax and self-soothe our body’s adrenalized activation, and to not be overwhelmed by it in a way that compulsively drives us to explosive speech, addictive coping, and other such actions that we may later regret.
Being angry and triggered is also notoriously a time when we can “see red” and lose awareness of words and concepts. Remaining mindful can help us to slow the moment down, and remain more aware of and realistic about what we are thinking, what we are planning to say before we say it, and what the other person is actually saying.
Much anger comes from fear and insecurity; when we feel self-critical and uncertain of our own worthiness, we are more likely to feel slighted by others. A large part of mindfulness practice however is developing a patient, friendly, and warm-hearted relationship with ourselves. The more we cultivate this, the more ease we often have with others’ rough edges and insensitivities.
In the end, when we practice meditatively with anger, if we don’t express it externally, we are still left with more of a feeling of dignity and a relaxed comfortable spacious bodily feeling. Conversely, if we do express our anger, we usually do so in a more precise, intentional, and constructive way. So, in the end, for meditators, the central question of anger is not whether to externally express it or not, but to what degree we are including this challenging experience as a part of our mindfulness practice.