If you're tired of being angry, if you truly want relief, I'll tell you what works for me to deal with anger. I used to get so angry as a kid that I would bang my head on the floor and try to smash my head open. I remember that as young as being two or three years old. My parents used to have to physically restrain me so I wouldn't hurt myself. Anger was a big challenge, a big problem, a consistent emotion for me for most of my adult life, until the last few years where I've learned to handle anger in several different ways, in a process that's actually productive, that allows the anger to be used and to fuel my life.
Emotions are okay and they pass
The number one thing with anger is to understand that emotions are okay. They have their time and place, and it's a passing emotion.
The number one thing you need to stop doing if you don't want to be angry is stop attaching emotions and stories. Stop taking the emotion and tying it into a story, because that's where you're losing power over yourself and your surroundings, and where you're also fueling future anger.
For example, if you just feel anger: my kids are seven and five, and they often just feel an emotion really strongly for a minute and then they move on. They feel it, they get it out there, they express it, and then they move on. What we've done as adults, lots of times, is we feel the emotion and then we try to suppress it. We try not to feel it, we pray for it to go away, we try to ignore it, or we put a story around it. So basically, we resist the anger.
What works for me is to let the emotions pass through me and acknowledge it and say, "Yes, I'm angry right now, but I'm angry for no reason." And that is where the real power comes in. I'm angry for no reason. I'm just feeling the feeling of anger right now. That allows me to be powerful, and to let the anger, the emotion, flow through and then move on.
I'm never upset for the reason I think I am
Another thought process that can work with that is one I learned in A Course in Miracles, that's called, "I'm never upset for the reason I think I am." I was feeling angry today, and I was making the mistake of putting a story with it. I was making the mistake of tying something that happened in my life, something my wife did that I didn't like, sticking the story of that with my feeling.
I felt anger when my wife did something I didn't like in the bedroom last night, and anger came up, and then the story came with it. Today, when I woke up, the story was there, and then the anger came up. What I did is I severed the anger and the story. I just am experiencing anger. There's no story. There's no reason. I'm not upset for the reason I think I am.
If you continue to experience anger over and over again, there are a few different ways it can be productive, but the secret is that you're not upset for the reason you think you are. There are a few different reasons you can really be upset. One is you're just experiencing being human and emotions. All emotions are desirable. They're part of the human experience. It's just like all colors of the rainbow are desirable. Would you tell me that you want to remove red from the rainbow because you don't like it, because you don't think it should be there? How would the rainbow look without red? Anger is an emotion that's part of the human experience. If you're feeling anger, it just might be a normal part of being human.
Where you get screwed is the story
Where you get screwed is when you start to take that emotion and wrap a story around it. I'm angry because this person did this, this person said that. I felt a surge of anger in traffic this morning as a person drove close to my bumper, then passed me, then pulled right in front of me at a stoplight. My mind's like, "You effing moron, I should rear-end you." But I don't believe that, and I don't hold on to it. That person's driving was impersonal. They don't know me, they don't care about me, they're just driving how they drive. They're not driving in any personal way toward me.
Another thing that helps with anger is to see that the things that happen aren't personal. People's driving is just how they drive. They don't know you, they don't care about you, their driving has nothing to do with you. At a certain level of growth and maturity, you realize that, and you don't take it personally, and you don't let those thoughts run you. I had the thought to put my finger out the window and flip this person off, and I laughed at it. I'm like, well, I'd be an idiot then if I did that. I realized that the anger I felt had nothing to do with that other person's driving. It had to do with an emotion I internally was experiencing, and any other set of circumstances would have served to produce anger. I could have gotten angry the light changed. I could have gotten angry about the bill at the post office.
Once you see that you're experiencing emotions, and external reality really has very little to do with those emotions, that's where you get powerful. Then you see, I'm not upset for the reason I think I am. I'm upset because I'm just being human, because I don't even remember who I am. I don't remember that I'm a mortal soul, that I'm source energy having a human experience by choice, and I wanted to have all the emotions and feelings. That's why they're here. That's why they're possible. This is what helps me to deal with anger, as I consciously separate my mind's tendency to put a story with the feeling. This is the same inner work I keep coming back to across my Life playlist, and it's a lot like how, in another moment, my mind went to fear but I chose faith instead of letting the story take over.
Release the anger through the body
I also do physical practices. Yoga helps me physically release anger from the body. While mental processes can stop you from doing something dumb, like sticking your middle finger out the window at another car, if I'm angry, often that energy needs to be released through the physical body. Yoga, exercise, massage, sex, and many other physical practices can help. Meditation, walking, light exercise, all these things can help release the physical energy of anger.
Another thought I have with anger is that I'm thankful I've got enough energy to be angry. I hate when I don't have enough energy to be angry, and being angry is proof that I'm full of energy. I love being full of energy. I love having enough energy to show up in the studio and make videos, to go do yoga in the morning, to handle all the stuff that comes through my day, and then just rest at night, sit on the couch, watch some videos, and learn how to make music after I've eaten lunch while my food digests. I love that most of the 15 hours a day I'm awake, I'm not angry. I've got a lot of energy, and when I'm angry, I get grateful. I'm like, thank you, body, for having enough energy to get upset, enough energy to get in a fight right now. I love having that much energy. My anger is proof that my body is working properly, because when you're sick and you feel bad, you can hardly have enough energy to even get angry. I'm glad today to be able to handle anger, because this has been a tough emotion for me over the course of my life.
Handling my anger helps everyone around me
I love it when the people around me can handle their anger in an acceptable way, because the better I handle my anger, the better I'm able to understand other people's actions. I wouldn't be surprised if that other driver today was angry themselves. Once you realize that, you'll often see you attract people in similar emotional states to the one you're in. If you're angry, you're likely to attract another angry person to you, and that's what motivates me to want to just experience the emotion and release it. Learning to do that consistently is its own kind of practice, much like the long-term emotional sobriety I work on every day.
If you're stuck in anger, I guarantee you you're playing a story, and you're doing a feedback loop where the story triggers the emotion of anger, and the emotion of anger triggers the story, and it goes back and forth. You can break that cycle in your mind with your thinking alone, and then you can help the emotion and the body relax through physical practices. This is a very valuable skill that every kid should be taught in school, and that's why I'm sharing this today, because I've seen the results of me being angry and breaking things, destroying things, hurting myself, hurting others. I love today the feeling that I'm empowered, that I'm in control, that I can safely experience my emotions without causing destruction to other people.
It's okay to have emotions, too. Sometimes I get angry and other people around me can sense and feel my anger, and they take it personally. I've helped other people, like my wife, to learn that if I'm angry, it's not her fault. If I'm angry, it's not my kids' fault. It's no one's fault that I'm upset. I'm not upset for the reason I think I am. There's no reason, truly, that I'm upset, except that I'm having the human experience. If this is the kind of honest, day-to-day inner work you want more of, I share it openly inside the Jerry Banfield Family, where we talk through exactly this stuff together.