Unmasking Anger

Many people believe that anger is "unspiritual," a damaging misconception that often causes us to stuff it inside. Spiritual traditions such as yoga and Buddhism can teach us how to react skillfully to anger without repressing it.

By Alan Reder

In a post-September 11 world, one point seems undeniable: The most harmful force known to humanity is not high-tech weaponry but raw anger. Anger is lightning in a bottle, and the bottle is us. If we fan anger's embers inside us, the heat can consume our love, rationality, and emotional and physical health. If we direct the heat at others, it scorches everything in its path—friendships, work relationships, marriages, and families. At its worst, anger even maims and kills. Rwanda, Northern Ireland, the Middle East—beneath the issues in each case lies anger burning out of control.

We know that we're saner and healthier when anger isn't igniting our thoughts and actions. But anger can't be wished away; sometimes it flares up inside us as spontaneously as hiccups. Other times, we feel justifiably provoked—by a lover who betrays us, a work partner who lets us down, injustice in society. So the real question is: How can we deal constructively with this potentially destructive emotion?

For thousands of years, spiritual traditions such as yoga and Buddhism have offered detailed anti-anger prescriptions because anger undermines their main goal: attaining happiness and freedom. More recently, psychologists and medical researchers have studied anger to help prevent the damage it causes to both the perpetrator and the target. This accumulated knowledge makes clear that anger can indeed be tamed, because despite its destructive power, anger barely has a toehold in reality.

Under Cover
Anger comes in several forms, including outrage, frustration, jealousy, resentment, fury, and hatred. It also masquerades as judgment, criticism, and even boredom. Like all emotions, it is a complex, ever-shifting state involving thoughts, feelings, and bodily changes.

The physiological effects, which include a two-stage jolt from the class of neurotransmitters called catecholamines (e.g., adrenaline), do for anger what gasoline does for fire. The first surge lasts just minutes but energizes the body for immediate action—either fight or flight depending on how we suss out the situation. Our fight-or-flight response is usually biochemical overkill, a holdover from the days when the main threats to our daily equanimity were sabertooth tigers, not telemarketers calling at dinnertime. This may explain why we sometimes act all out of proportion to whatever provoked our anger. The second surge of catecholamines lasts longer, from hours to days. It puts us in an extended state of arousal and may account for why, when we're already having a bad day, we'll strike out at anything that moves—our kids, our spouse, the dog—for behavior that normally wouldn't bug us. It also underlies the seductive, sometimes enthralling power of anger—high on catecholamines, we feel strong, clear, and purposeful, dark though that purpose may be.

Beyond this, anger is tough to categorize because first, different people respond differently to it, and second, researchers don't agree where it fits on the emotional spectrum. All emotions have variations and some emotions include blends of others. For instance, jealousy combines anger, sadness, and fear. So, is anger a primary emotion from which other emotions spring or a secondary effect of more basic feelings? While the research community continues to argue about anger's qualities, however, many who counsel angry people believe that not just jealousy but all anger conceals more fundamental human responses. Sylvia Boorstein, the noted mindfulness teacher and licensed psychotherapist, says, "When I work with angry clients in a psychotherapeutic venue, I ask them: 'What frightened you and what saddened you?' These feelings aren't mutually exclusive."

Page 1 2 3 4 5 6

See All Philosophy Articles »