How to Use Anger Skillfully and Find Freedom from Rage

“She’d worked so hard to turn her boiling grudge against Leland down to a low-simmering ache. It was best put by what she’d heard someone in AA say a few years back: Resentment is like drinking a poison and then waiting for the other person to die.”

--Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking

Some of us are comfortable with feeling and expressing anger. I’m not one of them. In my family of origin, only one of us was allowed to be angry and that anger was scary to be around. One time when I was a teen I responded with anger and was met with an even bigger explosion than usual.

It’s been a long journey for me to recognize my own anger. It took me getting really, really angry for me to begin to deal with it. Because knowing I was experiencing anger was not part of my emotional vocabulary, I’ve had to learn about it from the ground up.

For millennia women have been socialized to believe that their anger is bad and wrong, an unfeminine expression. We learned to subvert our anger. This is why we get labeled “bitchy”. Bitchy is often held-back anger. It’s a sniper way of exhibiting anger. We pop out with a barbed comment and then duck for cover rather than stating how we feel.

We often channel our anger towards ourselves, feeling guilty, over responsible, apologetic. This suppression can lead to depression, self-medication, nervous systems in chronic states of fight, flight or freeze.

How to Use Anger Skillfully

For many of us, owning our anger is a four-step process. Here are some things I’ve learned in my own personal Remedial Anger Course.

1.Cognitive. 

One overly simple but very useful way of recognizing feelings is to reduce them to four. The great thing is they are easy to remember because three of them rhyme: Mad, sad, glad and scared. There’s also shame and guilt but that’s the advanced course.

There are no good or bad feelings, just more comfortable and less comfortable feelings.

Feelings are transient. They come. And they go.

Anger has important functions. It both tells us that something is wrong and it gives us the energy to do something about it. 

Each of the feelings is on a spectrum from very subtle to screamingly blatant. With anger, it can range from being a teensy bit upset to homicidal rage.

2. Ownership.

Feeling entitled to your feelings, whatever they are.

3. Recognition.

Becoming aware that you are feeling angry. Often what you will first notice is the physical symptoms which differ from person to person but are frequently a sensation of heat in the head and chest.

4. Expression.

Being angry doesn’t mean we will strike out at others. It just means that we’re having a feeling. We don’t want to either act it out on others, or ourselves, or suppress it.

Anger vs. Rage

There’s anger, which we can work with skillfully, and there’s chronic anger which keeps us in a constant state of fight, flight and freeze, an adrenalized condition that takes a toll on our psyche and body. 

Then there’s rage which is a toxic cocktail of two emotions, anger and fear. It’s an emotional conflagration and it can quickly and uncontrollably escalate.  

Years ago during my terrible divorce, my overriding emotion was fear, but I was also fueled by anger which gave me the push to do what was necessary to protect myself.

When it was finally over, every month or so I would get swept up for days in a rage spiral, flooded with feelings so intense I felt poisoned by them. At the time I would have been happy if it was hurting him, but it wasn’t. And it felt like it was killing me.

Miserable and desperate to be free of it, I remembered a practice from recovery communities which is to pray for the person you’re angry at. I was willing to do anything, even think good thoughts about him.

At first, I was very specific about my good wishes for him, naming exactly how I supposedly wanted him to be happy. May you and your girlfriend be happy together . . . GRRR! May you have a sweet home . . .GRRR!

I knew it wasn’t working because I didn’t feel one bit better. It occurred to me that wishing him well through gritted teeth wasn’t wishing him well at all.

So I switched to calling up gratitude for the specifics of my life, for the many blessings I enjoyed. Great relationships with my partner and children; supportive, loving friends; a sweet home; meaningful work; good health.

Then I would casually, in the lightest and most off-hand manner, wish him the same.

I’m grateful for my relationship . . . and I wish the same for you.

I’m grateful for my relationships with my children . . . and I wish the same for you.

This was so much more do-able, coming from the fullness of my grateful heart, and over time, my anger eased.

And it felt something like freedom.