Deflating Your Anger
Anger is the emotion we feel when we have a blocked goal. “WHAT?” I hear you say, “No, I get angry when I perceive injustice, or when someone says something about me that isn’t true.” Right. You have a goal of living in a just society or for everyone around you to have a positive opinion of you. When someone else does something that you perceive as blocking or preventing one of those goals from being true, your body responds with the feeling of anger. Some people really don’t like the word “anger.” It sometimes gets falsely associated with violence or lack of control. Anger is neither of those things, nor does it cause those things. Anger is just a human emotion with no means of affecting the outside world beyond the confines of mind of the person feeling it. The reason people associate anger with violence or “losing your temper” is because some people (many people) use the fact that they feel anger as an excuse to act out and do thing that they know are wrong. This is just blaming people’s choices on their emotions, which suggests that they have no agency in their own actions. That’s just wrong.
And as a result, many people when I ask them if they’re angry or mad about something, I often get “No, I’m not angry” (even though they obviously are), “I’m just frustrated” or “annoyed” or “irritated.” This is nonsense, because each of these words are all variations of the “anger” emotion, just with a magnitude connotation. “Frustrated”, “annoyed” and “irritated” all just means “a little angry.” And the only reason they are saying they’re not angry is because they think admitting anger means they are not a good person. Anger is just a human emotion. It is never wrong to feel. (though it can be in response to a misunderstood reality)
However, all that said, Anger is still not a particularly pleasant emotion. It feels all hot and fast and makes it harder to think clearly (an adrenal response, which biologically speaking, does inhibit cognitive thought to an extent). So it’s completely natural that you might want to not be angry anymore. If that is the case, you are in luck, because Anger is one of the easiest of human emotions to manage. And it is all in understanding the trigger.
To be precise, Anger occurs when we perceive that a goal of ours is being blocked by someone other than ourselves. The more important the goal, the more intense the anger. And the more thoroughly the goal is blocked, the more intense the anger. If someone blocks your goal, but it’s easy enough to work around, that’s irritating. If someone sits in the seats you wanted at the movie theater, that might barely register, but for just a second, there’s a bit of annoyance. On the other hand, if your best friend steals your girlfriend just when you were about to propose, that fully blocks two huge goals: a life with the woman you love and the desire to be able to trust your best friend. You’re going to be HOT.
So then, how do we make ourselves not be angry anymore? Remove the block, or remove the goal. By definition, those are your only two options. By “remove the block” I mean, find away around, over or through the obstacle that’s been presented. If you do, the anger will slowly deteriorate. This is always the preferred method to deflate anger since it means we still get to have what we really want, even if we have to go about it a different way. However, sometimes, there is just no way to remove the block. Sometimes we just don’t have the necessary influence on the situation. Sometimes it’s because our goal is out-of-Garden, so we have zero control over it. That is a good time to remove the goal instead. Give it up. Understand and accept that you never had the right to that outcome. You can still want that outcome. Wanting a blocked outcome does not generate anger. It only generates disappointment (“I’m not mad, I’m disappointed” Remember that one?). But when something is a goal it means that we are investing ourselves in trying to make that be true. When that outcome is something that is in someone else’s Garden, that’s a bad thing to be investing ourselves in.
If there is any difficulty in getting rid of anger, it lies in sometimes not knowing which one to choose: try to remove the block or remove the goal? That is obviously going to be situationally determined. But once you understand the working pieces, it makes it much more of an intellectual exercise to choose which one you want to do.