Road rage is
common today in densely populated traffic zones. Humans transport raw
emotion onto the street. Imagine getting to work from an argument at home to a
critique from a boss or client! Emails may record LOUD words and emphatic adjectives.
Not empathetic ones!
Recognize ‘firing
from a bravery of being out of range’ or from someone else’s shoulder?
Or a direct head-on collision face to face with someone? Rarely do we get an
outcome to our liking from our anger, like seeking the attention of someone. At
other times, someone shouts back at us, worsening our chance of getting a
desired outcome. In the heat of the moment, we do not realise what we miss
(including feedback we may not get from others), as we are in the grip of the
emotion.
From arrogance to
sheer stupidity, this basic emotion may be perceived in a myriad tone by those
who witness our anger. Several means of dealing with it have come through the
ages. “Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the
host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.” ― said
the giant Maya Angelou . Mario Puzo of Godfather fame said “Never get angry.
Never make a threat. Reason with people”. Remember Mitch Albom and his
Tuesdays with Morrie? “Learn this from
me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is
a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade.
And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.” ― Mitch
wrote in his book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
So what is anger?
I lean upon the man with the Mind with the Heart, Richard McHugh, to state
anger as below.
Anger is an assertion to get what one wants because
one feels one does not yet have what one is in need of.
Anger is the mirror
image of sadness. Mirror Image of the grief emotion? Yes - In
sadness, we resign to the outcome of loss. In anger, we rise in
assertion of what we do not yet have! Mirror images in emotional terms. In
other words, we can afford to laugh at our folly of wanting to possess
something that eventually possesses us! However, it is important to live
our emotions fully. Curbing the flow of emotions is not a healthy attitude. Awareness
allows us to direct the flow of this energy.
To be in touch
with anger is actually being in touch with a real and inseparable part of
ourselves. Denying this emotion is a repression of the underlying desire
- a distortion of self-awareness. Contrary to popular understanding,
anger is not a separator emotion, unless we deem it so. Often, we end up
communicating in inept ways. Bias cuts us off from people we are angry
with. E.g. when jealous, anger is ill managed and instead
of strengthening the relationship – we tend to avoid making contact with the
one we are jealous of. Anger connects,
if we make the connect in direct forthrightness and diplomacy. Masterful
response comes from creative use of our inner resources. Self-directed
anger bereft of self-acceptance is a hopeless self-criticism. When we connect
with ourselves, we can direct our energy towards others effectively. Consider some
important dimensions in the expression of anger, as below.
1.
To be
angry in conduct is to be vulnerable. We are willing to be seen for our
bare emotions and inner desires as these signals travel unconsciously to others
without our knowing.
2.
In
anger, we do not give up our readiness to listen, to change or to
admit one’s mistakes. We are willing to stay with our emotion and deepen
our relationship till our ideas see or realise something different from our
start point. Anger has the potential to transform us.
3.
The contact
element in anger is to eventually get closer to the person we direct our
energy towards. For this to happen we need to be ready to stay with the
evolving emotion and the unfolding interaction till we deepen the
relationship with the other person. Often the emotional release found is in giving
up resentment against someone, in forgiveness. Forgiving oneself is
a rarer and clearer instance of self-acceptance. We often mistake guilt of a
past decision as a clue to self-criticism. Engulfing ourselves with guilt of
the past in the present moment, is to confuse the tense of the stimulus.
4.
Anger
is not about being ‘right’ – it is about being honest about ourselves
without being disrespectful of others. This is the point of competence
in the expression of our anger. Anger expression is a decision moment.
The decision is to assert your want without disrespecting the other. Remembering
the learning from our past decisions is to remind us of our imperfect nature.
Hence recalling the past decision for the mistake made, reduces the emotional
impact in the present. Yes, you are inferring pertinently, if you now realise,
that as humans it is our nature to choose. We decide actions. Guilt is the
product of choosing. Dissociating ourselves from the choosing and associating
ourselves in the learning helps improve our upcoming choices. How would you
decide on this next?
5.
The
goal of anger is not to prove a position, but to serve the inner need in
us. Consider the following examples of inner needs and corresponding behavior
examples. Tap into your calm unconscious for a dynamic understanding of your
needs. If there are associated fears, remember, that these are merely reminders
and not your destiny per se.
Getting to an
embodied understanding of one’s need is a pre-verbal coding which one can get
awareness of within our bodies. Judith Delozier
and Robert Dilts often are quoted to state that this is
what the body’s somatic mind encodes, most of which is below the neck. They
speak to a somatic syntax, or a grammar of the body that stores what in NLP was
known as the kinaesthetic energy. Alistair Prentice
for example talks about body movements, much in the same tradition. For further
in the embodiment arts and sciences, it is useful to visit the Embodiment
Conference site. For those with little patience, a mindful
guided meditation on the body is useful. Jon Kabat-Zinn
is recognized as a masterful practitioner and scientist in what we now call
embodiment.
|
Inner Need
|
Common Corresponding Behavior
|
Potential Fear
|
|
Need
for recognition
|
Be
the center of attention, take the limelight
|
Anticipation
of being rejected
|
|
Need
for safety
|
Fit
in with norms of a group or society, seek rule-books, instruction manuals, or
step-by-step guides
|
Fear
of losing a body part, or a fear of roaches, reptiles or creepy things like
insects
|
|
Need
to influence others
|
Be
the first to initiate interaction, leave no meeting without stating one’s
opinion. Have the last word in a conversation
|
Fear
of Shame, humiliation
|
|
Need
to be supportive of others
|
The
readiness to align with aspirations of others. Take up a second position to a
competent master / boss.
|
Loss
of connectedness, of being a ‘nobody’
|
Respect your
needs. Love yourself. The strength of the unmet need will determine how much of
the anger emotion will persist. Do not resist the feeling. Remember, the
more you resist, the more it will persist. Our role is not to
insist but to persist with the inner search till we get what we want. Meaning
is built in conscious engagement with inner needs. Imagine the unconscious
neglect of these needs. Quick-fix solutions assume that human experience is
limited in dimensions or inner resources. Acceptance of self in awareness is a
great start to accepting anger as a part of ourselves.
Not trying to
express is repressing our energy and allowing our bodies to take the hit – in
vein, artery, unprocessed fat or spasm. Eating an extra cookie or gulping
beverage does not serve our inner emotional needs. “Anger
is like flowing water; there's nothing wrong with it as long as you let it
flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom
to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to
forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous,
deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper
boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to feel anger, allow your waters to flow, along
with all the paper boats of forgiveness. Be human.” By
C. JoyBell C.
When we hear the sentence “Mr Pinto lived a short distance
from his body” what do we get in touch with inside of ourselves? Indeed, we are
alerted to parts of our body as in a quick head to toe scan, of where we may be
least attentive to. That’s when we unconsciously take to default or automatic
behaviours without exercising our own discretion.
Addictions like emotional eating could be a marker for
unresolved anger or misdirected assertions. We can be addicted to substances
like chocolate, tobacco, alcohol or even relationships with people and pets.
Obsessing over either form of addiction is a sign that we have turned our power
over outwards – outside of us.
Try
a simple exercise to get in touch with what really needs attention. Imagine
that part of you that struggles with the conflict inside that cognitively
acknowledges the excess chocolate and sugar adds to belly or visceral fat.
Emotionally though you eat regardless of the registered warning in your head.
Take a chair and place it facing your own a short distance from your own seat.
So you are seated feet feeling the floor temperature and you are looking at an
empty chair opposite you. That’s your conflicted weight gaining, addictive self
– out there. Here on your chair as on the left side of the table below you are
in touch with your more embodied self – aware of your resources and creativity
– to set aside impulses. Check the table below when you get to the other side
and get talking to your embodied self, from the less conscious and sugar
consuming chair.
|
Fully Resourced Embodied Self
|
Conflicted and Addictive Self
|
|
I see you struggle with your habit for
sweet. How can I help you?
|
Thanks for noticing. I don’t know how, but
I end up lowering my resistance. I gobble sweet. I like it.
|
|
So, what may I do to help you know how you
end up gobbling, before you actually gobble?
|
Never thought that way. You’re making me
pause here. It is not something I am used to. Please wait…
|
|
I am waiting. Let me know when you get a
picture of yourself as just before you are tempted.
|
Yes, that was helpful. I see myself saying,
“What the hell? Nobody’s watching. I can eat this one”.
|
|
So, when you say “Nobody is watching”, who
exactly is nobody?
|
I mean my wife, my brother, my doctor, my
colleagues, nobody.
|
|
So, you have regards for your wife,
brother, doctor colleagues et al. That’s nice. What makes them nobody
in front of sweet?
|
That’s a powerful question. I am thinking.
… pause…. I guess, I am reducing
their hold on me, and reducing them to nobody. This is not a comforting
feeling. I need help.
|
|
So, what becomes of their relationship to
you when you see sweet such as chocolate? You like these people otherwise,
don’t you?
|
Yes, they have a lot to be liked about.
But, they seem to control me, when it comes to sweet. So I eat the chocolate
as an escape from their hold on me.
|
|
What about you may be likeable, if you tell
them you have eaten chocolate without them seeing?
|
They would see me. They accept me for who I
am. They will see me telling the truth.
|
|
So, what may make it more natural
disclosing your truth to them?
|
Telling my innermost desires, rather than
burying my truth inside me in their presence
|
|
That’s interesting. Would you still gobble
chocolates after being able to tell them your inner most desires?
|
No gobbling, but only occasionally eating
them. I may not crave for sweet then.
|
|
What may you like about yourself when you
tell the truth to your near ones?
|
I get closer to your inner core, by being
authentic and spontaneous. Like a new raw courage, without upsetting them.
|
The above is a sample
illustration of the inner dialogue between the conflicted self and the Ideal
self. You may use the Empty Chair technique to speak and embody your addictive
nature till you get to a deeper structure of the issue. Even relationships can
be addictive. Respect yourself, and confront your undesired self on the Empty
Chair.
