Question: How do I resolve anger?
What is anger?
Anger serves a purpose to release deeper issues, problems and internal conflict. It’s a pressure release valve. Since from the body’s perspective: it’s better to release anger than to turn it around to destroy oneself.
However, anger is not very efficient and it’s the last step/tool in a person’s automatic release options. Suppressing anger is self destructive, as the negative energy redirects directly into your body. Anger is a path of destruction. Anger’s purpose is to destroy problems.
How does one heal anger? The true key is awareness of one’s inner self. Understand the root of anger is about releasing problems. It’s better to release problems in other more efficient and less damaging manners. So dealing with anger means to develop positive habits to release internal conflict before it reaches the anger state.
I had a teacher who taught me all about anger. My father was a wonderful soul, yet his one weakness was anger. He let anger control and destroy his life. He showed me time and time again, to release in anger, would always result in negative feedback from the rest of the world: which in turn would cause him more harm.
The lesson was very clear:
The world always reflects your actions. If you lash out in anger, then the world lashes back at you with that same anger causing pain/grief that still has to get resolved.
Once you have anger, there is no true “release” except resolution.
Lashing out in anger is an inefficient attempt to resolve or make a problem go away.
The key: Resolution
To lash out in anger is to still lash out at yourself, creating problems to still require healing.
So if you have anger
- Don’t hold it in.
- Don’t release it as pain.
- Release it as acceptance.
Now acceptance has many levels, since as you practice acceptance, you can release the anger long before it even boils up to become anger.
Long before anger: look towards your feelings, find the internal conflict (or external) and work towards acceptance. Taoism teaches peace is the true warrior’s path. The sword while an option is never used with anger or you have lost from the start.
Firstly: Don’t remove all aspects of anger out of one’s life. Anger does serve some useful purposes. More importantly at times you need some anger when dealing with other people. Occasionally you need to reflect anger with anger. Since anger is used at times as communication. Look at the wolf snarl above, it isn’t anger as action, it’s a statement of communication to indicate position.
However, having said that, I teach that 80 to 90% of anger is wasteful.
Basic Techniques to resolve anger
When feeling anger.
Step one:
- Take a breath, and just feel it.
- Look at it, don’t try to answer it, just look at it.
- Accept it, and then release it as a long exhale.
- Imagine it going into the earth as compost.
- With your arms sweep it away:
Literally use your arm like a sword to cut through the feelings of anger to say I see the anger: and it is as it was.
We maintain a lot of energy to hold onto the past: the past is just reflection of what we think happened. In the now… it’s gone and only a memory… and memories are no longer truth, but rather guide lines only. It is as it was. Release the issue as most anger is actually a lie that people use to project and keep the past alive in the now. But doing so is actually a form of delusion: 80 to 90% of anger is based upon lies! Why give up your own power to such lies? A Taoist as a result just releases anger without fuss. Simply brushes it away as a lie and anger on its own has no power at all, except any power we give it to make it real.
Letting go of most anger is as simple as releasing a breath!
Simply release the past.
For a Taoist this fact resolves 75% of anger issues. However, when the anger is based in personal truth that must be addressed then we need to do something more.
Step Two:
After looking at the anger: then look closely.
- If it’s a problem you can resolve now, then do so… No lingering excuses or apologies. Be decisive, apologize once and only once if needed, make your amends and just move on quickly and simply.
- If it’s something you feel guilt over: then forgive yourself! Be giving to others in repentance for three to five times to put forth kindness in balance of the negative actions. But only a few times. Your life is never an apology, rather in kindness our actions are about now, not filling in the past. As I said before: the past is just that: past gone!
- If it cannot be resolve right away: then let it go.
Instead resolve other smaller problems and be happy with that. Chip away at the anger in small resolutions/actions that over time will undercut the larger anger issue naturally.
You will be surprise how fast these techniques can help you resolve anger.
However, you have to be willing to release.
If you hold firm to “the past”, “expectations”, “lies”, “issues” : then it will be a long road in the release and often your anger will follow destructive means to create the release needed to occur.
In coming across a person who takes this longer road, you let them travel and go your own way. Every person makes their own path. Respect other people’s choices even the bad ones, since they are working on issues. The reason is that often times anger is Karmic in nature. You have to let a person work out Karma naturally and first hand, otherwise you just prolong their negative Karma.
Anger is a Karmic emotion, when you lash out in pain, you inflict negative Karma upon yourself and others around you. Pain inflicted thru anger takes time and active consideration of the people involved to release. As a result be respectful of those working with anger issues, Karma is a powerful beast and the only way to tame it is: with respect, time and acceptance.
16 Responses to Question: How do I resolve anger?
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thank you this has been most helpful,
You are welcomed Simon!
This gave me a good understanding to deal with different kind of people,without loosing control of my emotions and in avoiding of distructive thoughts. Thank you
You are welcomed Thanu!
Working with anger or those who use anger isn’t easy if you are not taught how to redirect that anger. Sadly our culture uses conflict and anger to resolve out 75% of it problems when in reality when anger should only come into play at the most 5% of the time.
Another sad truth is this, anyone who uses anger and conflict as their primary tools of choice are highly predictable and very easy to control by those who truly understand power. As a result you often will find people being used by others in their anger. Some people think their anger makes them powerful, but there is no true power in being used…
How do you propose resolution of anger towards the culture of planetary destruction, and those in power who help it continue? It’s a large problem, and I am deeply angry about it.
@L: No need for anger anymore.
chaos come nipping at the heels of men.
Rotten under pinnings are shifting even now. Such is the process of erosion: it moves unpredictably fast towards the end. The only question is how long is this kept hidden before it collapses. A month or 10? the world is about to shift. And with shifts come change . Let the house fall, be on the outside with peace in the heart as not to get caught in its downfall.
Those with anger only will lose their footing in the erosion of the times.
Patience and then answers will come to you.
thank you so much this really helped with family issues i have read alot of discriptions about dealing with anger and yours is by far the best greetings from the uk xxx
@IsabelLeigh: Thanks I have had to deal with other peoples anger for a long time. One thing I have found is that anger is a very poor tool to helping people get what they truly need.
For every victory gained using anger as the tool, also produces defeats, personal stress and other problems that always circle back around to harm a person later.
I would like to subscribe!
It’s easy to preach about anger and letting go, yet I find it hard to practice. It’s almost impossible to let go. Most of my anger results from : unfulfilled expectations on people and self , others hurting me.
Yet if we don’t set standards, people won’t improve and adhere to management. If we don’t get angry when people hurt us, then people will think that we are okay with mistreatment. Sometimes anger is constructive, sometimes it’s destructive. We need to be able to channel our anger well.
@Bobby: This isn’t about preaching at all. This is all about a different way to deal with anger, by learning additional tools of communication. Most people only have one tool to use and that’s judgement. Judgement will always result in conflict and then anger creates more problems than solutions.
By understanding kindness is to be in your essence, you can protect your essence without anger. You can protect yourself without anger, by using awareness to shift the situation and using communication to work around judgements and frustration.
Again the main problem is that most people are only taught to use judgement and anger quickly becomes their tool of choice. Then it is very hard to switch because it takes time and practice to develop any skill.
Anger as a tool should only be used 10% of the time at the most. I am not saying to remove it fully but only use it when appropriate and that take times to learn and polish.
Hey Casey, I have enjoyed reading what you have written and understand what you are saying. My problem is:- when I am really hurting and trying to explain my feelings to someone, and I am either given the silent treatment or the other person becomes defensive, changing my words to mean an attack on them, my hurt increases and I lash out with anger, either verbally or physically. I understand anger to be a secondary emotion and when it is my hurt driving it, I struggle to remain rational and the lashing out takes me by surprise… any ideas as to what I can do to help myself?
@Sapph:
Understand each person has their own process and speed at which they come to understanding. At times it’s critical to say less, and spread across what you would like to say over a longer time in smaller steps.
Understand with some it’s best to not say anything, despite what you might feel inside, despite the urge to “fix” things. Because if their perspective is opposite of yours, that will initiate conflict and conflict doesn’t fix anything it just decides who wins. Sometimes we have to walk away from trying to create a middle ground so both parties can find their own solution.
This isn’t always a ration process and emotions can derail rationality very fast. So yes it is a dance in how you interact with others and often times you just have to walk away from that dance.
Thank you….. I have struggled with my anger and divorce, and felt the best way for resolve was to lash out only to be bitten by my own anger, and then dissapointed in the way I spoke out in anger.
@Jerry: You are welcomed. Anger in divorce only accelerates hate, at first it feels as the only option, as it just comes out without your being able to stop it. But the option of anger only limits choices later as the anger bites back.
Finding peace with your anger which happened in the past is never easy. You can release it, but others who were bitten by that anger will carry the scars for a long time.
You apologize once and move on. And then in actions begin discovering kindness to counter the damage of anger over time.
But kindness isn’t always to be nice more often it’s to allow things to move on at times.
Not everything can be mended by your own hands and some things are to be left to regrow into something new and beyond your new life.
Just the way it works at times.
Mahalo 4 ur wordz. dey r very caressing.