Seeing my Anger as mine, Working to Transform it - Take 2!

in health •  7 years ago  (edited)

I've always been a fairly easy-going guy, never getting over-emotional at work or in life's day-to-day interactions. I remember once an employee of mine shouting at me, so I said, "Felipe, have I ever shouted at you", he said "No", to which I replied "well how come you are shouting at me, and I'm your boss?!

At 25 years old I had my first child, a beautiful baby girl with red hair. Life started becoming more complicated, harder to manage all the things I had going on, I started feeling a little over-stretched. Three years later I had a baby boy. When he was a few months old I was changing his nappy in the middle of the night, he was wriggling around, mess going everywhere, anger and rage were coursing through my veins. That was the moment.

The moment, I realised that my anger was mine. Before then I always thought my anger was someone else's fault: my wife for being unreasonable, my mother for being annoying, etc. Now I realised it wasn't this little baby's fault that he was awake in the middle of the night, needing his nappy changed! So the anger arising was totally my own anger, something I needed to do recognise, embrace and transform.

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So it wasn't until I had children that I realised that I was angry and impatient. But what to do about it? A quick online search revealed a book called "Anger, Cooling the Flames with Buddhist Wisdom". It turned out to be a beautiful book, with such beautiful compassionate writing that felt like it was written especially for me.

The author Thich Nhat Hanh, by chance, lived only 2 hours drive from where I was living in South West France, so off I went for a week's 'retreat'. It was there that I started to learn that we are responsible for all of our emotions, yes the environment is a trigger for our emotions, but ultimately those emotions are our own and not anyone else's responsibility.

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That's a hard one to swallow as to take responsibility for our difficult emotions can make us feel like 'bad' people - we want to blame others for those emotions that we do not think are 'good'. However, slowly over time I came to see that actually that anger was passed to me by my parents, by my teachers, by my society. So even though it was mine, the 'me' that I had always imagined really was a manifestation of the environment that I had grown up in.

This realisation was extremely important for me as it enabled me to be compassionate with myself for experiencing anger. While I would do my best to be more grounded and present so that anger would not arise so easily, when it did arise, I forgave myself more quickly through the understanding that this anger was not 'me', allowing it to fall away again much quicker.

It's been 17 years now since my first child, and albeit slowly, the seed of anger in me seems to have got less and less strong. Whenever I see any difficult emotions arise, I try to embrace them, to own them as my own (rather than projecting them as other people's responsibility) and then to try to find their source. Once I can see their source, either in the things around me or within my past, understanding brings self-compassion for that emotional state, which seems to weaken the grip and duration of that emotion.

It's an ongoing journey, but such a wonderful revelation, as if we think being angry is someone else's responsibility how are we ever going to heal that anger? Only by owning it ourselves do we then have the power to transform it within ourselves. And if we stay angry and frustrated, scientifically we know that we create stress and illness in our body and mind.

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Check out the many wonderful books by Thich Nhat Hanh, or see www.plumvillage.org

I will be doing many posts on the subjects of emotions, life, mindfulness, relationship etc - so do please follow me if you'd like to read more of this type of stuff ;-)

Sending smiles to you all,
Will"

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And just want to give a massive thanks to @lukestokes who took the time to show me where my 'lost' edit on this post went to - another beautiful helping hand in this wonderful community - I am so grateful ;-)

PS Do check out my other post on a similar subject - "You are Unique, Wonderful As You Are" , link here:

https://steemit.com/life/@willstephens/you-are-unique-wonderful-as-you-are

Have a beautiful day wherever and whoever you are!

I'm grateful too. It's a great post. :)

I love my three kids, but they sure bring out the anger and impatience within me as well. Great advice here.

I feel the same way about my puppy. While she can be the most adorable creature in the entire world, she can also really get on my nerves at times...

Thanks for your sharing. I totally understand what you mean, as I am just the same kind of person. I always can't control my emotion, but let the emotion to control me. I am so depressed sometimes after I calm down. Glad that you know your problem and solving it. I still finding my way to handle it.

Great post! Resteemed to 7300+ followers. :)

Hi Joan,
Thank you so much!!! I just jumped from 30 followers to 50 and am sure it will go higher - all thanks to you ;-) I feel so touched by your generosity and heart and happy to have you as a new friend in this community - no wonder you have so many followers!! Love, Will

By the way, do check out my next post "You are Unique - Wonderful As You Are" - you are!!! -https://steemit.com/life/@willstephens/you-are-unique-wonderful-as-you-are

Nice post. Good advice.

I am on a similar journey myself. Not through, buddhism, but through Freudian therapy. Fancy that!

One very effective way to counter anger and all the frustration is to rise up early morning and meditation for a couple of minutes. Being thoughtless and conscious about your chain of thought helps. Miracle mornings by Hal Elrod has helped me to some extent in making my mornings better. ☮️

One of the important things to peaceful living is anger management. Now do you mind me using you for the good of others and yourself? I am trying to help people by getting this across to everyone. How to be Happy 101. It even has something for you. I know this is shameless advertisement but it is for good cause. And Good Luck in life!

Acceptance is the first step to transformation. Glad that you took ownership and shared your story here. That took guts to put yourself out there. We can all learn from your example :)

Yes, you are so right about acceptance. In fact I believe that 'awereness is inherently healing' so once we we are aware of something if we continue to maintain that awareness, over time things will transform in a positive direction - I always feel better knowing this!

Yes very true..it's like how I always believed in the fact that focusing my thought about the specific bicep or tricep muscle being used while doing dumbbell exercises always made for better flexing control and results. :)

Nice post
Best expression of feelings
Be happy
Keep it up

This post really has impacted me. I have noticed that I have been projecting my anger at an almost uncontrollable amount lately. I can now begin to look within for answers and not look to blame others.

I have learned it is crucial to not waste precious energy with anger and instead focus on the details of my situation to better understand and seek answers. Thank you @willstephens, this article has helped me tremendously and I hope you continue to keep a cool head and clear mind my friend.

Great post!

I find myself in a similar position, even if it's a little different. I'm usually a calm person, and whenever I encounter a problem in my life I keep calm and I find ways to solve it, unlike my parents (especially my father) who are constantly angry at life for having so many problem.

However, I discovered that I have one weakness - stupid people. Whenever I find stupid people, I get angry really fast. It may be because I know how it feels to be like that, and how easy you can avoid being so stupid, and make so many mistakes, and destroy everyone's fun just because you can, but I still have difficulties in those kind of situations.

Who knows, maybe at some point in the future I'll learn how to not get angry at all, instead of trying to manage my anger and do my best to keep myself calm.

Hey, An interesting reply - what do you mean by stupid people? Surely you are just viewing them as 'stupid' - do you mean poorly educated? Or just people who you find annoying?

I don't mean to say that anger is bad as it arises when boundaries are crossed and therefore is a good signal to us that something is going on that needs our attention. I think it is a useful energy that we can harness for our own benefit if we know how to use it well!

What doesn't seem to work well is just projecting it out onto others and blaming them for how we feel!

You are right, and when I said "stupid people" I meant the kind of people who are both poorly educated and annoying, think are the best and everyone around them are inferior, for no obvious reason.

I find it difficult to talk to a person like that, or even stay close to him or her, that's why I always prefer to just go away and not listen to anything they have to say.

But you're right, blaming others for how we feel and trying to blame them for our anger is no the way to solve our problems.

Once I read a great Chinese saying: "Why should we get upset at the things that we can not change, and why should we get upset at the things that will change by themselves anyway."

Did you get to meet him? That's cool you lived close , i like him.

I've hung out with Thich Nhat Hanh a lot but not actually chatted to him one-on-one (But shared meals with him and walked with him in close proximity) - amazing being - really lives in the present moment with an incredible energy of love and compassion!

Wow so awesome! What a cool experience

Wonderful piece you wrote here, @willstephens. Upvoted and resteemed. I totally agree: we need to own up to our own shit. We may not be able to change all our external circumstances, but we can change how we REACT to them. It's easy to say to it, more challenging to practice it. Requires awareness, and being compassionate with yourself when you mess up. Something I'm still learning every day too.

I'm still new to Steemit, just checking out the cool content that's here, while trying to ignore the 20 word posts with a meme. Your post was great, I'll be following you.

I'm looking forward to interacting and posting a lot of cool, valuable stuff here.

I will be posting my 'IntroduceYourself' post shortly. Just waiting for my vid from Big Mike…(really excited!)

Cool man, we are all learning every day - I like that - it's what makes life such a great adventure! Look forward to reading your posts ;-)

This is a beautiful and honest article. One thing I have learned from seeing my therapist is the concept of Radical Acceptance. "We think refusing to accept the truth will keep it from being true or that accepting means agreeing. Accepting doesn’t mean agreeing." Yet I have to be honest that "Accepting reality is difficult when life is painful."

the post is appreciable... the actuall cause for living a happy nd peacful life iz anger to b controlled wether iz of bad or good cause...
follow nd upvote plzz

Very well written and so true

Thank you for the perspective.

Another facet of anger (and all emotions) to consider is that they are all either evolved or designed (your choice depending on your believes) to maximize our survival and fitness. To some extent we are not in control of our emptions but we can guide them. Our goals and expectations have a huge influence on our emotional state, especially anger. If we set goals that are too hard to reach we experience anger at the frustration we caused. If we expect others to provide some item or service to us and they do not, anger once again. I find it useful to adjust my goals and expectations to achieve emotional balance or at the very least avoid situations that I know are likely to cause anger.