Healing Space | How to avoid internalising global anger

Your staying angry often serves someone else’s purpose. Angry people become tools, instruments in agendas they have not chosen, socially, politically and at the family and workplace unit. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods. 

Every second communication - online, offline, via social media, text, or within the family and friend circuit - is angry, overtly or latently. Even if the communication is not directed at you, it could be a friend or colleague sharing how angry or irritated they are about something or someone. It feels hard to be able to avoid anger and its various manifestations these days. It’s pervasive, it’s in the air and it’s easy to internalize it and carry around a sense of seething within.

The problem with carrying anger around is that it’s like carrying fire, or a lump of burning coal: it projects outwardly but it also marks the person carrying it. It is impossible to be personally unaffected by the anger directed at someone else. Anger is a strong emotion and suppressed, repressed, unexpressed, hidden, held back, pushed down, it surfaces in heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol, causing headaches, spasms, sciatica, nervous tension, and cardiac issues.

It also is easily displaced. Customers don’t shout at delivery personnel because they dislike them, but because they are in that moment displacing anger directed at their partners, children, parents, bosses, employees, and others. The customer service executive is just a soft target for what seems like an overreaction to the wrong biriyani. A whole lot of people currently display anger in one form when it is meant to be expressed elsewhere and to someone else.

Anger is also not very useful. Solutions rarely come out of anger. If anything, it gets in the way. Anger stacks up blame, but blame is in itself not useful in identifying the source of the problem. Blame is a label applied to a person; i.e., ‘you’ did this. However, it doesn’t explain what sequence of causes influenced what happened. Anger fails to use empathy to see where the behaviour originated from and fails to create a safe space in which the defaulting behaviour is safe to present itself.

A child who is certain to be punished is not going to reveal that he hasn’t understood the formula and is unlikely to ask for help. A poor test result will reveal the failing, however, and while this gets treated as the child’s ‘fault’ for failing comprehension or not being intelligent or hard working enough, in fact it is the fault of the anger in the environment that prevented the child from asking for additional help when he needed it. Thus, difficulties are likely to remain hidden until they no longer can be, which means issues that need to be addressed cannot be in a timely fashion. A non-angry space in which there is no humiliation, punishment for errors allows people to express their shortcomings freely, which means they can get the support they need, which ultimately benefits the project or end goal.

If there is negligence in a project, reasons could range from the person being overworked, failing to understand the stated goals, a lack of clear communication from others, suffering personal issues, or going through an illness. Origins of issues are revealed through compassion and are rarely articulated or acknowledged through anger. Solutions come when the anger abates and you’re able to see the appropriate need of the situation clearly.

Dr Robert Thurman in his vital book Love Your Enemies: How to break the Anger Habit and be a Whole Lot Happier, explains how one can overcome anger: “And how do you do this? By analyzing your thought patterns. When you do, you realize that you are full of ‘misknowledge’ - misunderstandings of yourself and the world that lead to anger, discontent, and fear.”

Often, due to existing in an environment of anger, you can find yourself displaying an anger that doesn’t really originate with you. Anger is a useful currency in an increasingly raging world. Your staying angry often serves someone else’s purpose. Angry people become tools, instruments in agendas they have not chosen, socially, politically and at the family and workplace unit. Anger thus gives away your personal power to control how you react to a situation and subjugates your will, choice, to the overarching power holder. ‘Is your anger your own?’ and if so ‘where does it originate from?’ are useful questions to ask before going along with your anger and allows you to reclaim it for your peace.