Beyond Anger Management: Leveraging Emotions to Fuel Success
Anger ripples through the body with such force, enough to attack or defend, or destroy oneself if held in. How can we harness this power? Here is a short story of my long path to understanding how to use anger to have more energy.
My father was known for his temper. With the family name Trager—which contains the very word “rage”—his flares of anger were called “trages.” I lost my father when I was eight, and I remember little of my time with him. The “trages,” however, remain, bolstered by family legend, evoking both trembling fear and some stand-tall pride—what power there was in those moments!
Secret No. 1 to Managing Anger: Becoming Aware
As I grew older, I found my own version of “trages,” with anger boiling deep inside, and like a pressure cooker, exploding from time to time. I'd hit and throw things. And yell and cry. No grace, no calm, just primitive reactions aligned with the singularly primitive emotion anger is.
I concord with studies that have pinpointed three anger triggers:
When there is a disconnect between expectations and reality.
When there is a perceived threat.
When we attempt to hide other emotions—yes, we feel anger when we ignore other emotions. It's the perfect protective carapace and distraction from feeling the rest.
The science places anger deeply entwined with the brain's reward circuit. It's wired in us as part of our protective systems. Anger causes the amygdala to release adrenaline, noradrenaline and testosterone—causing a rush, you feel pumped up, more focused and miraculously shielded from pain for several minutes.
I remember very distinctly one prime example of this extremely physical response. I was in my early twenties and got cheated on a contract. The rage felt epic. At the time, I lived seven flights up a steep stairwell, under the rooftops in Paris. I recall running up at top speed, two steps at a time without stopping. Then doing it again and again! Until I was too exhausted to care. All powered by a trage.
When I settled down, I marveled at the very energy of it. Not so long after that, I took up martial arts. It was my way of dealing with the overwhelming physical sensations I was having as someone who, at the time, was quite angry. I started looking for ways to harness that energy. It began with awareness.
I subsequently learned that anger and fear release nearly the same neurotransmitters, except that the former raises body temperature and the latter lowers it.
That when we are angry, we are more impulsive, underestimate bad outcomes, and seek to blame others. And we can feel a heightened sense of motivation.
That if you are an angry man, you'll be perceived as powerful (having more social status), while angry women are seen as bitchy and out of control.
And that if someone else is angry or a having a tantrum, the best policy is just to let it pass—it usually takes no more than 20 minutes for them to wear themselves out. Really, don't do anything. Even intervening to ask what is wrong appears to prolong the process.
Secret No. 2 to Managing Anger: Being Intentional
Fortunately, in addition to the amygdala, we've also got a prefrontal cortex, with decision-making and reasoning to temper our actions. So, we may be flooded with all kinds of hormones that prepare us to fight or flee, whether we end up swearing or scowling or even punching depends on the prefrontal cortex.
According to studies, it actually takes less than two seconds to go from the initial anger reactions to a more measured prefrontal cortex response. This means we have no excuse. And there is truth to counting to ten when you feel the anger rise.
So, with the martial arts practice and self-awareness, I was able to count to ten. And yet, the energy was still there, and I'd still burst with rage, getting tense and occasionally slamming down my fist so hard it hurt. Anything to process the feelings. I was still traging.
I recall the first time my at-the-time soon-to-be-husband experienced one of my trages—incomprehension filled his eyes. It was so clear to me at that instant that we were on different planets, and I so wanted to be on the same.
“This has nothing to do with you,” I managed to blurt out. “It’s all mine. I need to get it out.”
I wasn’t thinking with my emotions, I was being them. At least I knew they were mine.
I added meditation to the martial arts practice. I wanted to put more distance between me and the emotion. To realize, inside, that I feel it, but I am not it. To be more intentional and use that damn prefrontal cortex of mine.
Secret No. 3 to Managing Anger: Choosing Alignment
As I advanced on my path of self-development, my trages moved from physical manifestations of anger to more tempered expressions, frequently with a series of choice words from my native language (English).
One day, when my daughter was three or four, I heard a loud thud in the next room over—something had clearly tumbled to the floor. Then I heard, in that tiny, little girl voice, "F$%k, F$%k, F$%k." I felt the heat of embarrassment reach my cheeks. There was no doubt where she'd picked that up. Tossing on my parent hat, I said something to the effect of, "Darling, I understand that you feel angry and frustrated. Those are harsh words. Can you find some other way to express it?" Then I hear, "Sh*!, Sh*!, Sh*!." I burst out laughing. We all laugh about it now. And still, at that moment I saw, with great lucidity, how my anger impacted others in so many ways.
I was truly motivated to find even more space between the trigger and the reaction to choose a different response when I got angry, one more aligned with how I want to show up.
How to Harness the Energy of Anger
Gratefully, emotional intelligence is a skill we can learn and master. Or, rather, it's a journey of discovering how to have healthy relationships to our emotions so we can use them to enhance our lives. And it's a heck of a lot easier with comfortable emotions like love and gratitude and compassion and happiness. Still, it's the uncomfortable ones like sadness and envy and anger that scream out for our attention. The more you avoid them, the louder they shout.
Here are some tips and tricks I've learned along the way.
Awareness of our emotions is key. The more we are in the present moment, the more we practice observing ourselves and how we discharge our emotions, the more skillfully we manage our emotions. This means stepping back to see the stories going on in our heads. It means feeling the energy and getting the prefrontal cortex to do something with it that is chosen and aligned with how we want to show up.
Befriending them all works wonders. Seeing them with curiosity and acceptance enables a different kind of relationship with emotions. This involves dissociating your identity from the rising emotion (be it a positive or a negative one), seeing it as information and energy. A simple change of vocabulary here is powerful: choose "I feel angry" rather than "I am angry."
Stress is a bitch. It sucks up our capacity to act from choice. Managing stress and sleeping well goes a long way.
The combination of a victim mentality and resisting the present reality drains us. How much energy do we expend resisting our anger because "we're not supposed" to feel that way? In effect, finding balance with our emotions requires acknowledging the reality of what we are experiencing and taking responsibility for how we are showing up.
Like muscles, the more you work an emotional response, the more it grows. If you dwell on anger, it grows, just like when you pump iron. When you can shift that energy to another neural network, like compassion, over time that is the one that develops. Next time you are pissed off at a honking driver, practice imagining that person rushing to the hospital for some emergency. Your response will not be the same.
Ultimately, the goal is to broaden our ability to work with any given emotion in order to be able to choose if, how and when we
either express it alone or share it with other, and then release it;
or harness the energy and flow it into activities that are important to us;
or simply let it pass, no foul no harm.
To do any of these, we need to be well fueled and well rested.
An Emotional Management Hack
Relax your eyes. Relax your tongue (really, do this, it's quite powerful to still the mind). Decide to welcome the full experience. Notice where in your body you feel the emotion. Does it feel big or small? Where are the edges? Are they sharp or soft? Does it have a color? A weight? A movement? A texture?
What is the emotion? Get really specific. If it feels like anger, is it frustration? Resentment? Hostility? Irritability? Outrage? Fury? Wrath?
Keep exploring the emotion with curiosity and no judgement. What purpose is it serving? What are you going to do with it?
Summing Up How to Turn Anger into Energy
Don't get angry about being angry.
Don't ever take anything personally, including your own anger.
Think about how you want to impact others and choose to do it.