How To Manage Anger

Everyone can get angry; it’s easy. But, Aristotle said more than twenty centuries ago, that getting angry with the right person, with the right intensity, at the right time, for the right reason and in an effective way is no longer so.

Perhaps that is why one of the things that best shows the character of a person is their way of proceeding in the face of the offenses suffered.

Tell me how you respond to an offense, how you handle your aggressiveness, and I will tell you how you are.

The anger of the monk and the warrior

They say that there was once, in ancient China, a warrior who formed a great army. With him he was conquering each and every one of the cities through which he passed, sowing death and desolation everywhere. His fame caused such panic among the people that, before he arrived with his army, all the citizens disappeared without offering any resistance and leaving their property at the mercy of looters.

One day, the warrior entered one of the cities and, when he approached the temple to collect the gold that may be there, he was surprised to see a monk standing quietly meditating.

The warrior, offended by what he understood as a show of arrogance, approached the monk and, pointing his sword at his neck, asked him:

“Don’t you know who I am?”

“Yes,” the monk humbly replied.

“So, don’t you know that I’m someone who can slash your neck and not even blink while I do it?”

–And you, don’t you know who I am? –Asked the monk without looking up from the ground.

The warrior, deeply puzzled, asked him with a certain tremor in his voice:

-And who are you?

Then the monk raised his head, fixed his eyes on the warrior’s and said:

“Don’t you know that I’m someone capable of letting you cut my neck and not even blink while you do it?”

This Zen tale has always been beautiful to me. The monk moves with great wisdom before the warrior. He does not flee, he remains in his place defending what is his.

He is not intimidated by the warrior’s fame. He knows that behind his fierceness, there is nothing but a fearful and arrogant man.

He assumes the challenge of the warrior when he puts the sword to his neck, and solves it without using violence, only with the edge of his word.

All the strength of the monk is that he becomes a lesson for the warrior, and for all of us, because he teaches him that swinging the sword on his neck and cutting him without blinking is not a merit.

The real feat is not to blink, to remain firm and serene, in the face of the warrior’s threat. Would the warrior be able to act like this?

Is it good to suppress anger?

We all come across looting and offensive warriors in our daily lives, but there are many people who do not always know how to take up the challenge or defend their place. On many occasions, they flee like the citizens of the story.

They swallow all the anger and aggression they feel, which ends up swirling inside them, turning against them and turning into self-harm.

Sometimes the amount of energy that they repress is so much that it ends up being channeled and deposited in certain areas of their body, causing a series of symptoms: contractures, headaches, stomach and joint problems, feelings of great regret, discouragement and sadness.

All of this, deep down, is nothing other than the result of having a great deal of unexpressed anger.

Many people have been using this mechanism to repress their anger practically since their childhood. That is why they have almost ceased to be aware of the great amount of energy and force that awaits locked inside them, waiting to be released in order to be at the service of the person and not against him.

Many of these people tell me in the consultation that they cannot help but feel afraid at the idea of ​​expressing the anger they feel with their partner, their boss, their neighbors or their co-workers.

In some cases they fear that the warrior they face may become even more dangerous and, in others, they are the ones who overflow and cannot contain all the rage they have accumulated for so long. They have a lot of anger in store and they are also afraid to show it. And it is understandable.

But, although it is true that we cannot stop feeling what we feel, at least we can decide what to do with what we feel ; in this case, with anger and fear.

It is not about not being afraid to act –that is, to show our anger– but to show it in spite of it.

How to handle our anger (in 4 steps)

Now, if this attitude of courage is necessary to introduce an important change in the way we manage our anger and our aggressiveness, it is no less true that we also require skills that allow us to venture into this task with a minimum of guarantees. What are these principles? Let’s see some of them.

1. Show it honestly

In the first place, I would almost say that the most important thing is to learn to reframe the experience so that we can see honestly showing our anger as an opportunity to get closer to the other person and not, as it usually happens in most cases. cases, of rupture of the relationship.

Ultimately, it is about visualizing the other being grateful for our attitude, and not upset.

If we have doubts about the possibility that this attitude of ours is pleasing to the other, we should only think if we would like, in case of having been offensive with someone, that this person approached us showing their anger with honesty and predisposition to reunion.

2. Take responsibility for anger

When it comes to showing our anger, it is also very important to take full responsibility for it; that is, to fully assume their responsibility, recognizing that we are the ones who experience the discomfort and not that it is the other person who causes it, because in this case we would be blaming them and holding them responsible for what we feel.

No matter how unpleasant a person’s treatment of us is, it is we who ultimately create our experience, and not the other. Hence, two people experience the same event differently, such as, for example, two workers who take a strong reprimand from their superior in different ways.

It is about the need to honestly express our feelings, instead of projecting the anger that we experience.

It is not the same to say “I feel deeply annoyed when you raise your voice” as “You get on my nerves when you treat me like this.” In the first case, we assume the action, since “I am the one who feels this way”; in the second, no, because “you are the one who makes me like this.”

3. Explain what we need

In addition to expressing the discomfort we experience, another crucial aspect to take into account is to show, also in a clear and transparent way, the need we have before the person for whom we feel cheated or angry.

If we do not do so, we are leaving the responsibility of guessing how we want to be treated to the other. Thus, in the previous example, when we have expressed that “we feel deeply annoyed when the other raises his voice to us”, it would be convenient to add what we expect from that person. It would be something like: “I prefer that we talk at a time when you are calmer.”

4. Listen to the other

Likewise, it is essential that, just as before we took responsibility for our anger without projecting it onto the other, we do not take responsibility now for the possible anger or annoyance that the other person may cause to listen to our discomfort and our demand.

In the event that, before our expression, the other is ostensibly upset, it may be appropriate to ask him how he feels about what we have said and what is bothering him so much.

Ultimately, it is about listening to him calmly and not swallowing his anger. We must not forget that the other is responsible for their own emotions, and not us.

Finally, to say that our monk in the story did not ask the warrior at any time how he had to be, how he should treat him. He did not demand that he behave in a respectful and kind way in that sacred temple, but it was he who showed himself to the warrior in a respectful, calm, kind and … forceful way.