We’re often told that anger is a “wrong” emotion – one that should not be felt. However, anger can be a very powerful and energetic emotion. It is an emotion that often brings energy and colour into our actions if we allow it to and if we can do this intelligently.
Rather than judging this emotion as “right” or “wrong” it may be very helpful to relieve ourselves of the need to judge our anger. We could save our mental energy and learn to work with our anger instead of against it when it arises.
Anger after abuse
1. Empowerment
Being abused by another person, especially if they have been a trusted person or loved one, is bewilderingly disempowering and easy to succumb to.
The energy of anger can feel empowering. It can drive us to act with strength and vigour on behalf of ourselves and others
If we can summon anger to assist us in this time of vulnerability, it can sharpen our senses and bring our power back, serving as a wake-up call that this abuse is not OK. It energises us and reminds us that we need to and will stand up for what is right for ourselves – this might be for you and your children or just yourself. The energy of anger can feel empowering. It can drive us to act with strength and vigour on behalf of ourselves and others.
Being assertive and using anger to fuel our behaviour can, indeed, be very appropriate and is not always “wrong”. However, we absolutely must be mindful of the seductive effect that this new power can have on us and not be carried away with adrenaline and more anger. Our constructive anger must be measured, observed with wide eyes and used for good.
2. Control
Being in control of your anger is also empowering – knowing you can turn the volume up and down as you see fit with wisdom as your rudder. But conversely, allowing this new emotion to take us away on an adrenaline-fuelled high of destruction and violence would just be succumbing to another abusive partner.
Anger can allow us to feel justified, especially when we have been “wronged”. It can help us to regain our sense of self. Again, using mindfulness to feel your anger, giving it a name and looking it straight in the eyes raises our awareness of what exactly we are feeling. It also defuses the power that anger could have over us. The aim is for us to have power over our anger, not the other way around.
The aim is for us to have power over our anger, not the other way around
But we can’t forget that getting caught up in our anger and being taken down a rabbit hole of who did this to us, how bad they are, how right I am, etc, etc, could sap our strength just as it’s being regained. It’s easy to get caught up in the story of who did who wrong. It can be the story we hide behind so that others will understand what happened to us and how bad the other party is – but it’s unnecessary if we are trying to simply harness the power of our anger to achieve what is just.
3. Mindful
A lack of mindfulness – allowing mindless anger and rage to take over us – is rarely useful. It can make original issues so much worse. It can lead to our own lowered self-esteem as we judge ourselves as “also wrong”. It can be divisive and hateful. Righteous rage blinds us and can be our worst enemy if a peaceful and just outcome was our aim in the first place.
‘It may simmer within as silent suspicion and resentment, or it may explode into violent rage and devastation’
Bhikkhu Bodhi
Mindful anger
Using mindfulness to remain acutely aware of our anger, to be present with it – tight chest, nausea, palpitations and all – prevents us from “becoming anger” and seeking its adrenaline-soaked refuge. Practising mindfulness when we are angry gives us a choice in this.
‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom’
Viktor E. Frankl
Repressing our anger isn’t helpful either. Shutting it in a box and closing the lid simply doesn’t work. It comes back to take up our headspace often at a really unhelpful time, for example when we’re trying to sleep.
Of course, sitting with our seething anger is uncomfortable physically and emotionally. Staying there in that uncomfortable place also provides us with the opportunity to reflect on our loneliness, fear and vulnerability, so we can heal our wounds and emerge not just victorious but healthy and able to move on from the injustice of being abused.
When confronted with a scenario that causes an initial surge of anger, we first must understand how to not act reflexively
When confronted with a scenario that causes an initial surge of anger, we first must understand how to not act reflexively.
Pause, reflect and then act.
When the urge arises in the mind
Buddhist monk Shantideva
to feelings of wrathful hate,
do not act! Be silent, do not speak!
And like a log you should remain.
When the mind is wild with mockery
and filled with pride and haughty arrogance,
and when you want to show the hidden faults of others,
to bring up old dissensions or to act deceitfully…
It is then that like a log you should remain.
