What to do with anger

Depression is sometimes the result of unresolved anger. Anger can be tricky, because sometimes it manifests as constant crying, so you think you’re sad or depressed. This was the case for me, when I was in my teens and twenties.  I thought I never got angry. However, I cried many times a month.  Today I had a tiny breakthrough, and I want to share the general process with you, without the details.

You can have a staring contest at your anger until it backs down. I just figured out that I spent a decade changing my behavior to avoid my husband’s anger and I’ve been expecting him to do the same for me, like it’s noble or something. My insight is that when I get angry, I expect others to say, “I can’t stand to see you this way; if it means that much to you, I’ll stop the behavior.”

That’s how it happens on TV, right?

But no such thing has happened in my life, yet I still continue feeling anger when I see behavior I don’t like in my husband. If my anger does not change his behavior, isn’t it just hurting ME? Isn’t it just driving him to secrecy? My family leaves me alone when I’m angry. Who wants to cross paths with a charging rhino? Nobody comes to pat my back and make me feel better; that’s up to me. So, here’s how I did it today:

I looked at my anger like it was an object. I became curious about the anger itself. Could I see any patterns? Was this anger helping me? Oh, I knew there were four questions I was supposed to ask….what the heck were they? I couldn’t remember them. But I remembered that husband and I were both expecting our anger to change someone else’s behavior. By looking at my anger this way, I shifted my focus from the person/behavior I was angry AT to the anger itself. Then it left. My anger simply dissolved. It took me 20 minutes. Now I can focus on the rest of my day.

Working with anger this way to dissolve it does not mean I endorse the behavior that got me riled up in the first place. It doesn’t make me an enabler to that behavior, either. The phrase, “I’m in charge of my anger” doesn’t mean that I have to sweep it under the rug, hoping it never comes out. It does mean that I have a responsibility to turn my anger into something constructive in my life and not let it gnaw at my mind and knot my muscles for weeks.

I think it’s time for a massage.