The Angry Young Man! This moniker catapulted the Big B of Bollywood from a nobody to stardom during the 1970’s and 80’s. If not for this amazing emotion, Anger, nothing will ever get done in this world. Anger is the action energy, it is the motivating force to lift you out of your comfort zone and initiate action to change status quo. It is also like nuclear energy which can power and light up the entire world when harnessed properly or destroy everything if allowed to detonate.
In an electric fan there is an on/off switch and a dimmerstat that can reduce or increase the speed as needed. If only we humans had such a switch and dimmerstat on our body somewhere to regulate the emotion of Anger! Actually we do have it but it is not visible, it is called Emotional Awareness. We just need to learn to step out of our rational, logical, analytical mind and up into the awareness mind to gain deep insight into the underlying phenomena behind the emotion of Anger.
An Energy Psychology Perspective:
Anger is an electro-magnetic energy vibration of a certain range of frequency that is felt in our emotional mind. This vibration shows up not only as Rage or Anger but also in several subtler versions such as – aggravated, agitated, annoyed, aroused, chagrined, cross, despairing, despondent, disgusted, distressed, disturbed, edgy, exasperated, frustrated, furious, harried, helpless, hostile, hot, impatient, intense, irate, irked, irritated, keyed-up, mad, mean, nettled, overwhelmed, rancorous, repelled, resentful, restless, upset, uptight, vexed.
We sometimes say, I’m not angry, I’m just feeling overwhelmed, or helpless, or upset or restless. It would be helpful in terms of emotional awareness to note that all of the above list indicates the energy of Anger, merely in varying degrees. Anger is a highly contagious energy and just one very angry person can instantly ignite an entire crowd of thousands if not millions of people with their angry energy. This is what enables things like mob-fury and mindless mass violence. Most of the anger we end up expressing or acting out is merely borrowed from others but still we suffer its devastating after-effects.
Anger originates within us from three sources. Our own thoughts or our own physical body (when threatened or made uncomfortable) can trigger the emotion of anger and this is usually our own anger and can be safely expressed. The third and the biggest source of origin of anger is the soaking up of the anger of others. As I have stated in previous blogs, all emotions are contagious but the energy of anger is the most contagious. For example, if I am sad and my friend is angry and we meet, the result usually would be that both of us will be angry afterwards! You can replace the example of sad with happy or scared or ashamed and the result would still be the same.
The best way to deal with Anger therefore is:
-To first take a deep breath and ask yourself, is this anger mine or borrowed. This simple inward question is enough to begin the release of the energy of anger when it is not yours.
-And then you can make a statement within your mind – “I hereby command all angry energies that are not mine to go out of my boundaries”.
-Expelling few deep breaths audibly out of your mouth, doing some energy clearing movements, or just sitting with bare feet placed on an iron or steel plate or tray instantly works.
-Once you learn to successfully deal with all anger energies that are not yours, 80% of your troubles with this emotion vanishes.
The rest of the 20% is your friend and it will motivate you and energies you towards growth and progress.
However, here too you can learn to use the emotion merely to help you to decide to take a particular course of action. The actual acting out of the action needs to be done only when the intensity of the angry energy is toned down. Sitting with your body and breathing into the regions of the body that are agitated due to the angry energy – usually the solar plexus and the region behind your face or the sinus cavities, will help hold anger and its energy with care.
Whatever angry energy that remains after the above two activities are actually good for you, accept them and carry them along instead of resisting and wanting to not be angry at all. Only a vegetable can be not angry at all!
Being grounded and present, cultivating a habit of always coming back to the state of groundedness or what I call always carrying a background state of groundedness with you, these are actually the dimmerstat that I mentioned above.
PfP ‘s SelvanS Daily Online Guided Meditation helps you foster this habit of being grounded all the time to experience and enjoy a wholesome life. For more insight and learning Emotional Awareness deeply with your Awareness Mind, you can also join the Awareness Journey online course offered by SelvanS Mentoring.
Written by Selvan Srinivasan