Of late, Schuitema in Pakistan has seen a lot of interest in people regarding the issue of dealing with Anger within them.
In our two in-house gatherings and a seminar for a voluntary women’s organization, we had participants who admitted that the challenge lay in getting to the root cause of what caused the confrontation and conflict and in the appropriate expression of anger.
Some people profess that anger is actually good because it makes you productive. Some consider it a sin. We believe that the decisions made in anger or the time spent dwelling in this negative emotion can never produce anything profound. Anger is destructive; more so for the person who is angry than the one he is angered by.
In this article, a brief synopsis of our learning has been given for those who wish to explore how to deal with their anger appropriately.
Where are You in the Conflict?
For many people, it takes a long while before they realize that the intervention to dealing with their anger does not lie outside of them… it rests with their own attitude, thought and motive. This doesn’t mean that the awful bully or the tyrannical boss will disappear when we configure ourselves perfectly. Nor shall it ensure that we float continually in a state of nirvana in a world devoid of anger stimulants. It means that we will be able to deal with situations and people who make us angry in a manner which shall be in their and in our own best interest.
For this, it is important to know where YOU are in the conflict.
Many of us don’t realise in the heat of the moment, that sometimes it is our own stance which causes a conflict to fuel. The Self and Other Diagram used by Schuitema explains where you stand vis-à-vis the Other in terms of your intent.
It is our intent that sets the mode for our thoughts and our actions. Our Self is where our intent originates. The Self is one against an infinitesimal Other. The Other constitutes every social being or experience you have from outside of you. So the Other could be your neighbours, workmates, family, commuters who travel with you in the bus or the grocer.
As the Self, we are in a constant state of transactions with the Other. The transactions are only of two kinds. We get something from the Other and we give something to the Other. If we reflect deeply enough, we have no control over what we get from the Other while we have the potential to have a full control over what we give to the Other.
For instance, I could be hit by a car on the street in an hour and I can do nothing to avert it. I cannot control the kind of workmates or neighbors I get and cannot certainly control the kind of family I am born into. However, I can constantly work around my response to the other (the Give part) and configure the Other around my response to some extent.
The people who focus in life on the Get side are the ones who are full of Expectations. And because their expectations do not always fulfill, they feel resentful and unfulfilled. They feel that the world owes them their rights and therefore they are perpetually in a state of conflict with the Other based on the degree to which they focus on getting.
Conversely, people who focus on the Give side are the ones who think of their Contributions to a situation. Because they focus on what they give, they are content to have given a person or a thing the best that they could. They see what they can do to make a situation better and therefore focus on their responsibilities… which brings them in harmony with the Other.
In a conflict situation it’s important that you step back to gather where you stand. If you are thinking in terms of, ‘my spouse must respect me’, ‘I deserve a better job’, ‘the kid should obey me’, etc then you are on the Get side of the picture. If you are thinking in terms of understanding your conflict situation better with the intent of doing something to improve the situation from your side, then you are on the Give side.
Hear Yourself Out…
In order to get to the root cause of a conflict and to know where you stand, you have to silence that voice that keeps speaking to you negatively. That voice in your brain is the Internal Dialogue that keeps replaying the conflict moment over and over again down to the minutest details and traumatizes you constantly. It stops you from being where you are and from doing what you should be doing. Schuitema recommends Silencing the Inner Dialogue Exercise regularly in order to be present in the moment you are actually in and to be more calm and peaceful inside.
It is important to mute the internal dialogue and change it from negative to positive by thinking of things that make you feel grateful. For instance, if a conflict situation is making you morose, think of the good points of the person who is making you angry. There has to be something good about the most irritating relationship you have!
It is also recommended that you write a journal everyday about your thoughts and experiences during the day. In the hectic humdrum of our daily lives, we lose ourselves out and don’t have a clue as to what is flaring us up. Bottled up feelings in time tend to blow up at seemingly trivial situations.
Appropriate Expression of Anger…
We always stress that it’s immensely important to withhold your immediate response in an anger situation. You might feel like yelling outrage at the monster before you but situations clarify a great deal when you let the ugly anger subside. You could try drinking cold water, taking a cold shower, sitting down and taking deep breaths (whatever your situation allows) to avert the bull inside from raging out. Learn what works for you. This is a great skill that you would do well to acquire in life and will save you from many regrets.
It is also important that you direct your anger at the issue and not the person making you angry. Anger directed at a person is personal and vicious. Anger directed at an issue has the potential of making things better for yourself and for the person causing you anger. Meaning that if you are being bullied, a straightforward confrontation with the bully laying your terms is what is required. It will help you and help the bully in realizing what needs to be rectified.
Resolving Conflict…
Do not brood in anger. Do not speak about people you hate and do not have the guts to confront. The talking will only reinforce your anger and make you more resentful without improving things. Think instead of the Giving part.
To do this, analyse your intent vis-à-vis the person who makes you angry. Is your intent a taking Intent or a giving intent? If it is a taking intent then change it to a giving intent by asking yourself… what must I do that would be in the best interests of this person and for myself? Does this giving require generosity or courage from your side?
Also, it is usually people who are weaker than us who have to bear the brunt of our misplaced anger. The appropriate thing to do when you realise that you have blown up at someone weaker than you is to apologise. Even a child deserves an apology for undue anger and apologizing immediately open doors for communication and trust.
Etsko Schuitema has a very useful pointer in this regard: “If you feel frustrated by the Other, you need to show generosity to the Other. If you feel exhausted by the Other, you need to show courage to the Other.”
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It’s inevitable that you will be angry sometime. But what’s important is that you read yourself in the situation that makes you angry. You can’t get rid of all the nasty people out there… they’ll keep coming back to you with different faces till you realise that the anger button they push, needs to be deactivated from your side!