How to Control Your Anger - What to do When ANGER Becomes a Problem

Welcome to Lesson #4:

Controlling Anger and Hurt Is the Problem, Not the Solution

If you are reading this, chances are that a good deal of your life has been plagued by anger, rage, unresolved hurt, and pain. This may be hard for you to face head on. You may still believe that managing and controlling anger is a way out. Yet you’ve been down that path, and it hasn’t solved your anger problem. Each so-called solution—each attempt to stop or slow down the pain, to manage and control it—has gotten you to this place. And you are still angry.

It seems as if the most sensible solution to an anger problem is to control the anger. At least that is what the voice in your head tells you. This voice comes from the belief that anger is dangerous; that it’s impossible to feel anger and still live a good life.

Well…the voice is lying to you. Controlling anger doesn’t work in the same way that control works in other areas of life. In this chapter, you will learn why. You’ll also learn how to begin letting go of the anger control agenda and get on with your life.

Two Areas Where Control Doesn’t Work

Trying to control areas of your life where you don’t have much control is a surefire guarantee of disappointment and anger. There are some situations where desirable choices seem nonexistent such as sever illness, deception by a partner, or getting laid off from a job. People can usually see that such situations are out of their control, and they don’t beat themselves up for not being able to make things turn out differently.

Most angry people feel they must struggle fiercely to get a grip on their angry thoughts and feelings. Struggling with what you think and feel may be how you have learned to cope with your anger. You may even beat yourself up for not being able to control your hurt, pain and disappointment. You’re not alone; it’s natural to think that you should be able to control them.

However, the problem with control strategies is this: they work just enough to keep your painful feelings at bay, but in the long run you are left feeling angry and hurt. Once this cycle of struggle and control is set into motion, it can take over and become the dominant feature of your life.

Everyone’s anger stems from two main sources: their struggle to control other people and their struggle to control painful emotions such as anger and shame.

YOU CAN’T CONTROL OTHER PEOPLE

Angry people go to great lengths to exert control over other people. You may achieve an illusion of control with infants and very young children, but it’s impossible to even fool yourself when it comes to exerting control over older children and adults. The goal of control will fail 99 percent of the time.

When you try to control others, you’re operating under the mistaken assumption that other people in your life ought to behave, think, and act like you think they should. The plain and simple truth is that other people don’t like feeling controlled, and neither do you. Trying to control others sends the message that you do not accept them for who they are. You are expressing mistrust of their judgment—in effect, putting them beneath you.

Here, your mind is feeling you two lies. First, it is telling you that you have the right to control others. The second lie is that you actually have the ability to control others. Both are essentially false. You can’t force your way into the minds of other people, just as other people can’t force their way into your head to tell you how you should feel, think, or behave. If you think you can do this, then you are only kidding yourself. When you act to control others, you basically have a 100 percent guarantee that they will eventually find ways to resist and run from you. We can also promise you that your efforts will leave you feeling frustrated and angry.

Exercise: Control over Others is Misleading: A Self-Inventory

Here is a list of behaviors driven by efforts to control other people. All these efforts eventually lead to anger, frustration, conflict, bitterness, and alienation. Take inventory of your behavior as you go through the list and check off each statement that applies to you:

I routinely offer advice that is unwanted by pleading, persuading, or lecturing.

I repeat a point over and over in an effort to get others to align their thoughts and views with mine.

I communicate by telling rather than discussing.

I use “shoulds,” “musts,” “had betters,” and similar absolute statements when communicating.

I use my anger to get my message across or force compliance in others.

I use inflexible, strict statements, stubborn noncompliance, closed-mindedness, or chilling silence to influence others.

I impose my choices, beliefs, and standards on others with uncompromising stubbornness.

I write off the behaviors, values, thoughts, opinions, and choices of others as wrongheaded and in need of my correction.

I procrastinate or give a halfhearted effort as a way to get back or get even.

I tend to be impatient with myself and other people.

I feel uneasy about loose ends and strive for closure, even if it hurts me or others.

The following exercise will help you see the problems that arise when you try to control other people. All you need to do here is imagine that you are a puppeteer.

Exercise: The Human Puppeteer

Take a minute to think of the characters involved in a recent anger episode where you were trying to get others to do as you wanted. Then, go to your imaginary puppet box and pull out the marionettes, one for each character in the show. From your perch high above the stage, you begin to play out the anger scene below you. Try to play it out as you would have wanted it to go. As you do, notice how easy it is to get all the characters to do as you wish. You can make them bend over, gesture, and do whatever you want them to do. If you think “That person is making a stupid request,” you can simply replace what that person says with whatever you whish them to say in that moment. You can get them to think and say what you’d like to hear, and to show emotions that you think are appropriate in the situation. You and only you have control over the puppets.

Now, let’s mix this up a little. In the sequel, real people dressed to look like marionettes are the characters in this show. As before, you are high above the stage in your perch. The actors are still connected to the strings. But as you try to replay the scene, you notice that the characters are not doing what you are trying to will them to do. You want them to go left, but they go right. You say “They shouldn’t be doing that,” and you pull the strings, but now you feel them pulling back, resisting you. You try to force them to think and say this or that but hear them saying something else. You become frustrated because you really don’t know what they’re thinking and feeling and you have no way to get them to do what you wish. You feel anger building as the human puppets are now running this show—not you!

The real-life marionettes in this sequel are playing out the scene just as they should, because they are human beings. Unlike the puppets, they control their choices and actions, what they say and do on this stage. You, meanwhile, are powerless over them. But you are not powerless over how you respond to them. You have control over what you do here. You can either fight the characters and engage in a struggle, or you can let go of the strings and simply allow the characters to do as they would do, think as they would think, feel as they would feel, without trying to change how they play out their roles. You can simply watch, trusting that the characters know what is best for them, that they may choose to do this or that, and that in the end, they—and not you—are holding their own strings. You hold your strings.

Why You Can’t Control Anger and Emotional Pain

Recognizing that you hold your own strings in life will put you face-to-face with your own pain, hurt, and other emotions, both positive and negative. You may think, “Well, if I can’t control other people, then maybe I can control the negative energy and thoughts that arise in my mind and body when I hurt and feel angry.” This sensible-sounding solution is unfortunately another dead end. Control over your emotional reactions is just as misleading as your desire to control other people.

Numerous studies have shown that when people act to get rid of emotional and psychological pain, they end up instead with more emotional and psychological pain. You can’t keep your unpleasant thoughts and emotions from burning you in the same way you can pull your hand away from a hot stove.

Trying to control unpleasant emotions, internal bodily sensations, and even disturbing thoughts will mostly backfire. You’ll get more of the very thing you don’t want to think and feel. This happens because your body is a system with a built-in system of feedback loops—your brain and nervous system. When you act against parts of this system—suppressing, avoiding, stuffing painful feelings—it sends out reverberations to all other parts of the system. This mind-body connection is like a sensitive spider web in this respect. Everything is connected.

Suppression and control take enormous effort. Suppressing unpleasant experiences—be they thoughts, memories, anger, anxiety, hurt, or bodily sensations—actually make matters worse. Why?

The more you try not to think about a particular thought, the more of this thought you’ll actually have. The same is true of unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and some internal bodily sensations. The message is this: You can’t win a fight against yourself.

Such struggles with yourself are fueled largely by an unwillingness to make space for every aspect of your experience and identity. Your mind would like you to believe that to be happy and to live life fully, you must get rid of your painful and unpleasant thoughts, feelings, or memories. To have the “good life” means that you must be pain free. So you struggle to manage, stuff, bury, deny, or medicate the hurt and pain. All this time spent controlling tends to get in the way of what most people wish to spend their time doing—the experiences and relationships that you’d probably much rather be having.

The lesson to be learned here is this: Control works against you when applied to unwanted and painful aspects of your private world, just as it works against you when you try to impose it on other people. In both cases, you are sending out a message that diminishes your own and others’ humanity and dignity.

To get out of this cycle, you’ll need to first come to terms with the fact that deliberate control is not a solution. It is the problem. Your thoughts and feelings—the good, the bad, and the ugly—always go with you wherever you go. These experiences define what is uniquely human about you. You cannot escape or avoid them so long as you’re alive. They are part of you. To act against them is to act against your very being. To act against them means that you will remain stuck in hurt and anger.

Exercise: Pain Avoidance - A Self-Assessment

All efforts to suppress and control anger are essentially about avoiding pain. The goal is to make the hurt go away. However, this goal is unreachable; in fact, it is a dead end. Covering up hurt with anger does not make the hurt go away. Instead it bottles the energy for release at a later time. The release later on might take the form of unfettered anger. Or it may show up as depression, anxiety, panic attacks, or physical symptoms such as headaches, ulcers, backaches, and fatigue.

Let’s take a look at how you may be suppressing your emotional pain and hurt. Here is a partial list of behaviors that suggest you are in the habit of suppressing your anger. Read each statement carefully, and think about them as they apply to your life. Take stock of your behavior as you go through the list, and put a check mark in front of each statement that applies to you.

I tend to hide my painful feelings for fear that nothing good can come from showing my emotions.

I act to push out of my mind upsetting thoughts or memories.

I avoid feeling unpleasant emotions and act to reduce them quickly.

I habitually stuff my feelings or use distraction, alcohol, or other drugs and strategies to feel better.

I resort to anger to hide other unpleasant emotions and thoughts.

I see my emotional hurt and pain as real barriers to living the life I want and becoming the person I want to be.

I tend to withdraw from problems, even if that means they are left unresolved.

I refuse to air personal problems, needs, or concerns.

I focus on maintaining the appearance of having it all together.

I avoid controversial or troublesome topics.

I second-guess my own choices.

I play the role of people pleaser by putting myself second.

I let my hurt and frustration pass without discussing it.

I pretend that I don’t have resentment, or that all is rosy in my life.

Areas Where You Do Have Control In Your Life

Conscious, deliberate, purposeful control works well in the external world outside your skin wherever the following rule applies: “If you don’t like what you are doing, figure out a way to change it or get rid of it using your hands and feet. Then go ahead and do it.”

Unfortunately, this rule does not apply to internal events that occur inside your skin, such as angry feelings, painful thoughts, and other emotions. Rather than trying to change these, you are far better off refocusing your attention and expending your energy on the three areas where you do have control: your choices, your actions, and your destiny.

You are the Only One Who Has Control Over the Choices You Make

You alone have full responsibility for the choices you make. Understanding this can feel both sobering and liberating. For example, you cannot choose whether you feel hurt or angry. However, you can decide what you do with that hurt and anger. You can choose to dwell on your hurt and anger, run from it, or bury and hide it. You also have the option of doing noting about the feelings and thoughts. You can decide to let them be or actively meet them with compassion and patience.

As you learn to recognize that every moment of your life is about choices, you free yourself from being a slave to your impulses, your resentments, and your anger. In essence, you’re free to choose how you respond to triggers for anger and what you do with your emotional pain and anger when you feel it. It’s your choice whether you behave in a kind, forgiving, or accepting manner while recognizing your painful feelings; or whether you give in to your impulse to either deny your anger or act on it.

Where You Have Response Choices

Take a look at some specific areas where you have the power to choose your response choices:

Meeting your hurt and anger with compassion and forgiveness versus struggling with it to deny it.

Hearing what others have to say (even if you disagree with them) versus refusing to listen and giving them advice they don’t want.

Speaking words of acceptance and understanding versus words of judgment and blame.

Letting go of old hurts, resentments, and painful memories versus holding on to them.

Practicing patience with others and yourself versus blowing up in anger and frustration.

Acting in ways that uphold your humanity and dignity as well as that of others or acting in ways that shame and degrade.

Moving forward in your life with anger or struggling with it and remaining stuck.

Exercise: Brainstorming Alternatives To Anger Behavior

For this exercise, recall an upsetting situation that brought on feelings of anger, blame, rage, and other unpleasant thoughts and feelings. Once you have the scene clearly in your mind, go ahead and list the main triggers (whether people, thoughts, or feelings), bodily sensations and emotions that you felt, and, finally, how you coped or behaved in this situation. Be as specific as you can. This exercise has similarities to the anger management history exercise you completed earlier, but this exercise takes you further.

Take a look at how Melinda, a nineteen-year-old retail sales clerk, completed the first part:

People Trigger: My mother criticized me.

Feeling Trigger: Feeling frustrated and hurt.

Emotions and bodily sensations: Irritable. Anxious. Heart is racing and pounding in my chest. Surge of adrenaline. Tense in neck and shoulders. Feeling sad and humiliated.

My anger behavior (how I coped): Acted cold. Told her to “shut the hell up.” Called her “a miserable old hag and a lazy, good-for-nothing bitch.” I left and drove to my friend’s house and vowed to keep away from my mother. Spent time venting with friends about how much of a witch she is. Spent a lot of time trying to think about reasons why my mom has to be so mean.

Now comes the more difficult part: brainstorming alternative choices to anger behavior. Start with the triggers and see how they ultimately led to self-destructive anger behavior. Rewind the tape, and for each trigger, see if you can brainstorm other choices, apart from anger behavior, you had available to you in that moment. For a hint, take a look at your coping strategy. You’ll want to come up with fundamentally different choices than the ones you listed under coping strategies and anger behavior. As you do, be aware that there are no right or wrong answers here. These are your choices—what you do and can do for yourself. Later on, you’ll be guided through this process more deeply. With practice, you’ll find that you do have a broad range of choices when anger and hurt show up. Acting on anger is one choice among many other choices.

After Melinda analyzed this scene, she then went back and brainstormed other choices she had available to her. Here’s how she completed the brainstorming part of this exercise.

People triggers: I had absolutely no control over what my mom decided to say. My mother’s choice of words and her actions are not my responsibility. She can say or do as she wishes. I can choose to simply listen. I’ve heard this stuff before. I don’t have to let my triggers by engaged. I can just let the words be words without reacting to them.

Feeling triggers: The frustration and hurt I feel are my own. I can simply notice what my body is doing here. I can decide not to push the feeling away, but not to use it as fuel for anger. I can just let it be, and experience it for what it is.

Emotions and bodily sensations: There is really nothing I can do about what my body is doing right now. What I’m feeling is unpleasant, but I don’t need to run from it. I can choose to sit still with the energy and do nothing to make it go away. I can allow the energy to go away on its own.

My anger behavior (how I respond): I can see that I have lots of choices here. I can choose to listen to my mother or leave. I can choose to respond to her in a calm voice by letting her know that I feel hurt and sad when she says those things to me, even though I’m enraged inside; or I can confront her with a loud voice, name-calling, screaming, and leaving.

I can extend compassion to my mother and let her know that I do love her, even though her words drive me crazy. Or, I can act in ways that do not reflect my love for her as another human being. I can decide not to run from my mother, because this relationship is important to me. I can choose to carry the hurt and pain with me to my friend’s house, or let it go. I can choose to gossip and vent with my friends about my mom, or I can choose not to do that. Venting really did nothing to resolve the situation with my mom.

Above all, Melinda began to appreciate that how she responded to this situation was her own responsibility. Only she could do things to meet her needs and uphold her values. The same is true of you. The choices you make can lead you to anger and misery or the life you want to create and nurture.

Controlling Your Actions

In this chapter, your actions refer to anything you do with your hands, feet, and mouth—how you respond to the thoughts, memories, physical sensations, and feelings dished out by your body and mind.

Let’s say you feel hurt. Then you act on it; perhaps you lash out with blame and accusations, or you shut down by withdrawing. These are both actions. Alternatively, you might do nothing about the hurt and simply notice it for what it is (not for what your mind says it is). You focus on doing things in your life that matter to you, even if that means taking the hurt along for the ride. Either way, you’re doing something. But your choice of actions, in a very real sense, helps define who you are and what your life will be about.

Control works very well when you apply it to your actions. For example, if you want to clean up your yard, you can go and get a rake and get started. If you want to perform an act of kindness, you can do something nice for someone. If you want to change the color of the walls in a room in your house, you can paint them. You can exercise regularly and watch what you eat and drink to promote your health and well-being. The common element in these life examples is this: They all involve actions—what you do with your hands, feet, and mouth. Other people can see what you do and hear what you say. This is a critical point in terms of your anger.

By now, you know how tough it is to control the feeling of anger. You may also have trouble controlling anger behavior. Impulses to act are strong, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by them. But even an impulse to act is still a feeling. There is a split second between the impulse and the action when you can intervene, determining what you’re going to do and how you’re going to respond. You can step back and ask yourself, “Is it really necessary to act on this emotion [or this thought]?” You have control in this moment, no matter how powerful the anger feelings, hurt, and impulses to act.

Ask yourself what has cost you more, your anger feelings or your anger behavior. It is very likely your angry behavior has cost you far more than your anger feelings. Nobody else knows what you truly think and feel inside. Your anger only manifests itself to others through what you do with your hands, feet, and mouth. You’ve paid for your actions, not your thoughts or feelings. Your actions are what have gotten you into trouble. This is where you need to take charge and make changes.

Controlling Your Destiny

Controlling your destiny is the real reward. The overall effect of your choices and your actions will determine what your life will become—in other words, your destiny. This does not mean that the outcome of your choices and your actions will always be what you desire; remember, you can’t control what others do, think, and feel. And there are many events in life, both good and bad, that occur outside your control. What most people hope for is that the cumulative effect of their choices and actions will yield a sense that their life was well lived. Everything you do from here on out adds up to that. Choice is destiny.

Recognizing the Struggle for Control and Letting It Go

Letting go of the struggle for control is not as hard as it may seem. It begins with you making a decision to do so. The hardest part is putting your decision into action. One of the main obstacles to action is failing to recognize the difference between what you can control and what you cannot control. Falling back into the old control agenda where control is not possible is a surefire way to stay stuck and to allow anger to sidetrack you from what you want your life to be about.

To get unstuck and stay that way, you’ll need to develop greater ease in the early detection of situations where control is possible in your life; those are the places where you need to spend your time and effort working. The exercise below is designed to help you to do just that. Think of it as a sort of review and preparation for the hard work to come.

EXERCISE: DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT CONTROL

Read each statement and then, without giving much thought, circle the number next to each situation you believe can be controlled by you. Don’t circle the numbers where you think the situation is outside your control.

1.    What someone else is thinking

2.    The choices I make

3.    Others being on time

4.    How I respond to other people

5.    What other people value and care about

6.    What I say in a situation

7.    The thoughts I may have from time to time

8.    The direction I want my life to take

9.    How others respond to me (my choices, actions, and expressed thoughts and feelings)

10.    How I behave with respect to other people

11.    The choices others make

12.    How I speak with other people

13.    The behavior of pets (mine and others’)

14.    How I respond to my thoughts and feelings (positive, negative, neutral)

15.    Whether other people follow rules or standards

16.    Whether I am on time and follow through with commitments

17.    What others do

18.    Whether I follow certain rules or standards

19.    Whether other people like me

20.    Whether I prepare for tasks and do my best

21.    What I feel at any point

22.    What I do with my precious time on this earth

23.    Experiences in life that do not directly involve me (weather, equipment failures, political decisions)

24.    My values and what I care about

Now go back and look at the numbers you circled. All the odd-numbered statements represent situations where you have absolutely no control. You may imagine otherwise; but if you go back and think carefully, you will see that you truly do not have control in any of these scenarios.

Your mind may say you do or “should have” control of some of these odd-numbered situations. This is part of the problem. Remember, when you struggle to control what you cannot control, you will only end up feeling hurt, angry, and disappointed. Anger needs this struggle to grow. When these situations show up, you need to recognize them for what they are, stop, and then look for places where you can exert control over your choices and actions with an eye on what you want your life to be about.
The even-numbered situations represent a sampling of life situations where you do have control. They share one thing in common: they represent your actions, what you say or do.

End Of Chapter Thoughts

The path out of anger is learning to recognize the difference between what you can and can’t control. You cannot control your emotional reactions or what other people do. You can control your choices and actions, what you say, and what you do, including how you respond to your anger, to your pain, and to other people.

You can control your efforts and contributions toward life and the welfare of others, both at home and at work. You can choose how you respond to your thoughts, memories, feelings, physical sensations, and choices you’ve made. You can control how you respond to other people—without trying to control them. The challenge for you will be to drop the rope in your tug-of-war with anger in situations where control won’t work, while learning to focus on areas of your life where you do have control.

Point to Ponder: Control is often misleading. The trick is to recognize what you can control—your choices, your actions, your destiny.

Questions to Consider: Where do you needlessly try to apply control in your life? What have your vain attempts at control cost you? Are you willing to give up trying to control what you cannot control so that you can move forward with your life?

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