There are many ways in which life events can produce feelings of anger on a semi-regular basis: We can feel anger over something as arbitrary as dropping a plate while making dinner; we can feel angry at our spouse because they spoke to us in flippant manner; we can feel angry at ourselves for not living up to our own expectations of perfection.
And anger doesn’t just affect our mood. According to health authorities at institutions like Harvard Medical School, anger also directly causes a number of serious health issues including heart disease.
The Invisible Enemy
Despite the fact that anger can literally rob us of our well-being and even our life, most of us simply don’t know how to manage this complicated emotion. When we cling too closely to feelings of anger, we’re like diabetics gorging ourselves on sugary foods. It’s a no-win situation that is often accompanied by terrible consequences.
As an emotion, anger can also be particularly long-lasting: Many of us may hold onto grudges for decades or nurse resentments against others on a daily basis. In situations such as these, we may feel hurt by others to the point that even contemplating forgiveness seems itself impossible.
A Particularly Human Emotion
It is vitally important to recognize the fact that the feeling of anger is a completely normal emotion to experience. In fact, there is quite simply no way to go through life without feeling anger every once in a while. It may seem hard to believe, but even Jesus got angry at times! Mark 3:5 tells us that Jesus “looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts…”
If the most morally perfect human being who ever lived could not avoid feeling anger from time to time, in other words, what chance do we have? Truly, the goal in approaching life with more calmness should not be to avoid or to eliminate anger altogether; instead, we should learn to manage anger differently when it arises and change our beliefs about why such anger arises.
Changing Our Perceptions of Anger
Suppose for example that a young woman has just started a new job and is eager to earn the respect of her coworkers and supervisors. On her first day, she realizes that she has forgotten to bring the security badge that will enable her to enter her new workplace. She can’t believe it: She has not even begun her new job and she is already locked out of the building! Now she has to drive all the way home and pick up her security badge before shuffling into work an hour late.
This young woman is quite angry at herself about this turn of events. And it’s not difficult to see how her anger arises from her fears about the situation: For example, she might worry that she will appear irresponsible to her supervisors. Perhaps she fears that she will not get on well with her coworkers in her new job.
She may also start to worry that others will see her as incompetent or that she will become unemployable and unable to support herself financially in the future. To wit, one single mistake can touch on a myriad of different anxieties about the future. The young woman’s anger towards herself and towards the situation is deeply related to both her expectations about her life-choices and to her identity as a hard-worker. And yet what does she gain by refusing to let go of this self-directed frustration?
Holding On Too Long
This is also why it is commonly said that anger is a secondary emotion. As a feeling, anger usually springs forth from a more primary emotion such as fear. The next time you see someone have a meltdown, ask yourself about the kind of fears and insecurities that could lead to such behavior.
But if anger is such a painful emotion, why do most of us insist on hanging onto it for so long? What exactly do we get out of a situation in which we structure our lives and relationships around our deepest resentments? Why do so many people struggle to forgive themselves and to forgive others in turn?
The answers to such questions can be extremely complicated to say the least: Anger is one of the most powerful and complex emotions that human beings can attempt to process. It is also an emotion that is easy to stoke: Just think of how low or frustrated you feel after watching just a few minutes of the nightly news or how irritating it can be when something goes wrong at work.
Feelings of anger are dramatic. We watch suspenseful movies and television shows because drama is exciting. Because they add tension to life, therefore, emotions related to anger can sometimes feel almost compelling in a strange way: In many respects, everyday office or family dramas thrive on a narrative structure that tends to shift between a cast of villains, rescuers, and victims. Often to our detriment, anger gives a kind of coherence or storyline to the mundanities of day-to-day life. Even national politics is based around the shifting of anger from one side of the political divide against the other.
Forgiving Ourselves First
But that kind of drama can distract us from the beauty of the world and from being able to love ourselves. A wise person once pointed out that if Jesus is able to forgive us, we should be able to forgive ourselves too. As human beings, we are all capable of making mistakes; however, we are all also worthy of forgiveness according to God’s concept of humanity. Remember that God sent Jesus to help us because above all else God loves us. Jesus was capable of forgiving even his most vehement enemies. On the cross, Jesus asked God to forgive his persecutors. At his lowest moment, Jesus still renounced anger as an emotion.
Battling Ourselves
Learning to forgive ourselves can teach us a lot about the process of forgiving others. After all, our anger towards others often springs from our need to feel as though we’re above others; it is a form of pride.
In the Sermon on the Mount as described in 7:1-2 of the Book of Matthew, Jesus instructs his followers thusly: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: And with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
In John 8:7, moreover, Jesus all but accuses an assembled crowd of wanting to stone a fallen woman out of a sense of pride rather than out of any interest in obtaining “justice” from her punishment: “So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Why Condemning Others Involves Condemning Ourselves
We see here that one of Jesus’s primary commandments was not just to forgive others but to renounce our anger towards them; additionally, Jesus shows that we judge others because it makes us feel good to feel superior to them or to feel as though we are above their mistakes.
Part of the process of self-forgiveness involves recognizing that letting go of anger does not mean that we will never feel anger again or that forgiveness is not oftentimes a lifelong process. If we find ourselves dwelling on our mistakes or on the mistakes of others we should not be too hasty condemn ourselves.
What we should do is stop ourselves and consider why we’re so intent to dwell on our feelings of anger. If we can pledge to ourselves that we will forgive ourselves and forgive others, we can start the process of seeking out calmness and spiritual fulfillment. That process may be imperfect at times; however, none of us should expect perfection. Remember that letting go of anger is a process rather than an endpoint!
Here is a prayer to help us as renounce anger and act with love towards ourselves to towards others:
Dear Lord, help us to see the good in ourselves as we attempt to overcome and let go of our own shortcomings. By extension, help us to see the good in others as we attempt to forgive their shortcomings.
Allow us to find the strength to cope with anger in a healthy way. Help us to avoid a path of dissent and dissension; instead, help us to embrace a path filled with love and the understanding. Amen.