Bypassing Anger

A while back, I read a list about how to deal with anger. It advised:

11 things to STOP doing when you get angry. If you avoid these behaviors you’ll go a long way toward resolving your anger without hurting other people or yourself:

1. Stop speaking. Silence is the number one behavior to practice when you’re mad. It shows you’re in control of your anger. 
2. Stop staying. If your anger goes over 5 on a scale of 1 to 10, leave the situation until you or the other person is back in control. 
3. Stop staring. Staring at another person inflames your anger. Look at the floor, the ceiling, or anywhere else. 
4. Stop interrupting. This is directly connected to staying silent. 
5. Stop threatening. 
6. Stop yelling. 
7. Stop pointing. 
8. Stop sarcasm and stop mocking. These behaviors can be hurtful and humiliating. 
9. Stop throwing things. 
10. Stop sighing. Non-verbal ways of expressing anger include sighing, chuckling, or rolling your eyes, and can also hurt or humiliate another person. 
11. Stop criticizing. It’s not your role to point out what others are doing wrong. 

Source: Anger Busting 101, by Newton Hightower, Bayou Publishing

This is a good list with helpful hints of dealing with expressions of a deeper problem. However, as aspirin only deals with the symptom and not the problem, these 11 helps may not do anything to remedy the real malady, which is the anger itself. And face it, if you have to be told to stop threatening, yelling, or throwing things, you probably have an anger management problem.

In everyday life, most people express their anger in a passive/aggressive manner that is noted among some of the symptoms above – sighing, sarcasm, criticism, and mocking (as an aside, the typewritten *sigh* is one of the most annoying little habits on the Web). Rare are the people who express their anger in Sopranos-like fashion – violent, volcanic eruptions of boiling hateful emotion that devastate and lay desolate the relationships and feelings of everyone within the vicinity of the explosion. Those people are rare, but they do exist.

Instead, most people’s anger turns inward. And anger turned inward results in any one of a variety of gut-chewing, misery-inducing, joy-consuming, peace-destroying manifestations, such as depression, bitterness, envy, self-loathing or resentment. Anger inevitably steals not just joy, but in too many cases, the very life of a person.

I look at this list and as commendable as it may be, I also see it can be misused, or (worse yet) weaponized. To wit, I’ve been on the receiving end of people whose silence wasn’t a means to stop anger, but to express it. Similarly, some people have a flight response to anger, and they intentionally make others pay by abandoning the relationship in the heat of conflict. And if you’ve ever heard any variation of, “I’m so angry I can’t even look at you,” then you understand that the denial of eye contact can be as hurtful as an intensely-locked gaze. The rest of the original list is less debatable, but in a modest effort to offer alternatives please consider these 4 bypasses to the initial list:

• speak differently. Anger typically comes loaded with “you”-type accusations. Diffusing anger starts with “me” statements that own thoughts, feelings, and actions. For example, instead of saying, “You don’t listen to me!” consider saying, “I don’t feel heard when…”
• stay differently. Anger pits people nose-to-nose as adversaries on opposite sides of a conflict. When confronting a difference, consider positioning yourself alongside the other person. If you sit across from the other person, don’t engage in the disagreement until you have made a volitional determination that you won’t let your situational difference become more important than your relational harmony.
• look differently. This nuanced change is more about your attitude than about your eyesight. If you’re staring angrily at someone, the dictating attitude dwells on the prairie where animosity and intimidation roam. So, take a more humble attitude and make eye contact with the other person, remembering that they matter more than your disagreement. They have thoughts, feelings, and intrinsic value. Express care, kindness, compassion, and gentleness with your eyes. Don’t be surprised if the rest of your face follows along, too.

In all, disagree better. Resolve not just to manage your anger, but strive to eradicate it from your arsenal. Your world will be the better for it.