Anger is a powerful emotion. Many times it is the initial reaction to cover deeper emotions like hurt, betrayal, jealousy, envy, shame, guilt, etc. When left unchecked, anger easily leads to destructive behaviors. When explored, it can lead to constructive and empowering actions. In the Bhagavad Gita, a popular Yoga text, anger (krodha) is said to lead to the demise of many human beings. It should be dealt with so that the mind can find peace. Deal with anger to find peace.

YOGA AND ANGER

“From anger arises delusion; from delusion, loss of memory is caused. From loss of memory, the discriminative faculty is ruined and from the ruin of discrimination, [a person] perishes.” (BG 2.63)

From a seed of anger that sprouts and isn’t weeded out, it can lead to a person’s ultimate downfall. What is delusion? This type of thinking is based in reaction and creating a story that’s not based in reality or fact. Someone cuts you off on the highway and the seed of anger explodes: “What the hell?! You jerk! I can’t believe you did that to me! I’ll show you!”

The ‘delusion’ in this situation is that the person who cut you off did it knowingly and to personally make you upset. In reality, that person wasn’t even considering you, but thinking of themselves and their situation. 99.99% of the time they have no idea who you are and vice versa, yet the behavior is interpreted in the mind as something done to personally offend.

Why? Probably because that moment of shock and fear reminds your mind of a time when someone did something to you that was more malicious and you felt the same way. Now, that old emotion comes to life and you react, maybe in a way to stand up for yourself because you didn’t in the past. Maybe you vowed to never ‘be treated like that again.’ Now your mind is ready to avenge your past self and fight.

FROM DELUSION TO LOSS OF MEMORY

This ‘delusion’ then leads you to forget yourself and your values. Forgets that you too have cut someone off while driving in the past by mistake. You forget to see the big picture and focus on the anger and injustice that you feel you deserve to act upon.

From that ‘loss of memory,’ the intellect part of the brain that makes rational and informed decisions (Buddhi) is covered by the anger reaction and focuses on the deluded view of the situation. The mind isn’t able to discriminate between fact and story. Anger has completely taken over the rational, discriminative mind.

So, you start to push down on the gas pedal to chase after this person, maybe cutting in front of them. In the best case scenario, the other car pulls off at the next exit and you keep going down the road, fuming. Worse case, you cause an accident or you follow them to get out and yell at them when they stop. The worst case scenario is that a fight happens where injury and even death occur. All because anger took over.

DEAL WITH ANGER TO FIND PEACE

Luckily, there is something different to do when anger happens. Guaranteed, anger will happen to all of us, many times, over our life. Instead of letting it take over and become destructive, by owning the anger reaction, exploring it, each of us can find our way to being more constructive with it.

“The Sannyasins, who are freed from lust and anger, with hearts well-subdued and Self realized, for them absolute freedom exists here and hereafter.” (BG, 5.26) 

This verse from the Bhagavad Gita, shows us that over time and with practice, when the mind can be refined.  Can you imagine what it would be like for an anger reaction to be quickly snuffed out without much effort or force? It is in that moment when we will experience contentment and understanding of who we truly are. This is the outcome of efforts to deal with anger appropriately.

ANGER IS NOT BAD

It’s not saying that anger is ‘bad’ or you shouldn’t feel anger. Not at all. If we try to suppress it, it’s like the backdraft of a fire when oxygen has been depleted and then suddenly a hit of oxygen is added quickly – an explosion. That’s what happens when we suppress or ignore anger. You may think you’ve deprived it of the fuel it needs to exist, but then a situation happens that gives it fuel again. It explodes more powerful than before.

This is why alcohol, drugs, shopping, food, gaming, gambling, etc. don’t actually fix our emotional reactions. They just delay us in having to deal with it. At some point you have to deal with it or you will be consumed by it.

To get to a place where you are able to quickly deal with anger, understanding that it is your reaction and something you need to explore and face, takes time, practice, and effort. 

THREE ACTION STEPS

The first step is to start changing your perspective. 

When anger happens, stop blaming others or a situation. It is your reaction and you have to deal with it. It’s no one else’s responsibility to make you feel better. That’s actually disempowering in the long run. You are capable of facing and dealing with your anger. Like I said in the beginning, anger is usually a sign that there are other, more deep, emotions that are really fueling that anger reaction.

Take responsibility and own it so you can start to explore the real, underlying issue.

The second step is, when anger happens and you are aware of it, do whatever it takes to calm the mind down. This is important on a physiological level. Many of us have a build up of stress hormones in our bodies that is depleting and degenerating the body. Develop a ‘No Tolerance’ policy for the major stress hormone dumps that happen daily with situations that aren’t even close to life or death. Find your calm.

The third step is to keep developing an attitude of curiosity to learn about your anger reaction. Gaining self-understanding is key to disrupting the anger reaction pattern and doing things differently.

You got this! Here’s one of my guided meditations to help with that exploration.

Namaste.