Strong feelings of anger are common in depression. Freud believed that unexpressed anger actually causes depression, as if anger can be turned inwards. He thought that people are angry with themselves to avoid being angry at others on whom they may depend. As we saw in our chapter on self-criticism, there can be a lot of self-directed anger and frustration in depression. However, we now know that, in some depressions, people become more angry and short-tempered with others, not less. In some of our own research we found women become angrier with themselves as they become depressed but men become angrier with themselves and others.1 When we feel angry and on a short fuse it is often those weaker than ourselves that get it.2 People can also be very fearful of their anger.3
There are four domains of coping:
Anger is often related to feeling frustrated, blocked, thwarted, ignored or criticized. Something or someone is not as we want it or them to be. In evolutionary terms, anger gives us the energy to overcome the blocks to our goals, or to fight harder (counterattack) in a conflict situation. Thus, anger can be a natural res ponse, although unpleasant and undesirable.
Examples of some of these are threats, damage or losses to:
Obviously our sense of control is important here, and anger can be a way to try to regain control. It can rise quickly in us before we have much chance to think about it – thus the value of practising mindfulness.
Frustrative anger occurs when things in the world don’t go as we want them to – e.g., the car won’t start in the morning so we can’t get to work on time. Stress and depression can lower our tolerance for frustration and thus increase our susceptibility to feel anger. When stressed, we may feel generally more vulnerable to things that can damage or block us, and there are also some basic self-beliefs that can affect our tolerance for frustration – for instance, ‘This shouldn’t happen to me’, ‘This is going to seriously interfere with or block me in what I want to do’. Time pressures and things going wrong unexpectedly can lead to the familiar flush of irritable anger. Don’t I know that one! However, people who are going to be able to cope with such things as the car not starting will note the flush of anger, and then quickly turn to coping (e.g., get a taxi). Those of us who struggle will personalize and may feel ‘let down by the car’ (how could you do this now!) and have a tantrum.
Coping then is making a commitment to try to cope with your anger in the following ways:
Really focus on coping and what is going to be helpful to you right now; for example, do you need to take yourself away from the situation (or person) until you are calmer; do you need to seek help?
We can feel anger when others pose a threat to us or injure us in some way. Physical or verbal attacks can lead to feelings of anger. Anger is likely to be greater if we think the injury was deliberate, or the result of carelessness, than if we think it was unintentional or unavoidable. The anger that we feel towards an intentional injury can be revenge, and the impulse is to harm (counter-attack) the other person verbally or physically. These feelings are common in group conflict and war. Even when people rationally realize that cycles of vengeance are doing no one any good, it can be hard to stop. Coping is similar to the above: noticing anger arising and then shifting attention, and making clear in one’s mind that anger is not a good place to be acting or thinking from – don’t forget that this takes practice though, so go easy on yourself but try your best.
A very common theme in anger is exploitation. This is when we think someone is taking advantage, using us or taking us for granted. As we have seen, most of us have a desire to feel appreciated and for relationships to be equitable. Be it in child–parent relationships, between friends and lovers, or even between countries, perceptions of being exploited or taken advantage of can lead to anger and its consequences. Assertiveness and dealing with the issue at hand are often important.
Anger can arise when others don’t give us the attention we want. They may ignore us or dismiss our point of view. For example, Emma wants Chris to spend more time with her and help around the house, but he says that he’s too busy. Or maybe Chris says he will help but does not keep his promise. Emma feels angry with Chris. However, with this kind of anger, we rarely want to harm the other person, but rather behave (e.g., scream and shout) so that they don’t ignore us. We want to renegotiate our relationship, not necessarily destroy it. Sometimes this requires a steady and constant compassionate addressing of the issues.
This kind of anger arises when we think that someone is getting more of something desirable than we are. Linda thought that she would win the beauty contest, but she didn’t, and she felt envious anger towards the winner. In envy, we want what someone else has, be this material possessions, a position in society, a popular personality, intelligence and so on. In jealousy, we think that someone we value might prefer to be with a person other than ourselves – for example, a married woman shows an interest in another man and her husband has pangs of jealousy. This type of jealous anger (if expressed) acts as a threat to the woman, suggesting serious consequences if she were to cheat on or leave her husband. Sexual jealousy is more likely to arise for someone who sees their lover or partner as a possession. Jealous people can also be very insecure and may come from backgrounds of sibling rivalry or having to ‘battle’ to win parental attention.
This anger relates to the feeling that others should do as they are told. Parents become angry with children who disobey them. A religious person becomes angry if the members of his church do not obey the rules. We may become angry with our government over how they spend our money. The basic belief here is, ‘Others should conform to and obey the rules of conduct that I believe are important’. The anger occurs because, in some way, we see the other person’s conduct as potentially damaging to our own interests or way of life.
This is when we feel anger by seeing harm come to someone else – for instance, when we see people starving and feel angry that this has been allowed to happen. The anger fuels the desire for us or others to do something.
There are two aspects common to all these situations: first, things are not as we want them to be; and second, we place a high value on the things that we are angry about. In helping ourselves with our anger, it is possible that we may discover that we are overvaluing something, drawing conclusions about a situation that may not be warranted or seeing more potential damage in a situation than there is. Anger can be very helpful because it alerts us to things that we need to defend or change. People can be inspired by anger (at, say, injustice) to change things, or to have their voices heard. It is usually when anger involves ill-will or desires to cause harm that we have problems – and of course this ill-will can be directed at oneself.
Anger itself is not all-or-nothing, black or white – it is more shades of pink to red. For example, imagine a line that starts off white and gradually becomes pinker until the other end is red. At the white end, there is no feeling at all, nothing matters. At the other end, one is enraged. The trick is to be somewhere along this line where you can keep control, but not in the white area or the red area. Anger is like a car that we need to learn how to drive. You don’t want to drive everywhere at 100 miles an hour, but neither do you want to leave the car locked in the garage because you are frightened of driving.
Sometimes depressed people do not know how to drive their anger. They continually lock it up and enter only as far as the vaguely pink area – at least as far as expressing their anger goes. This may work if you are confident in doing that and don’t need to show your anger. But it is not so good if you do need to reveal it and feel weak and inferior if you back down too quickly. If you feel that your anger tends to get out of control, you can learn other strategies. Here are some to think about.
Anger is often defensive, in the sense that we are defending ourselves against a block to something or from criticism or being ignored or dismissed. When we behave defensively we often go for ‘better safe than sorry’ thinking, and our emotions are triggered quickly (see Chapter 2). This is why many psychologists think that beneath the veneer of our anger we feel vulnerable – not someone who is confident or strong.
Why can anger feel so powerful? Why does it hit the red zone? It is not uncommon to find that what triggers anger can seem quite trivial. We might suddenly find that we are seething with anger over rather small events. It appears as if our anger has expanded. In some depressions, there are ‘anger attacks’, when people find themselves enraged for reasons they can’t put their finger on. Some researchers believe that, in some cases, anger attacks are to do with the depression itself (and the biological changes associated with it). Some people on certain anti -depressant drugs can experience increases in irritability – for others they are more calming. If you find that you have become far more irritable and angry since starting an antidepressant, go back to your family doctor, who may recommend a change in medication.
There are also psychological reasons for ‘blowing up’ over a trivial event. Let’s think about the example of Emma and Chris given on page 444. Suppose Emma says to herself, ‘If Chris really cared about me, he would help with the housework’. Clearly the anger is not just about the housework but about the fact that Chris’s lack of help is being taken as a lack of caring. Emma may also feel taken for granted. Thus, what seems like a trivial event actually has a much larger meaning.
When you think about the things that make you angry, it is useful to ask yourself some questions – invite your anger to speak to you, as it were. Okay, anger, now . . .
Another question that can be very useful is to ask is, ‘In what way does this situation hurt me?’ In depression, as a rule, it can be helpful to focus on the feelings of hurt rather than on the anger. If we focus on the anger, we could miss the fact that it relates to feeling vulnerable or damaged in some way. Indeed, by being angry we can sometimes block out deep fears of being abandoned, ignored and hurt. Behind anger in depression can be a lot of hurt, a need to grieve for past hurts and problems of shame. If we can work through the grief, the anger and the depression may subside.
If we focus on our hurts rather than on our anger, we might gain more insight into our anger. In Emma’s case (see page 444), she saw that she believed that Chris’s lack of help had the extra meaning of ‘not being cared for’, which led to the idea that maybe he did not value her or thought she was not worth caring for, which led to the idea that maybe he was right. This sensitivity may be from the past (e.g., feeling parents or friends did not care enough) but the key is that when Emma reflected compassionately she worked this out for herself. She realized that caring was not ‘all-or-nothing’ and that there were in fact many other instances that showed that Chris did care.
So our anger can expand when we overestimate the damage that can be done to us. Here’s another example. Derek was working on a project that required help from others. However, they did not finish their own work on time and he became furious. His thoughts were, ‘If I don’t get this project in on time, that will be a very bad mark against me’. He had a fear of being seen as inadequate by his boss. ‘They are making me look incompetent to my boss. This could affect my chances of promotion. Therefore, these people, by not doing their work on time, are shaming me and ruining my whole future.’
When Derek focused on his own fear of shame, he began to see that he often got angry with anyone who might ‘show him up’. This led him to consider why the approval of those in authority (mostly men) mattered so much to him. This in turn revealed the poor relationship he had had with his father and his belief that, ‘I must please those in authority, otherwise they will be angry and ignore/discount me’. These thoughts ignited many of the feelings and fears he had as a child. His anger was powerful because of the meanings he put on the situations that triggered it. Later, Derek was also able to see that his belief that ‘his whole future would be ruined’ led to a high degree of anger.
Derek learned to deal with his anger by making a number of flash cards:
Having the flash cards gave Derek that extra bit of space to avoid letting his anger run away with him. It helped him to take his foot off the accelerator. It’s not magic but it is a help. You might want to write some out for yourself like Derek’s.
Robert became enraged when he went to a hotel and found that he had been put in the wrong room and the young receptionist didn’t seem to care. He ended up telling her that he didn’t think the hotel should employ people like her. When he got to his room, he felt ashamed and depressed about his over reaction, sat on his bed and burst into tears. What had happened here? Later in therapy he was able to work out his thoughts as the following:
Of course the anger is more of a rapid ‘whoosh’ than built up thought by thought – but the thoughts show us what is in the anger. In a few seconds the problem had grown out of all proportion and had become a question of respect, manhood and being seen as a soft touch. The receptionist’s attitude had triggered Robert’s underlying fear of being someone not worthy of respect and of his sense of inferiority – all of which he defended with rage.
Later, while still sitting on the bed, he recognized that he had behaved aggressively to the receptionist. He then thought:
So we can see how Robert’s anger expanded because he had overestimated the damage to his self-esteem and had believed that this was a test of his manhood. In fact, it is not uncommon to find that depressed people can have rages and then feel intensely unlovable and hate themselves for it – they feel angry with themselves for being angry.
George became enraged with another driver while driving with his family. His children were frightened and started to cry so he screamed at them, too. Later, he felt ashamed and guilty. He thought that he had ruined their day and was a horrible man to ‘go off like that’. At 3 a.m., feeling alone and unlovable, he started to think that they would be better off without him and contemplated suicide. George’s anger was a sign that he was not coping and was feeling very vulnerable underneath the rage. He was in a depressed brain state, where anger is far more easy to activate. When things are tough like this, it is the very time to be gentle with ourselves. Indeed, the tougher things are, the more powerful compassion can be. Being kind to ourselves for being a little upset is one thing, but if we can be compassionate when we have a rage then that is powerful. Remember, this is not ‘letting ourselves off the hook’. Indeed, sometimes we will feel more upset at the upset we have caused others when we give up self-blame and focusing on ourselves. We are kind because we mean to heal ourselves, and make genuine amends for any hurt we have caused.
So, understanding the values you place on the things that make you angry is a first step. Then consider the ways that you feel hurt and vulnerable. If you sometimes feel that you lose control, avoid globally attacking yourself and instead look for alternatives. The following are the ones that Robert eventually came up with for himself:
You may have noted that the anger in the various examples outlined above could also be seen as ‘shame anger’. The anger acts as a defensive measure against being put down, feeling small, discounted or rejected. Indeed, in situations when you feel anger, it is always worth thinking that shame may be part of your feelings. You can get into shame/anger spirals where you are angry at being shamed and ashamed of being angry. The first step to get out of this is to avoid attacking yourself (see Chapter 13).
One reason why we can feel anger is when we are using ‘shoulds and oughts’. Robert, in the example above, had thought, ‘Others should not behave this way’. Unfortunately, we can’t write the rules for how other people will behave. If we are not careful, we can get stuck and simply go over and over in our minds what another person should or shouldn’t do. A couple of times I have noticed my anger arising in airport queues, and my thoughts of, ‘These queues are ridiculous, it’s sheer incompetence; no one cares; they treat us like cattle’ and so on. I don’t like being trapped in queues – it’s rather claustrophobic – so that fear can fuel my anger. Of course my anger does no good to anyone, and certainly not me or my blood pressure. I have to try to switch attention to the soothing breathing, create the compassionate smile, note how others are caught here too – it is not personal. One notices the anger and then makes the choice to try to refocus one’s mind on helpful thinking for one’s own good. At times, ‘shoulds’ are related to other thoughts, such as ‘If X loved/respected me, he/she should/shouldn’t’. You can work on these ideas by telling yourself:
In depression people frequently feel bad about themselves for getting angry. How can you treat yourself kindly if you have become so angry? Again, we need help from the compassionate/rational mind. It may help us with such thoughts as:
Sometimes, if we have been angry (especially with children), we feel so guilty that we think we have to make it up to them and start to allow them to do things that we would normally not allow – because of guilt. However, this can backfire because the children, being children, might start to take advantage of the situation, which can trigger our anger again. If necessary, apologize for your action and then work on gaining more control over it rather than acting out of guilt.
Sometimes, because we believe that we have been very hurt or damaged, anger turns to hate. Then the desire is to harm others, and this can be frightening. Bella came to hate her mother because of a very physically and emotionally abusive past. She felt that her mother had ‘an evil tongue’. She had fantasies about stuffing a pillow in her mother’s mouth and watching her choke to death. However, she was desperate to be loved, and she took her hatred and murderous thoughts as evidence that she herself was evil. Her thoughts were:
Her doctor, who had been treating her with drugs, had no idea of this inner life. This is not surprising, for such hate-anger is often not revealed if there is strong fear or shame associated with it. Bella was able to begin to challenge these thoughts and ideas:
We all have the capacity for hatred – it is not itself abnormal. Indeed, sadly, history shows the consequences of hatred, so there have been many who have felt like me. I am not abnormal. To call my hatred ‘evil’ is all-or-nothing thinking and self-labelling, and leaves out the hurt I have felt because of what happened to me. I did not wake up one day and think that it would be a good idea to hate my mother. These feelings have come from a lot of painful experiences, and it is understandable for me to hate someone who has hurt me so much. However, I do need to learn how to work with my hatred and come to terms with it. I need to learn how not to hate myself for hating. This is because my hatred hurts me and holds me back in my efforts to get well.
Brooding and ruminating is bad for our brains (see page 28). If we think about what anger is designed to do, and recognize that one of its functions is to help us to fight harder, we can see the danger of brooding on angry thoughts.1 These turn on our threat self-protection fight/flight system, when stress hormones and other chemicals are pumped around our bodies, which become tense and alert. However, if no ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ happens, these chemicals can get up to mischief.
Allen was asked to take early retirement, and a new manager started to undo all the changes that he had introduced in his section. He had various arguments with his boss, but all to no avail. Allen became depressed and had serious sleep difficulties. I asked him to monitor his thoughts when he woke in the middle of the night. These turned out to be: ‘The bastard. After all the years that I have worked there and this is how they treat me. There must be some way I can stop them. I can’t just roll over and let this happen.’ When these thoughts began to run through his mind, he became quite agitated and would pace about the house, going over and over them. If his wife tried to calm him down, he would snap at her and then feel guilty. Then he would say to himself, ‘They’re even breaking up my relationship with my wife’.
My discussion with him went something like this: ‘When you have these thoughts, they activate your primitive fight/flight system and that’s designed to hype you up – to fight or to run away. However, you’ve done what you can and there seems to be no way that fighting can help you now – especially at three in the morning.You’re left in a hyped-up state that has nowhere to go except in pacing about and snapping at your wife. You’ve recognized that, in reality, there is not much you can do.’ Allen reluctantly agreed. ‘So we have to find a way for you not to activate your fight/flight system because it drives you into depression.’
As Allen came to understand the processes that he was activating in himself, he was ready to start to explore alternatives. We wrote out some flash cards for him to read if he woke early:
We might also care to reflect on a more Buddhist or philosophical view that all things are impermanent, nothing stays the same; the sea continually moves and if we try to stop things changing then we are on to a loser. Sometimes letting go (and grieving if we need to) can be one of our most important life tasks – and a tough one. With Allen we also examined the advantages and disadvantages of taking early retirement, including the fact that he would have more free time and that it would probably be better for his health. Once Allen let go and gave up fighting an unwinnable battle, he was free to explore other strategies – such as how to get the best deal for his retirement. It was not easy, but a year later, he told me that it had been the best decision he’d ever made.
So the key issue is to avoid brooding on anger. Work out strat -egies for coping. If there are things that can be done, do them. If there are others who can help you, seek their help. But brooding on injustice, going over the same ground over and over again, does not help. Giving up an unwinnable fight is one strategy, but at other times you may need to learn how to become more assertive and stand your ground (see Chapter 20).
Caroline was angry with her parents because she thought they did not love her enough. As long as she felt angry, she avoided the great sadness and need to grieve that were underneath her anger. Anger gave her some feelings of power. Sadness and grief made her feel very vulnerable.
Anger can be used to prevent the recognition of being hurt, but it is often hurt and shame that need healing and this often involves sadness. Some people may imply that all you need to do is to get your own back on the person who has harmed you or to stand up to them. However, although this can be helpful it is not always so. Underneath, we still have a wish to be loved and approved of. I remember a patient who had done quite a lot of work with another therapist on learning to stand up to her abusive parent and express her anger. However, despite this, she was still depressed and mistrustful. What she had not done was grieve for her lost childhood or allow herself to feel and accept the feelings of vulnerability in grieving.
You see, there are always two parents inside us. There are feelings and memories of the one we actually had, but also the desires, fantasies and hopes for the one we wanted – that ideal protective, loving, caring parent. We can work on coming to terms with the abusive parent and our anger with them, but we also need to work on grieving and letting go of the parent that we always wanted. We can do this by using our inner images and practise becoming the compassionate self – or sometimes through new loving relationships.
In working with anger in depression (and I stress ‘anger in depression’ because not all anger is like this), it is sometimes important to find someone who will help you move through the grieving process. In grief, we acknowledge our pain and vulnerability. In the grieving process itself, anger is often the first or a very early response – but we have to work through this stage rather than get stuck in it.
Sometimes people try to avoid feelings of anger altogether. If you bypass anger, you might go straight to feeling hurt, but also feel a victim, a powerless subordinate. You will also bypass becoming assertive (see Chapter 20). You may feel that you have no power to do anything about certain situations. You might think that you feel hurt because you are weak, and you may not be able to focus on the fact that it is at least partly the attitude of the other person that is the cause. It is important to recognize your hurts without, at the same time, becoming a powerless victim.
Here are 10 self-beliefs that may stop you from exploring your anger and learning how to use it in an assertive way. Following each one, I offer some compassionate alternative ideas.
Compassionate alternatives: It’s not about winning and losing. Even if I don’t achieve the outcome I want, it is helpful to try to put my point of view. If I tell myself that I have to win, otherwise it’s pointless, I am defeating myself before I start. If I attempt to put my point of view, at least I will have tried. Trying to be assertive means that I am less likely to be angry with myself if I don’t get the outcome I want.
Compassionate alternatives: Because my parents could not cope with my feelings of anger does not mean that anger is bad. Anger is part of human nature, and it can be useful. If we never felt angry about things, would we be motivated to change anything? Anger is really important because it reveals where I am hurting and what I value. True, aggression and lashing out are not good, but anger turned to assertiveness has many uses. Although my parents taught me that anger is bad, they may not have taught me how to be assertive. Perhaps they did not give me any positive ways to deal with conflicts – maybe the problem was that they did not know themselves. I need to learn this for myself.
Compassionate alternatives: Of course, I might prefer never to be angry but that’s not possible. In that moment, feelings of love might not be there, but that is like a storm that comes and goes and meanwhile the sky remains itself. To say that I am unlovable is all-or-nothing thinking and self-labelling and discounts the positive aspects of my life. When I think of being unlovable, I may be thinking of being unlovable to someone. Who is the person I feel unlovable to? If it is my partner, I can think of it this way: relationships are like boats. If my boat can only sail in a calm bay, it is not much of a boat. We need boats that will not capsize even if a storm blows up. If I see myself as unlovable when I feel angry, I am also saying that my relationship can’t cope with the odd storm – but, in fact, clearing the air and being honest and frank with my partner is likely to strengthen my relationship, not ruin it.
Of course, it is true that, at the moments of conflict, you are not sharing loving feelings, but love is like the climate; it remains no matter what we do. Anger and conflicts are like wind and rain – they come and go. Just as one thunderstorm does not change a climate, so your anger does not make you unlovable. You can learn to survive conflict.
Compassionate alternatives: Blind loyalty is rarely helpful and it is better to develop openness and respect. If I am respectful then I am also honest – because one can’t be respectful in being dishonest about one’s feelings. To feel disloyal is linked to guilt (see Chapter 18) but this does not mean I do not care for the other person. I also need to think if I am actually worried about being rejected for rebelling! Sometimes, when I confide in people I trust – about the anger I feel towards others close to me – I can have strong feelings of being ‘disloyal’. However, confiding in others might help me to get my anger in perspective. If the person I am angry with has done things that have hurt me, keeping them hidden is really colluding in a secret rather than showing loyalty. I confide in others because I want to sort out my feelings. It is understandably difficult if I feel that I am ‘breaking loyalties’. However, remember that people have done all kinds of bad things out of loyalty. If I show compassion, I can try to change things in a different way.
Compassionate alternatives: Deliberately hurting others is not, by most people’s standards, a moral thing to do, but the anger we are talking about here is not like that. Rather, I want to use my anger to draw attention to the fact that something is causing me pain or hurt, and change it. I have no wish to harm others just for the sake of it, but to help them see how they are hurting me and to stop them doing it. In this sense, my anger is defensive. Others are far less likely to be hurt if I explain my position and show respect for them rather than attacking them. It is also the case that I can’t be held responsible for everyone’s feelings – that’s giving myself too much power. In any case, I might, in the long run, be more hurtful to them and our relationship if I am not honest with them about my feelings. Think in terms of respectful rather than hurting anger. This is not an excuse to act out whatever emotions I fancy – I will try to be emotionally polite as well as honest – thus as with all things it is a matter of balance.
Compassionate alternatives: Angry feelings can be frightening if I am not used to feeling them. I may block my angry feelings if I feel that I might lose control. However, I am far less likely to do this if I learn how to be assertive (see Chapter 16). Learning how to mindfully ‘be with’ my anger and learn acceptance and tolerance means that it will no longer frighten me and that will help me greatly.
Compassionate alternatives: It is my responsibility not to do that. So I need to consider a number of things. First, am I seeing my anger as more damaging than it is? Am I secretly telling myself that I am a very powerful person and that everyone around is so fragile that they could not possibly cope with my anger? If so, I can try to think of the reasons why I might wish to believe that. Then work out the evidence for this belief and the evidence against it. Lashing out at people – going into the red zone – is not a good idea, but this is no reason to avoid being assertive with others. Let me think about times I have been angry but in control. Let me make a commitment to myself to stay in control but not in a way that simply silences me. Like driving a fast car, I can learn to drive at different speeds as are appropriate – I have just got to give myself a chance to learn. If I do go OTT and say hurtful things then I need to be honest about that, recognize my fallibility, also apologize and try to repair the harm I have done (see Chapter 18).
Compassionate alternatives: It may be that I am prone to feeling shame if I express my feelings, so I can work on that. It may also be true that if I become very angry, I might say things that I do not mean or become tongue-tied. The main thing is to try to focus on the issue, that is the message I want to convey, rather than my anger.
If you have become angry, find out if you are having self-critical thoughts and calling yourself names (e.g., ‘I’m stupid,’ ‘I’m a fool’). If so, recognize this is all-or-nothing thinking and discounting the positive aspects of your life. It would be helpful to remind yourself that your anger is one element that you might wish to change, but it does not make you a fool or stupid. We can all do and say foolish things from time to time – but we can also learn to tolerate and forgive ourselves for them.
Compassionate alternatives: There are few things in life where one can be 100 per cent right. This is all-or-nothing thinking. Maybe no one is right or wrong, but everyone has a different point of view. Sharing these differences can be a source of growth. In any case my anger cannot be stopped simply by saying I have a right or I don’t. I can also keep in mind that even if I feel I have a right to be angry, it does not mean anger is a useful response – sometimes forgiveness is.
Compassionate alternatives: ‘Selfish’ is, of course, a self-label and I am probably discounting all those times when I have given of myself. Even if I feel grateful to someone, this does not mean that there cannot be disagreements between us. I can show gratitude when the situation warrants it, but positive things can be achieved in not hiding my discontent.
Be cautious not to let your gratitude turn into a trap of obligation, for then you may feel more resentful.
Not so long ago when I was a stressed and my father had just died, I lost my temper big time with my computer at home which had suddenly decided it wasn’t going to receive any e-mails or save files. I was under time pressure to get to work. In my explosion I said some very naughty words and threatened to completely kill, destroy and smash my poor computer that had been working well for years. Hearing this explosion of rage was of course very upsetting for my wife. Then I rushed out of the house and drove off far too fast – again, rather upsetting for my wife. A mile down the road that little voice kicked in, ‘Gilbert you asshole! You are not supposed to get angry like that. Good grief – and you’re writing a chapter on anger too – it was very upsetting to Jean – how could you!’ However, thanks to my practice I think, I found there was a compassionate voice which soon recognized that I was actually quite distressed and simply said, ‘You’re very distressed right now, it’s not your fault (and that felt sad then), but do pull into the side of the road, phone Jean and apologize and let her know your are okay.’ So I did, and felt better. The point of the story is that is helps if we can quickly go to the compassionate self as anger arises in us and then behave as best we can. It is not easy, but if you’re kind to yourself and own up to hurt if you have caused it, this will help you.
Anger is one of our main threat self-protective defensive emotions. It’s one of our big emotions in our brain and therefore is easily aroused and can be tricky to control. This is not our fault at all, but it is important to learn how it is triggered in us and how to exert control. It might be linked to things from our past, the beliefs and attitudes about ourselves and other people we are carrying. We may use anger to avoid feelings of hurt, or to keep people away, or even to test them out.
Whatever the reasons for having difficulties with anger, and depressed people often do, the task is to be gentle with yourself about the problem and then think about how you can learn to manage your anger by either becoming more assertive or working on the things that make you angry. As with all of the ideas we are exploring together, be compassionate with your anger but at the same time do the best you can to work with it in a helpful way.