Many people ask me what we should do when we get angry. What we usually do is, either suppress or repress or express it. Many ask me which one is right. In fact, none of them is right. The right thing to do is just to experience it. Anger is an emotion. Actually, emotions are the means we experience in life. Let us see how this serves you.

How do we usually express our anger? We shout, yell, blast the other person or may hit them physically. Sometimes we shut ourselves in our room, refusing to speak. Even this is an expression, but not suppression because we indicate or express that we are angry by our action. Think of a balloon, being pumped with air. What happens if we keep pumping more into it? It just bursts even with a small prick or sometimes even without a prick. When we express anger, we are giving anger our energy. We expand our anger by constantly pumping our energy into it, so that it is large enough for us to express or make other person feel sorry. In the process, we in fact lose control on anger which takes us into it's grip. And even a minor trigger will literally blow our fuse. Here, anger is not serving us but we serve our anger with our energy.

What about suppression or repression? You must have seen water hose in your garden. When we hold mouth of this pipe and obstruct the flow of water, the pipe starts dancing in a funny way for some time before bursting out pushing away our hand with all its force. Or the pipe may just break if we are holding it too tightly for the water to escape. In either suppression or repression, we may burst or break after we reach one point, that's why it's called our breaking point.

So which one is a better option, expression or suppression? It may seem we must do either one or the other. But there is a middle way, where we use both. Usually when we get angry, we become anger. I say we become anger because we identify ourselves with the anger instead of seeing it as just our emotional experience. It's different from how we experience happiness. Happiness we experience internally and then express externally. But anger, we just get carried away with it. But we can actually practice to experience anger so that we do same with it. You can try it once when you are by yourselves.

Just close your eyes think of someone or something that recently made you angry. Don't do anything but just observe how this anger feels in your body as a sensation. You can describe it to yourself as you observe, just keep moving with this body sensation. For example, you sense your head getting tighter; just keep your focus there. Then it may move to your legs, just move your focus to your legs. It is that simple. You will observe the anger is rising and falling like waves in ocean. All emotions are just like waves; they come and go if we allow the experience. We don't allow because they may feel frightening or painful for us. But if you try once, you will see it just rises and subsides. There’s nothing to worry about it.

What we usually do the moment we get angry is we give it more energy by expressing or suppressing it and hold on to it for years. If we experience and allow ourselves to just be with it, we can actually express ourselves in a more powerful way. We will be in charge of the situation and we can stand up for our rights or make ourselves heard without getting carried away with our anger. Here, we use anger to know what is troubling us so that we can attend to the underlying issue. We can handle our emotions better and even use them to our advantage if we give ourselves just a few minutes to experience exactly what we experience in that moment.

Ramakrishna Maguluri
Engaging with life
ELAI
engagingwithlife@yahoo.com