How to Embrace Anger
By: Christina Ramas
Tags: Compassion, Present Moment, Mindfulness, Anger Management, Anger

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

How to embrace anger? That’s one of the most popular searches on Google, and it has about 53,300,000 results (0.42 seconds) as of this time of writing.

This article will show you lessons about anger that robs our freedom for happiness. Here I do not mean political autonomy, but freedom from the mental patterns of anger, wrath or rage, furious, resentful, upset, mad, aggravation.

Here are ways to embrace anger:

Live each day with compassion and kindness

If you choose to live each day with compassion and kindness in nature’s simple treasures, you can transform anger into peace, love and joy.

Thich Nhat Hanh said:

If we have anger in us; we have violence in us, just as they do. When we see that our suffering and anger are no different from their suffering and anger, we will behave more compassionately. So understanding the other is understanding yourself, and understanding yourself is understanding the other person. Everything must begin with you.

Take the analogy of a gentle mother

Imagine yourself like a mother holding her crying baby close against her body with tenderness and love. While the baby is crying, she rubs the baby’s back.

Anger is like a crying baby. Your anger is your baby. The baby intensely needs to be with his mother, which is as basic as his need for food. You are the mother. Embrace your baby.

What takes place if you hold your anger with tenderness and love? You’d bring peace, calm and healing.

Understanding anger

I’ve read from the book Anger by Thich Nhat Hanh that we should not fight our anger, because anger is our self, a part of our self. Anger is of an organic nature, like love. We have to take good care of anger.

Dealing with anger is difficult to do. What helps me when I feel destructive like a turbulent tsunami is to take a deep breath and close my eyes — start by focusing on my breath, focusing on the core of what keeps me alive. When I take in that breath, I remain calm and take notice of my emotion. Try not to judge what I feel. Instead, observe and listen to what my body is telling me.

Practice mindfulness

Mindfulness is all about paying attention to what is happening at present, right before your eyes, your ears, and nose and other senses. Paying attention to your thoughts and sensations without judgment.

Mindfulness is about being compassionately present for whatever you’re feeling and accepting yourself exactly as you are right now.

Mindful Practice for Working with Anger

Think shapeless, like the water

Lesson in life is to accept, adapt, and adjust to certain situations; that’s how one can adapt the qualities of water.

This reminds me of a quote:

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot and it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. -Bruce Lee.

Be forgiving

Forgiveness can mean that you let go; love from a distance; step into your present rather than anchoring in the past.

Think of forgiveness more about how it can transform your life — by bringing inner peace, happiness, emotional and spiritual healing.

How to Embrace Anger

Conclusion

When the force of anger manifests in you, know how to handle it. Otherwise it will exhaust you and cause you suffer deeply. It’s natural and safe to feel angry in certain instances. Yet, holding your anger within for so long isn’t healthy.

Up to you, how do you embrace anger?