What You Want: To get control of your rage
What to Try: Recognize anger (instead of what's making you angry)
"Let's say a rush of intense anger overtakes you," writes meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. Normally, as she explains in
Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace,
we think about the person or thing that made us mad (for example, "They
did this, so I'm going to do that and my vengeful act will destroy
them!") or we beat ourselves up (for example, "I'm such a terrible
person, I'm so awful. I can't believe I'm so angry. I've been in therapy
for 10 years. How could I still be angry?") But what if you could take
human beings out of the equation? What if the first thing you said was,
"Oh...this is anger." Identifying the feeling allows you to look at the
anger (not you or the other person) and, as Salzberg writes, this
decreases its power to take over our minds since we stop being busy
reacting. What we notice, she adds, is that anger is not just one thing;
it is made up of moments of sadness, moments of fear, moments of
frustration, moments of panic. Understanding that it is many different
things also allows for many different ways to end it.
