Blog #4 Anger Part 3: The Release of Anger

In the last post, we explored the idea of how anger protects us from danger and yucky emotions—feelings we learned to dislike since childhood. We also know anger starts physiologically as bodily sensations. 

In our last discussion about anger, we will be talking about how our body instinctively wants to release anger. 

Nervous System Instincts

A lot of our feelings and behaviors are set responses, and the experience of anger and aggression is often part of a bigger process of how we interact with our environment. That anger goes away when the task is done. To illustrate how anger functions in our nervous system, I am going to describe two experiences most of us may be familiar with:

1. Visiting the doctor’s office for a check-up. Sometimes the doctor will test our reflexes by striking a rubber hammer on the tendon just below the knee cap. If everything goes right, our leg should kick outward when we feel that weird sensation from the strike. In this process, we are not consciously thinking we need to kick out our knees. We simply react. 

1. Yawning in a social setting. When we are yawing in a conversation, we might notice that they also start yawning, as if it is contagious. In this case, there is no straightforward logical explanation for why that happens. We can only postulate that when we are interacting with another person, our nervous system mirrors the other person's emotions and movements, which include the act of yawning.

The nervous system process of anger is just like the two examples described—they are partly automatic. In posts #2 and #3, we covered how anger is the fight in the fight-or-flight response when we react to perceptions of danger and other’s aggression or rejection. When we feel threatened, we feel anger and it motivates us to mobilize our defenses, sometimes with aggression, other times with strategies such as passive aggression, denial, shame, etc. Once our body stops perceiving danger, our nervous system gives us endorphins to fuel our angry emotions. In other words, when we perceive danger, our bodies elicit the fight response; we feel angry until our bodies no longer perceive danger.

There are many reasons we feel like fighting. We have covered the scenario of fighting against an actual external threat, but sometimes medical or neurological conditions can also elicit a fight response. For example, a urinary tract infection (UTI), can make us irritated and grumpy. If we have dysautonomia—the dysfunction of part of the fight-or-flight response—this can elicit symptoms that trigger anger. This blog only covers the psychology of anger. You should seek medical care if you have medical concerns.

Another cause of a nervous system fight response is psychological trauma. If you are having a chronic experience of always feeling threatened and never able to feel safe, your anger may be due to trauma. I will cover the topic of trauma extensively in the future. However, as long as the cause of your anger is largely non-medical, this post has something for you to try.

Releasing Anger

Before I go into explaining how our body releases anger, let’s reject the idea of using aggression to vent angry feelings. Aggressive venting—destroying objects, being aggressive to others, or engaging in risky behaviors such as reckless driving— has no guarantee of helping us manage our anger. We might notice that in people we know who are violent—even though they display aggression all the time, they are likely not able to fundamentally curb their violent habits. Although yelling or destroying furniture may give them momentary relief, it does not help us manage our feelings. Using aggression to manage our anger might reinforce our aggressive behaviors. 

Instead, releasing anger is an act of realizing danger is not around us. In the previous section of this post, I explained how when we no longer perceive danger, the fight response subsides. When we understand we are safe, we don’t have to fight. There are two ways to approach this method:

1. Tell yourself You are okay. 

   1. You will need to really believe you are safe. If you don’t genuinely feel safe, you are gaslighting yourself. 

   2. If you have trouble calming down with this method, you will need to address your anger with mindfulness.

2. Mindfully feel the emotion of anger without feeding it with ideas that anger us. 

You might have this experience at some point in your life—You’re sitting in a room, cooking, or performing mundane tasks when you start to ruminate about injustice, unfairness, or inconveniences in your life. All of a sudden you are fired up and angry. In those moments, notice the things angering you are not even in the room— there is no one for you to yell at, and there is no injustice to fix. Instead of fighting against a real danger, your mind becomes the very thing that fuels your anger, and there is no way to resolve it.

To resolve anger, we need to allow ourselves to go through the angry feelings without “all the other stuff”. One effective way to do it is through mindful visualizations. The first step to relate to our anger is to create an image to represent it. Then, we allow ourselves to focus on the image without concerning our usual stories of unjust, unfairness, revenge, and rage. 

For example, if my visualization of anger is “a ball of fire”, then I shall refrain from turning my imagery into something like “when I burn my enemies with this ball of fire, they will all be feeling sorry”, nor distractions like “I see this ball of fire and Jimmy is such an asshole”. Instead, I shall detach from my usual stories, focus on the ball of fire, and allow myself to feel the bodily sensations of anger. By doing so, I am moving through and releasing anger.

Exercise: Visualizing Anger

This exercise aims to explore our bodily experience of anger and at the same time allow our body to resolve the feeling itself.

Note: Please engage this exercise in phases. In a single sitting, always start from phase 1. This works best if you refrain from jumping to a further phase until completing previous ones. Please be gentle, take your time, and do not push through emotional pain. 

Phase 1: Developing Mindfulness and Dropping the Story

1a. Find a soft, comfortable, and relaxing place to sit or lie down, without too much distraction.

1b. (Optional): find a stress ball or something equivalent to be available for later.

1c. Allow yourself to focus on just the environment around you (color, texture, shapes of objects, etc). If you are thinking about things that make you angry, visualize them as strings of words in front of you and put them into an imaginary box. When you can maintain awareness of the environment and not fixate on stories and thoughts, proceed to phase 2.

Phase 2: Forming a Visualization

2. Use your imagination, if your anger is an object, what does it look like?

Some Examples:

• A bonfire

• A smoldering or erupting volcano

• A white-hot piece of metal

• A hurricane

• An ice storm

Try to visualize it in as much detail as you can—what sensations does your body feel? 

Phase 3: Resolution

3a. Continue to visualize. Use the stress ball if appropriate. If stories come in, use the technique from Phase 1 to put them away.

3b. Allow the visualization to evolve on its own until the feeling subsides, or if you can no longer concentrate on the visualization.

3c. Dissolve the visualized imagery, and come back to focusing on your physical surroundings.

3d. Notice your surroundings once again, notice how you feel, and resume your day when you feel ready.

 ***Please know if participation is creating more adverse effects impacting your daily life, in-person professional guidance may be more suitable for you. If you are not sure this is for you, consult your therapist or medication prescriber.***

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Disclaimer: Psychotherapy is a psychological service involving a client interacting with a mental health professional with the aim of assessing or improving the mental health of the client. Neither the contents of this blog, nor our podcast, is psychotherapy, or a substitute for psychotherapy. The contents of this blog may be triggering to some, so reader’s discretion is advised. If you think that any of my suggestions, ideas, or exercises mentioned in this blog are creating further distress, please discontinue reading, and seek a professional’s help.

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