I’ve dabbled lightly in the eastern mystic magicks of mindfulness and meditation – I did hot vinyasa yoga for a few years. It taught me enough to know that I should know better than to get angry when I do. But I haven’t developed my meditation practice enough to connect the dots to stop myself going from upturned-hand-cross-legged calm to upset-clammy-hand cross leggy man. Yesterday I got angry because I couldn’t find the right bread tin to bake sourdough. Up until very recently, I could almost watch myself getting angry, like some out-of-body night terror, unable to stop myself, wandering reluctantly but furiously towards the feelings shelf to get my clenched fists on the most spectacularly devilish pair of rage-coloured glasses perched right next to my hunger hat and that fetish fez that never quite goes with anything.

Blind rage

I don’t like myself when I’m angry – who does? I’m also prone to overthinking things. And because I studied psychology at university (giving me almost the perfectly disastrous balance of confidence and incomplete knowledge), I never fly into a blind rage. My anger is too self-aware – self-conscious even – and I’m immediately critical of myself. Or, as we like to say in the (studying of the) psychology field, I psychoanalyse myself to try and analyse the psycho out. But I’ve seen blind rage first hand and it’s ugly and utterly futile – good motivation to sort out my own anger.

When I was 19 years old, I worked at a pub within stumbling distance of Stamford Bridge in Fulham, London. It was a pretty greasy pub chain called The Slug & Lettuce. One night, I ventured out from behind the bar to help one the bus boys collect some empty glasses from tables. I’d taken two steps right into the wrong place at the wrong time when four men, obviously recently related to silverback gorillas, started a new sport with me accidentally at the centre like a skinny puck ready to be slapped into a net, or just slapped. It was full contact and heavy drinking wasn’t only encouraged, it was required before participating. There was a lot of grappling and more haymakers than a spring harvest festival. I watched, helplessly pinned amidst the gorillas, as security guards rushed to the playing field. I was caught in the opening scrum but a momentary shift in momentum let me squeeze my way out of the crush. As I made my lucky escape, I heard the sound of a wet-logged football being kicked by a mud-covered boot – or was it someone’s Christmas-ham-sized head being punched by a roast-chicken-sized fist? One of the gorillas’ red mist splattered across my face like gravy. I rushed back to the bar, keeping my right eye shut and lips pursed to stop their rage entering my bloodstream, and I splashed my face with cold water.

Security took the field and started handing out penalties like hugs at the closing song on the last night of a festival. The game was a blow out after that. It was the closest I’d been to such blind, relentless rage. In that moment, there was nothing beyond their consuming rage – the world shrank down to just them and the other bloke at the end of his arms. In another context or circumstance, it could’ve been quite romantic. But then and there, seeing the world in shades of red, there were no consequences, no reason, no de-escalation, no calm breathing, practically zero chakra alignment, just punch-drunk bloody rage. It was all quite thrilling.

Look into rather than through anger

My curiosity about what makes anger well up started with an experiment I mentioned in Irrelevant Expectations that saw me rummage through the inner workings of my frustrations. I tracked every frustrations for a day, nearly flipped the bird at a friend’s mum while driving home in paradise, and arrived at the realisation that frustration was futile and entirely avoidable if caught early on in its mutation. It got me thinking about my anger response, and what causes it. I wanted to understand the series of escalations that led to me running from squinting with disbelief and bubbling frustration to storming about, glaring at the world through my finest pair of rage-colour glasses.

I know to err is human and that err is just the 18th century spelling of the rage growl – grr! I know anger is an imperfectly human response but I aspire to minimise my anger – to be one of those people we’ve all encountered who’s like a pigeon in a sock – utterly unflappable. The beguiling kind of beautiful, calm soul who absorbs anything that’s thrown at them and remains kind. Why can’t I respond to challenging situations with that same unflappable equanimity? Or better yet, a whimsical indifference and an infectious, enlightened chuckle? Oh look, old mate didn’t indicate while going through a roundabout and now I’m about to be T-boned. Ha, ce la vie! Lol, hello death, I’m early, are you a hugger? Well, I recently found answers and I didn’t even have to ask death.

“I aspire to be one of those people who’s like a pigeon in a sock – utterly unflappable.”

I recently read The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga who set out to share the beautiful insights from the Austrian psychoanalyst Alfred Adler. Adler says we fabricate emotions to reach unconscious goals. In a fraction of a red bespectacled blink, we choose our emotional response, which is influenced by a subconscious goal. It’s a furious truth to swallow at first, but with some subtle reframing opens up a new world of rageless possibilities. Understanding that we choose our emotions, which means we can just as easily choose a different emotion, helped me connect the last few dots between yoga-mat mindfulness and actually averting anger when it yoga mat-ters.

Anger is a tool you can pick up and put down

Adler posits that we most often use anger as a tool to regain control of a situation and sometimes to consciously or unconsciously dominate the other. If you’re reading this, I’m guessing I don’t need to explain to you why dominating the other isn’t an admirable path to pursue. I started testing this theory on some old angers – all memorable tarmac tantrums were about regaining control (and self preservation – control over living), anger at the baking tin was me trying to regain control over the over-fermented mess of a dough I’d created. For me, it was like Adler was peering into my soul. We unthinkingly use anger to try and regain control, but it’s terribly useless at it.

Another time when I was about 20 years old, I had control wrestled away from me by anger. I was working at a pub with no security guards and it was fifteen minutes before closing time. We were all set for a quick get away when three enormous guys walked in clearly a bit drunk. I tried to tell them we’d already stopped serving, but they begged for just one and then they’d be gone. Fine, you have fifteen minutes to drink them and then it’s home time. They agreed and then ordered double rum and cokes – a tall order of foreshadowing.

We continued cleaning the bar and thirty minutes later when we were all done, I told them their 15 minutes was up and it was time to go. The biggest one in the group (based on body not brain size) walked over to me. He towered at least a foot taller and wider than me and was probably close to twice my weight. ‘We’re not going anywhere and you’re not going to do anything about it.’ He spat through grit teeth, a furious anger already coursing through his body. ‘Yes you are and no, I’m not. Because you’re going to put your drinks down and leave,’ I said with courage I didn’t have. He lifted his right hand with his half full drink in it, ‘you want me to put this down?’ he jeered and started swinging it towards my head.

“We’re not going anywhere and you’re not going to do anything about it.”

I was sober so my reflexes were much faster than his and I caught his hand before it had unstoppable momentum. I wrestled his hand down by his side. His eyes burnt with a white hot rage now – we both realised he’d just lost control. He dropped the glass, smashing it on the floor and ripped his hand free of mine. He grabbed me by the throat, and charged me backwards to pin me against the wall. Aside from a few terrifying wipe outs in some serious surf, it was the most helpless I’ve ever felt. Long seconds passed and his mates finally realised what was happening and scrambled across the room to pull him off me. They were drunk but on some level seemed to realise that fighting the bar staff of any pub wasn’t the kind of behaviour that made their mothers proud. They scrambled out the door and into the cowardly dead of night.

Our angry neanderthal friend wasn’t going to be told what to do by a skinny smart-mouthed kid especially if it meant he wasn’t allowed to finish his drink and especially not in front of his mates. I think he came into the pub angry. If we didn’t serve him a drink, I think he would’ve started trashing the place – chairs through windows, grabbing bottles from the bar. So his anger was postponed but his unconscious goal of dominating someone else – me – was already locked in. So when he lost control over his night, he chose anger to try and regain control of the situation (he just wanted to finish his drink) and achieve his goal of dominating me. His anger did allow him to regain control but only momentarily – like a sugar rush followed by a stupendous crash.

By way of a postscript, the chef at the pub worked as a debt collector in the 80s and he was particularly protective of his friends, which I’m proud to say included me. So when he heard about the incident he asked a few questions and quickly discovered the neanderthals’ cave was just down the road. So he ‘went and paid them a little visit to ask a few questions’. He later told me they cried like little cowards and willingly accepted their 12-month ban from the pub. Thanks, Corey.

Be reflective not reflexive

We use emotions as tools – anger to regain control or dominate. And, like all tools, they can be put down as easily as they’re picked up provided we’re conscious of what we’ve chosen. Try to be reflective not reflexive in the heat of the moment. Once we recognise we’ve chosen anger, we can choose to put it down and pick something else instead – whimsical indifference, silent curiosity, gruff indifference, most things are better than anger. The key is to create space between the stimulus and your response, so you can check whether you’ve picked up the best emotional tool for the situation.

If you’ve chosen anger because you’ve lost control of the situation, by choosing to drop your anger and replace it with another emotion, you are regaining control. You are doing what anger can not ever effectively do. And now that you feel more in control, you can take a deep breath and a figurative or literal step back and look at the situation with more objectivity. Is it really worth glassing this skinny smart-arse because he said you couldn’t finish your rum? Or should you just go home? What was your subconscious goal? What do you think you just lost control over? And what’s the best response to the situation now that you’ve avoided anger? And are you sure you’re not hungry? You’re probably hungry. Remember to heavily season this revelation with self-love and patience. It will take a while for you to change your behaviour, but knowing what you now know about anger will change the way you see it forever.

Featured