If you’re spending any amount of time online or watching the news, anger is everywhere. People are calling for more civility in our engagements, and I hope we can move in that direction as a society.

Do you feel out of control and helpless to change the way things are? Here’s something you can do now.

Change your relationship to anger.

Not abolish it or suppress it. Get to know it and become its friend.

If you’re like me, you might have a lot of negative feelings about anger. It’s intense, sometimes scary, sometimes overwhelming.

You might have seen people acting out their anger in harmful ways and decided anger was dangerous.

The emotion of anger and behaviors are TWO separate things that often happen together.  If you equate anger with yelling, hitting, harsh words, you’re of course going to try to avoid it because you don’t want to hurt people. And if you don’t succeed in stopping unhealthy angry behaviors, you’re likely to suffer intense shame as a result (some day we’ll talk about toxic shame).

If you can experience the emotion (and its sensations) and find a way to PAUSE long enough for those powerful feelings to settle, your behavior will be different.

It’s not healthy for your body if you feel anger and squash it before it can move through its natural cycle. Suppressing anger is associated with many health risks. Check out this article by Dr. Gabor Mate to learn more. A friend and I had lunch last week and every time something came up that was upsetting, she immediately flipped to looking at the bright side.

I get it. We all have to stay sane in these very strange times. But if we NEVER allow anger to be felt, there is more chance that it gains more potency inside of us, building our sense of it being dangerous or uncontrollable.

My last bit of advice – you don’t have to practice working with your anger live in the moment if you’re with people who aren’t a good fit for supporting you through it.

Try it out on something small first and see if you can feel the beginning, middle and end of the cycle as it moves through.

Watch my video on anger. The funny thing about this video is I’d just gotten back from a wonderful vacation. Ironic to talk about anger from such a serene place.

Share your successes and challenges in the comments!