Letting Go of Anger

A powerful anger management tool is learning to let go of anger. Anger is made of thoughts and energy, so it's not a substantial and solid thing, and we should be able to just let it go. However in our mind anger becomes very substantial and solid indeed, and letting go seems next to impossible. Many turn to an anger management class for help with this issue.

Yet we can let anger go. We can shift our relationship to anger; we can shift our allegiance to always grabbing onto it and holding it in our mind in a tight and rigid grip. We can learn to soften and ease our angry mind, rather than seek help in an anger management class.

So how do we do it? In some ways this is a non question. We just let it go. We deliberately disengage the anger response. In an anger management class we take charge of our state of mind and say, "I'm not going to get angry right now. I'm going to drop it." This is an interesting exercise, because in a way it's very straightforward and easy to do. We just let it go, like dropping a hot coal that is burning in our fist.

Yet in another way it's tremendously challenging because we are deeply habituated to squeezing that hot coal with every ounce of our strength. Letting it go seems next to impossible, even in an anger management class. But if we don't let it go, there we are with our anger year after year after. And as difficult as it is, the real question is," Are we going to make that first move or not....?" At the end of the day it's really up to us.

Letting go in an anger management class is different than suppressing anger. Suppression involves actively shutting the energy down, stuffing it inside in a way that causes us harm. Suppression would be ignoring that you have a hot coal in your hand, and then you just put it in your pocket, except you didn't even know you put it there. Meanwhile it burns and creates a deep suffering and confusion in your state of mind at a subconscious level.

Letting go on the other hand is seeing anger clearly, and deciding not to consume it. You consciously decide not to bite your teeth into anger in an anger management class, and you don't let it bite into you either. You experience the anger, you feel the burning pain of it, and you decide, "I'm not going to do this to myself," and you just release your grip.

An Exercise

Choose a day, and on that day make a deep commitment to an anger management class.

Say to yourself, "I know I will probably experience anger today, and I am happy about that because it is going to afford me the opportunity to practice letting go of anger." Develop a very clear and powerful resolution that when you experience anger on this day, you are going to release the hot coal from your hand a let it fall to the ground.

This isn't easy, especially at first. As soon as anger comes up we have deep seated habitual patterns of either suppressing it or acting it out and the seduction of these patterns is powerful. However with this process we are meeting those patterns face to face, and we are giving ourselves the opportunity to exercise the power of our own anger management class.

When anger first comes up and you try the anger management class exercise, if you succeed, great! Celebrate that and then do it again when anger arises the next time. If you don't succeed, then acknowledge that. Take a moment once you have cooled down and just let yourself acknowledge that you were overpowered with the energy of anger, and then say to yourself, "Alright, so be it. No problem. I've been stuck in this pattern for a long time, so I'm going to be kind with myself and not feel guilty. Next time I'm going to try again, and eventually I am going to let this go!" And then when you feel anger again, do your absolute best to follow through and release your tight grip on that hot burning energy.

Once you've let go and your energy has settled, you now have a brand choice in your set of anger management tools.      

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