Healthy Anger

Throughout the years of my work with clients, I have come to observe the very positive aspects of anger and to define specific skills that are essential for the practice of “healthy anger.” These include the following:

1. Healthy anger means observing and experiencing anger without being overwhelmed by it and reacting to it.

2. Healthy anger means recognizing our anger as a signal to explore the feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations that precede it.

3. Healthy anger means viewing anger as a signal to direct our attention inward to identify our core desires, needs, and values.

4. Healthy anger calls for developing self-compassion, which includes skills to enhance our sense of safety and connection.

5. Healthy anger includes developing strategies to let go of anger, which may include forgivingothers and yourself.

6. Healthy anger encompasses compassionate practices that don’t cause suffering for others or for ourselves.

7. Healthy anger means learning how to communicate assertively with others.

8. Healthy anger enhances our resilience and overall well-being.

My research and clinical practice have informed my view that cultivating healthy anger involves self-reflection, using skills from three broad areas of understanding and practice: mindfulness and mindfulnessmeditation, compassion (including self-compassion), and self-awareness.

Mindfulness and mindfulnessmeditation help you observe your own experiences without reacting to them or becoming overwhelmed by them. It encompasses embracing the curiosity of a child as you view thoughts, feelings and physical reactions as being temporary rather than a fixed part of who you are. This offers expanded freedom to choose how to react to them.

Research regarding self-compassion has shown that self-compassion increases resilienceand stability, decreases negative self-evaluations, defensiveness, and the compulsion to see oneself as better than others. Thoughts and actions that support self-compassion provide the soothing essential to sit with tension of our pain.

When practiced together, mindfulness and self-compassionskills “reduce reactivity, strengthen autonomy, promote emotional sensitivity, enhance understanding of historical sources of our hurts, and provide guidelines for safe, effective communication,” says Harvey Aronson, author of Buddhist Practice on Western Ground.

Expanding self-awareness helps us to understand the interplay of thoughts, feelings and physical sensations that contribute to anger – and to identify those that help inhibit the trajectory of anger arousal.

By making a commitment to cultivate the practice of healthy anger, we benefit ourselves and others. Mindfulness, self-compassion and self-awareness can expand our compassion for others, as we become more authentic and happy in our relationships. These practices require commitment, effort and patience but they help us to lead a more fulfilling life.

In coming posts I will elaborate on these three approaches for cultivating healthy anger. I will also identify key challenges to doing so and how to overcome them.

Travis, C. (1989). Anger: The Struggle for Emotional Control in America’s History. Chicago: University of Chicago