Receive these blog postings by e-mail
How often do you feel angry? If you’re like many people recovering from a divorce or break-up, you probably sometimes feel really, really angry, so that the anger seems to cloud everything else. Even if you’re in divorce counseling or end-of-relationship counseling, you will still experience anger in your daily life - it’s natural and understandable.
I remember how my level of anger ebbed and flowed during my divorce, especially when I had to interact with or even think about my ex or as I reflected on the choices I’d made that led me to be in this position in the first place (that latter anger was self-directed). It was sometimes minute-to-minute; one minute, I’d be happily getting ready for an outing with a friend, and the next I’d be seething that I’d “wasted years of my life with the wrong guy” or that I had to take time photocopying my credit card receipts the next day in preparation for a legal meeting.
I suspect your anger fluctuates like this, too. But for many people (maybe you), weeks can pass when anger is the predominant emotion, day after day. It is not helpful that, in our culture, girls and women are often “trained” not to express anger, while anger sometimes seems to be the only emotion boys and men are allowed to express. In general, we are not particularly skilled at effectively coping with anger.
The idea that it’s best to just “let your anger out” is actually not supported by psychological research, which suggests that this type of expressive venting can actually increase feelings of anger and aggression. But denying or suppressing your anger isn’t healthy either. So, what to do?
Here’s a brief mindfulness exercise to try the next time you’re feeling mildly or moderately angry or annoyed. If you practice it with minor annoyances over time, you might find it helpful even in times of more severe anger. It can help you pause before you speak or act on your anger, make you feel more relaxed, allow you to put things in perspective, and might actually make the anger wane (but the tricky thing is not to try to make the anger go away - just observe it):
- Take five slow, deep breaths.
- Check in with how your body feels, scanning it from your toes to your head and noticing any areas of tightness, tension, or lack of tension. Just notice how you feel in your body, without trying to change anything.
- Draw your attention even closer to the feeling of anger as it manifests in your body. Does it have a particular quality, such as a texture, temperature, or sense of contraction? Does it fluctuate, or is it constant?
- Spend at least five minutes continuing to check in with your body, noticing how the sensations of anger change during this time. See if you can really get to know your anger in this moment, not trying to get rid of it or change it, but seeing what arises.
Over time, you can train yourself to recognize signs of anger in your body, observe them, and see how they come and go. You might name the anger - “Ah, there’s that sensation of anger in my stomach again,” for example. The anger very often shifts, either fading away or transitioning to another emotion, such as fear or sadness, which can in turn lead to a deeper level of self-exploration* (more on these emotions in a future post).
You can even turn this exploration of emotions in your body into a “half-hour vacation,” spending 1/2 hour a day connecting with your internal experience of whatever emotions arise (it would be helpful to take a mediation or yoga class to learn more strategies for how to do this). This is not recommended if you’re experiencing depression.*
For more about anger and what to do about it, see this article from the American Psychological Association.
*If your anger is accompanied by extreme sadness or depression, please seek professional counseling. If you ever feel suicidal, call a friend and call 911. Nothing in this post is intended to substitute for psychotherapy.
