Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions (31 page)

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Authors: June Hunt

BOOK: Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions
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Identify Your Objective
As we’ve already discussed, most of the time the purpose of your anger is pretty straightforward. You get angry as a way to…
• alleviate your hurt
• express outrage at an injustice
• confront your fear
• vent your frustration
And your goal in each case is simple: Make it stop.
But in order to redirect the explosive energy of your anger into a constructive pursuit, you’ve got to move beyond protective reflexes and ask yourself,
What do I want to accomplish? If my anger is a rocket I can steer, where do I want it to go?
Think of it as creating a personal mission statement. Businesses and other organizations often put their philosophy and purpose in writing at their inception to let clients and the community know what to expect from them. This written document also becomes a navigational beacon for the company or organization. Being intentional about what they set out to do makes it easier for them to notice if they have wandered off course.
For the same reasons, when your mission is to make positive use of your anger, you will find it helpful to clearly state your intentions.
A Meddling Motherin-Law
When Anita called me at
Hope in the Night,
she began by saying, “I know this will sound cliché, but my motherin-law is driving me completely insane.”
I assured her clichés exist for a reason. Just because an experience is common doesn’t make it less real or painful.
For the first few years of marriage, Tom and Anita lived hundreds of miles from either of their parents. At times, they regretted the limited contact the kids had with their grandparents. But on the whole, Tom and Anita were grateful for the freedom to establish their household as they saw fit.
All that changed when Tom’s father died suddenly and his mother, Patricia, came to live nearby.
“She was in mourning—we all were—so for the first few months I let things slide that otherwise would have made me mad,” Anita told me. “Now I’m just mad all the time, but after two years, it’s hard to know what to do about it.”
The problem was Patricia took on more responsibility and authority with her grandchildren than Anita wanted to relinquish. Patricia elbowed her way into Anita’s parenting territory. She frequently reversed decisions her daughter-in-law made about important issues such as bedtime and how many treats the kids could have during the day.
Tom backed up Anita as best he could, but his job required him to travel and he was often unavailable.
Meddling
was the word most often written on the slips of paper blanketing the bottom of Anita’s anger bowl.
“I’ve reached a breaking point,” Anita said. “If I don’t figure out how to get rid of my anger, it could get really ugly.”
“It could get even uglier if you try to force your anger to just go away,” I said. “That never works. How about this: If you could make your anger work toward a positive outcome, what would it be?”
She thought for a moment, then laughed as she said, “I was going to say I’d like Patricia to leave town again and never come back! But I realize that’s not true. What I really want is to be treated with respect in my own home.”
Bull’s-eye! Although the way forward might still involve painful and even angry confrontation, the goal Anita identified was a worthy one. By targeting her anger on creating respect, Anita set a course that made it possible for everyone to win.
By stating her objective aloud, her blurred perception about what to do came into sharper focus. Don’t let the destination of your anger remain vague or undefined. Set yourself a course for constructive resolution.
We can deceive ourselves by creating a smoke screen that makes us feel like we can change others. But we don’t have the ability to change others. In fact, we don’t even have the ability to truly change ourselves through our own will, strength, or desire. Change comes through our dependence on God’s grace to transform lives—both ours and others.
This dependence upon God is extremely important. For example, what if Anita’s goal had been to force her motherin-law to show her more respect? Her chances of success would have been next to zero. Why? It wasn’t within Anita’s power to make Patricia do things differently. Attempting to bring change in our own power generally results in the opposite of what we intend.
Resist or Respect
“Most of the time, the harder you push someone in a direction they don’t want to go, the more they resist,” I told Anita. “It is human nature. The best you can do is to make sure you respect yourself enough to draw firm boundaries and to enforce them, no matter who steps across the line.”
At the time, that person was Patricia. The next time, it could be a neighbor or a church leader. If Anita did the work to alter her own inner landscape, she would be empowered and prepared to prevent another encroachment, whatever its source.
When you identify a positive goal for your anger, make sure it is achievable by concentrating on the only thing you can control: you.
Employ the Power of Prayer
After years of counseling hurting people on
Hope in the Night,
I am still surprised at how many attempt to struggle through life’s hardships without taking advantage of one of God’s greatest gifts: the privilege of prayer. Prayer is like making an SOS call to the Creator and Master of all things—yet this vital communication link and source of divine power too often goes unused. The Bible says, “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). It’s like we’re trying to control our anger with our hearts and minds disconnected from their power source. And it’s both frustrating and futile, for the result is certain failure.
Unfortunately, too many people perceive prayer more as a dreary duty than a precious privilege. To pray is not to beg or to engage in wishful thinking. It is to stand before God as sons and daughters in the full confidence of our salvation and to trust Him to answer our prayers according to His perfect will.
God’s eagerness to answer prayer is reflected in the words of the apostle John: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him” (1 John 5:14-15).
True empathy, found in prayer, will open pathways to peace you hadn’t seen before or believed possible.
If you struggle with anger and want to make a commitment to channel your churning, often volatile feelings into a positive force, there is no better way to start than by having a candid conversation with God.
First, pray for discernment. As theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in his famous
Serenity Prayer:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” When our hearts and minds are open to His leading, the Spirit will guide us into all truth.
Second, pray for those with whom you are in conflict. Ask God to give you insight and understanding into why they think and behave as they do. You will certainly discover your “enemies” are only human—misguided, perhaps—but just as vulnerable to pain and fear as you are.
True empathy, found in prayer, will open pathways to peace you hadn’t seen before or believed possible.
Finally, pray for God’s will, not yours, to be done. We’ve all prayed for things and later thanked God for not answering our prayers with a yes. And we’ve all heard accounts of people attending high school reunions, seeing their former sweethearts, and thanking God for not answering the prayers voiced by their foolish young hearts years before.
Truth is, the human eye is not well adapted to see the big picture. We have trouble perceiving the value of paradox and mystery. When it comes to harnessing anger for good, what looks like a setback is sometimes the key to victory. It is important to surrender to God’s purpose no matter what.
As Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
”
That’s good advice. To “acknowledge him” refers to seeking God in prayer, seeking His perfect will in all situations, including your battle with blazing anger. God
wants
to be involved; He is eager to help and strengthen you.
How do you release your anger? First, delve deeply into your heart and honestly reflect on the pain you are holding onto. Then go to God in all humility, refusing to demand your rights and rejecting any thought of revenge, and surrender the situation and yourself—past, present, and future—to the Lord. Although you, like Anita, may feel completely powerless, in reality you have the power to release your pain and anger to Him.
The “Releasing Your Anger” Prayer
“Lord Jesus, thank You for loving me;
thank You for caring about me.
Because You know everything,
You know the strong sense of
(
hurt, injustice, fear, frustration
)
I have felt about
(
name or situation
)
.
Thank You for understanding my anger.
Right now, I release all my anger to You.
I trust You with my future and with me.
In Christ’s name I pray. Amen.”
Tangible Action: Using Anger for Good
What good would it have done for César Chávez, or Martin Luther King, Jr., or William Wilberforce (the English abolitionist who fought against slavery) to channel their anger at injustice into positive change if they had never set foot out of their houses? Not much, I’d say. Only because they stepped into society and turned angry passion into viable action do millions of us enjoy a more egalitarian world.
The same is required of you if you hope to translate your anger into positive change, if you hope to turn wishful thinking into progress you can measure. Once you know what you want to accomplish, decide what you must
do
to make it happen…and then do it.
For Anita that meant finally sharing her feelings with her motherin-law, a conversation she had avoided for years. She kept her goal in mind as she planned how and when to broach the subject, making sure the two of them would not be interrupted. She carefully scripted her initial comments to avoid making inflammatory accusations.
“I realized I could succeed in reaching my goal no matter how Patricia reacted,” Anita told me later. “Once I defined my boundaries, she was free to honor them, or not. And I was free to continue accepting old patterns of behavior, or not.
“It was so liberating! Why should I stuff my anger down and watch it turn to bitterness when I could draw strength from it instead?”
The key to Anita’s “liberation” was respecting herself enough to establish firm boundaries and enforce them, plus a willingness to act on her anger so she could reach her goal. At first, Patricia reacted as Anita feared she might. She was defensive and resistant. But Anita was undeterred, like Chávez and his farm workers on a picket line. Eventually Anita’s firm yet gentle determination paid off as Patricia admitted to being too intrusive, and apologized.
“It was like the relationship was reborn,” Anita said. “From that time on, she treated me more as an equal. She even confided for the first time how much she still grieved for her husband, and I was able to help her through it. None of that would have happened if I hadn’t trusted my anger and used it to set things right.”
As Anita surrendered her bowl of anger to God, He melted each “meddling” slip—forever.
Anger can be frightening. It can thunder and roar. It can erupt and blow, and bury your life in smoldering ash. But if you’ll resist the temptation to run from your anger—if you’ll heed it and harness its energy for good—like the engine of a Boeing 747, it can deliver the thrust you need to rise above hurt, injustice, fear, and frustration so you can soar to new heights—and even change the world!
Blacksmithing: Pyrotechnics with a Purpose
When you wield the cold steel of a wrench or a hammer, it’s easy to forget the element without which they would not exist: heat. Today, much of our technology is dependent upon precise tools and parts that were forged in a fiery inferno.
For centuries, the village iron forger, called the
blacksmith
—a name derived from the Old English word
smite
which means “to strike”—was one of the most esteemed members of any rural community. That’s because he possessed the know-how for creating tools necessary for survival: plows, weapons, armor, and more. Like an artist who masterfully swirls paint or a sculptor who molds and shapes clay, the blacksmith skillfully manages and manipulates the most feared element of all—fire—to produce a bevy of beneficial tools.

 

Before hard metals become malleable, they must be heated to a red-hot temperature roughly half their melting point. Traditionally, the blacksmith then formed the metal mass into a specified shape by striking it with a hammer as he held the mass against an anvil. When the blacksmith was satisfied with his creation, he would thrust it into cool water to solidify its shape.

 

Anger too can provide just the right amount of emotional heat to create something constructive and useful, a positive force capable of changing attitudes, correcting injustices, and channeling opportunities for Christlike growth. Like the blacksmith, who shapes metal objects, learn how to manage your fiery anger, and watch something positive and promising emerge off the anvil.

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