Anger and Compassion

A couple of years ago I took a hiatus from Facebook and also stopped actively reading / watching the news. I kept finding myself feeling overwhelmed with anger, frustration and hopelessness each time I’d scroll through the day’s news. I was grateful to my husband who would fill me in each day on anything important that I’d missed, and was glad to be free from so much media content. As the pandemic approached and eventually came, I decided to flip the switch and rejoin the world of media consumption. It hasn’t been easy. I don’t know about you, but I find it is realllllly challenging to hear a certain leader speak without getting consumed with anger. Like, every time I see him, I just want to reach through the screen and smack him! When I have the presence of mind to breathe with my anger, I often think to myself, ‘I’ve been practicing mindfulness and compassion for over 15 years, how is he triggering me so much?!’

As things have continued to heat up, and this person has continued to make statements and choices that I see has harmful and deleterious to human existence, I’ve had a lot of opportunity to reflect on my own reactivity to him. I had a big ‘a-ha!’ recently when I was able to acknowledge to myself how very painful it felt to harbor so much anger towards him. It wasn’t like he was feeling the angry eyes or hearing the comments I was flinging at the TV. No, those were all going right back towards me! And they hurt. My stomach was in knots, my shoulders were tight, and my face was red. I was fully in fight or flight mode because of a news clip.

So, I took my anger and paused to think about why this guy might be behaving the way he was. In all likelihood, he was hurting too. What ache was he trying to fix, where in his life was he not feeling loved and secure, that he felt moved to act as he did? Just like me, he wishes to be happy. Just like me, he wishes to not suffer. Almost instantly the tension began to melt, my stomach eased, and I returned to a more natural pallor. My pause for empathy and compassion didn’t change the justified frustration I felt with this guy’s choices, but it did free up some space in me to rest in love again instead of the fear I’d been wrapped up in to that point.

I’m not always able to get to that point of empathy for someone who seems to be so damaging and disastrous to others, and during those times, I find the best remedy is to stop and give myself compassion. Can I recognize the pain I’m in and be with it long enough to see it fully without needing to fix it or immediately blame or change someone or something outside of me? There’s no way I’m going to feel empathy and compassion for someone else if I don’t first know how to have compassion for myself.

These days in the US there is a lot of outrage coming from all over. Everyone is so certain in their certainty. I think a lot of this comes from the very uncertainness of these times. It’s all the more obvious that no one can really predict what tomorrow will bring, and that’s pretty uncomfortable, even scary. Anger often feels like an easier emotion to launch into than pausing to embody and experience the fear and ickiness of uncertainty — especially when it feels like someone who could do something to make things better isn’t doing it! But a lot of times that anger ends up blocking us from metabolizing the difficult emotions that brought it about. And without doing that, there is no space for growth or moving forward.

This is in no way meant to bash or downplay the importance of anger. As an emotion, it’s just as much welcome in our experience as any other emotion. However, without really getting to know the ins and outs of our anger, just like any other emotion, it can run wild and wreak havoc. Anger though, because it is such a potent and energetically charged emotion, seems to run amuck more easily than other emotions, often giving it a bad rap. In mindfulness practice our work is to really know the anger. What does it feel like in the body? How does the breath feel with anger? How does the heart feel? What other emotions accompany it?

For me, this exploration of anger often yields surprising results. Namely in the awareness of what other emotions are there too. Anger feels like a painfully explosive mixture of fear, sadness, disappointment, impatience, frustration, disbelief, aversion, repulsion, unfairness, and plenty of other unpleasant feelings depending on the day. It’s not surprising that I’d rather not feel those feelings, and would instead like to get on my high horse and be pissed off. But when I can see the emotional load for what it is, I’m more able to tend to it and care for myself. After some lovingkindness and self-compassion practices the justified anger remains, but now I have a chance to use it as a force of love instead of one of fear. Without first caring for myself though, the anger just grows and all of those emotions get expressed less skillfully.

At times justified anger can be fuel for big changes, but without first getting to know it, what feels like justified anger is often unacknowledged fear and aversion in disguise, and is no more a tool for positive change than a weapon for self-inflicted pain.

So how do we alchemize that anger into empathy and compassion for others who don’t share our views? Like I always say, the best thing we can do with any emotion or experience is love it. Get to know it. Welcome it. Let down our guard long enough to befriend it, or at least make its acquaintance. Empathy and compassion for others arises most easily when we have first taken care of ourselves. And to take care of ourselves, we have to know what we’re experiencing. How do we recognize and respond to pain and suffering in someone else if we can’t first recognize and respond to it in ourselves?

I’ve shared other practices in the past about getting to know our pain, and I encourage you to try that practice. And today, I’ve got a guided meditation about self-compassion for you. I find this practice can be helpful in recognizing the pain I’m in and learning from it how best to care for myself. I hope that the practice is beneficial to you and that you’re able to use it the next time you watch the news, or feel angry or upset about anything else.

May we all find peace. May we all find freedom from our suffering.