The words of our responsive reading, taken from Buddhist tradition, offer a heartening hope: that we might live with "boundless love for all the world," with "love unrestrained, without hate or enmity," never wishing "evil to anyone at all."

But then when we signal our interest in moving into the right-hand lane, so we may leave the highway at the next exit, some fellow traveler just behind us in that lane chooses to speed up into the space we need, forcing us to miss the exit and have go an extra mile and double back, contemplating all the while the forms of evil we wish this idiot might receive.

Or our finely-tuned plans for a happy or productive day are undone by the apparent incompetence of our garage mechanics, the MBTA, Amtrak, the airlines, or whoever we were counting on to get us where we wanted to be.

Or, more seriously, people we know and love frustrate our expectations: as a parent, our teenager doesn’t come home on time, or as a teenager, our parents are way too restrictive and too unforgiving. Annoying things our spouse did that we were sure would go away, haven’t yet, and it’s been five years. Our boss is an idiot, or our employees are. And while we may not wish them evil, boundless love is not exactly what we feel.

What we feel is frustration and anger, even rage. Acted upon, these emotions can result in harm and hurt, even grievous harm and hurt, psychological bruises struck deep in someone’s sense of self, physical bruises, too … and even worse, even death.

This week has been designated nationally as one in which to focus on the terrible problem of domestic abuse, the damage people inflict on their partners, parents, children and others who live in their homes. There will be an area-wide vigil on Saturday evening, beginning at the Community United Methodist Church in Cochituate at seven and leading to a service at St. Zepherin’s at 7:30.

It is good to hold in our hearts and in the public attention those who suffer the savage results of anger terribly out of hand. We have talked about this here before, citing the awful statistics, calling for a more serious social effort to condemn and curtail the violence.

Anger touches all our lives, not just as people who are subject to the anger of others, but as people who bear and express it ourselves. It is important to condemn violent anger’s most awful results, but it is not enough; we need to consider how anger works in us as well, and how our society deals with violence in general.

The thing about anger is, it is a part of who we are as humans. We have inherited from thousands of centuries of evolution, in which it played a role in helping our ancestors survive. "With anger blood flows to the hands, making it easier to grasp a weapon or strike a foe," Daniel Goleman observes [p. 6]; "heart rate increases, and a rush of hormones such as adrenaline generates a pulse of energy strong enough for vigorous action." Very handy in the prehistoric environment; less so today.

Some people are quick to anger and others are slower.  Some people are more internal with their anger and others are external.  Carol Tavris [103] suggests that our responses are learned reactions in part due to our social environment and our genetic make up.  In one study she sites people who were more passive about their expression of anger had a negative physical reaction when told they had to be more assertive.  And conversely people who were more aggressive in their anger expression had a negative physical reaction when told they had to be more passive.  However both groups, with practice and social rewards, learned to behave in the exact opposite way and had the exact opposite physical reactions; the passives learned to feel good when they were aggressive and the aggressives learned to feel good, in time, when they were passive.

The question is, how to respond to the anger we feel, large or small, easy or hard, slow or quick. The fashionable answer of thirty years ago was that anger was a healthy, positive thing, and it deserved expression. The best way of dealing with anger was to let it out, the worst thing was to bottle it up inside.

Essentially every book written and every study done on the subject in the last twenty years has gone to pains to point out that this earlier answer turned out to be largely wrong – not altogether wrong, but mostly so [see  Tavris]. Giving in to anger only leads to more anger, not less. One becomes a more anger-prone person the more one indulges one’s anger.

Which is hardly surprising. As someone once asked, we know that love does not decrease the more we express it, why should it be different with anger. Well, it isn’t.

There are a few parts of the earlier analysis that were right. First, bottling up anger really isn’t a good idea. Venting your anger isn’t the answer, but neither is repressing it. Goleman quotes a Tibetan teacher who said, "when asked how best to handle anger: ‘Don’t suppress it. But don’t act on it.’" [65] Or perhaps, act on it in healthy ways. We will get to those.

And second, anger is a good thing in some ways. It may be a sign that we should pay attention to something about our circumstances more attentively and with greater thought and understanding. Acted on appropriately, it can goad us into action we should take but might wish to avoid, like finally confronting a neighbor, co-worker, or family member whose behavior is upsetting, abusive, or wrong. Anger can kindle and stoke the flames of our conscience and our struggles for greater social justice.

In the new, more balanced way of seeing things, anger is not shameful or wrong in itself. It is natural, even healthy, but it is a powerful emotion with dangerous potential and it has to be managed and controlled.

Venting is rarely the right answer. By venting I mean when I feel anger in me, I let it out at the person who’s provoking it, then and there, full force. Venting not only increases one’s anger, it hurts other people, and it often provokes anger in them in return.

But the feeling can be so strong! What to do? Answers abound, and they’re pretty simple, even obvious, but it seems like they’re worth an airing in this week when we want to focus attention on the control of domestic violence, because they’re the sorts of things people need to have in mind before they go do something rash.

These are pretty basic things, like Goleman’s saying that as early as you can in the process of losing your temper, try to picture the disturbing event or behavior in some less negative light. [62] Too often, our tendency is to conclude that we are under some sort of attack [60], that things are transpiring as they are because someone wishes us ill, that our self-esteem is imperiled. Our animal instincts kick in, anger rises, anger builds on anger, we can lose perspective, objectivity, and even control. Long before, we need to "seize on and challenge the thoughts that trigger the surges of anger…." [64]

Goleman is drawing on the work of one Dolf Zillman, whose studies showed there was a second way of preventing anger from overwhelming our reason: take a break. Cool off. Do something distracting, and eating and shopping don’t count: you can go on building your anger; better TV, movies, reading [63], or exercise.

You may still want and even need to relate the content of your discontent, but after your body’s chemistry is more normal, and your mind is less controlled by emotion. In the meantime, as your mother may have told you, hit a pillow.

A new violence prevention program for teens suggests a five step process beginning as Goleman does, (1) Recognize the angry feelings, this being the most important step.  It requires that we be tuned into our bodies so we know the physical signs and can eventually learn our triggers.  (2) Calm down – this is the old fashioned count to ten, move away, take deep breaths, use positive talking to yourself.  (3). Think about what you can do. Think about all the possible choices and consequences before deciding what to do.  Ask others for advice if need be.  Figure out how to be fair and safe.  (4) Identify the deeper feelings – what else is present besides anger?  How do they play into the situation and how can they be honored and acknowledged too?  And finally, (5) Express your feelings to the person,  using I statements, and then think about what worked well and what didn’t.  It’s a long process, but one that changes habits that have become destructive.

One important piece to remember is we are responsible for our anger and its effect on the people we love.  There was a time when we were encouraged to believe we are not responsible for our effect on others. To a degree that is true -- we can not live our lives wrapped in concern for our effect on people. However, when it comes to the kind of harm, emotional and physical, that aggression can cause, we must take responsibility for our actions.

Such measures are essential if we are to live with ourselves. Goleman notes that "Of all the moods that people want to escape, rage seems to be the most intransigent; [research] found anger is the mood people are worst at controlling. Indeed, anger is the most seductive of negative emotions; the self-righteous inner monologue that propels it along fills the mind with the most convincing arguments for venting rage." It has a "seductive, persuasive power…." [59]

But along with all its other negative effects, it kills. And I mean those people who will be remembered at the vigil on Saturday evening, but I also mean you and me, for our own lives shall last less long if we are pawns of this emotion, prone to "the power of anger to damage the heart." [Goleman 170] Studies confirm it: "hostility … puts people at risk." [170]

Let us stay with Daniel Goleman a little longer as we close, because his message takes on a religious aspect. Responding to the correlation between anger and heart disease, he writes that "The good news is that chronic anger need not be a death sentence: hostility is a habit that can change…. [One] anger-control training resulted in a second-heart-attack rate 44% lower than those who had not tried to change their hostility. [Such a program] teaches … mindfulness of anger as it begins to stir, the ability to regulate it once it has begun, and empathy. [Empathy!] Patients … are encouraged to purposefully substitute reasonable thoughts for cynical, mistrustful ones during stressful situations…. For frustrating encounters, they learn the ability to see things from the other person’s perspective – empathy is a balm for anger.

"As [the researcher Dr. Redford] Williams told me, ‘The antidote to hostility is to develop a more trusting heart.’" [171-2]

Unitarians and Universalists have been inclined toward trusting hearts from their beginnings, albeit with some caution voiced along the way. The world does have its evil, and cause for anger and action. But mostly the universe, our auto mechanic, our neighbors, our friends, the shoe repair shop, the folks here at church, our family members, God, and even strangers on the street are not trying to do us in, but only trying as best they can to muddle through, like us.

If we can hold to such a faith, guarded though it must be in the real world, which does not yet deserve our "boundless love," perhaps we can at least achieve some freedom from our own hostilities and our unmerited sense of anger.

Let us save our anger for tyrants, bigotry, injustice, and hate. Let us learn to live with, and manage, and keep in control those angers we feel for those most close around us. And let us even imagine that such "love unrestrained, without hate or enmity," never wishing "evil to anyone at all," might some day be expanded to a "boundless love for all the world" and deservedly so.
 

Books used:
Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books, 1995)
Melvin Kinder, Mastering Your Moods (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994)
Harriet Goldhor Lerner, The Dance of Anger (New York: Harper & Row, 1985)
Men For Change, Healthy Relationships: A Violence-Prevention Curriculum (Halifax, NS: The Halifax County-Bedford District School Department, 1994)
Carol Tavris, Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982)
Neil Clark Warren, Make Anger Your Ally (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1983)
 

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