Faith G. Harper - Unfuck Your Anger: Using Science to Understand Frustration, Rage, and Forgiveness

Unfuck your ANGER

Using Science to Understand Frustration, Rage, and Forgiveness

Part of the 5 Minute Therapy Series

Dr. Faith Harper, 2016, 2020

This edition Microcosm Publishing, 2020

First edition, first published 2016

Second edition, first published Jan 10, 2020

ISBN 978-1-62106-055-0

This is Microcosm #337

Illustrations by Trista Vercher

Book design by Joe Biel

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

N othing pisses me off more than being angry.

Pun intended, obviously, but in all seriousness? I really do hate myself for getting angry. It feels awful. I dont like that rush of feeling activating my body. I worry that I will fall out of control. That I will turn into the kind of person who hurts others. The kind of person who has hurt ME in the past.

Ive had over a decade of mindful meditation practice. Ive worked in mental health even longer than that. I feel like I should have transcended anger by now, though I know that it doesnt work that way. On the other hand, I do think that awareness in and of itself is what has best prevented me from letting my anger hurt others and myself.

Most everyone has been irritated by their own anger, right? Im not alone in this. And while weve all seen some ridiculous, unreasonable, pissed-off person in action and thought And HERE is the problem with the world, most of the anger we deal with day in and day out is not that person raging on the evening news, or the person who loses their shit in the middle of the grocery store parking lot. In reality, there arent that many of those over-the-top, out-of-control pissed off people out there (although it feels like it some days).

In reality? Most angry people? Are just... us.

Normal, everyday people who are not walking around the world with a chip on their shoulder labeled entitlement. Instead, were normal everyday people who are just in a lot of pain. People who are overwhelmed by what is going on in our lives or in the world at large, and are responding to these feelings of disempowerment by trying to reclaim some sense of agency. People who werent allowed the vulnerability of softer emotions like sadness and fear, so they sublimated it into anger. People who grew up in households that were so violently angry that they have never seen anger used as anything other than a weapon of abuse. And people who struggle against feeling angry in general, trying desperately not to react with anger, either towards others or toward ourselves.

One of the questions I get all the time is this:

When is anger a valid emotion?

And the answer is the easiest one ever.

Always.

Thats because anger isnt the problem.

And if right now you are thinking something along the lines of Yeah, Ive had my nose broken by someone else in the past so fuck off with telling me anger isnt a problem. I get that. And also? Me, too. But the other persons anger wasnt the problem. The problem lay in how their anger was weaponized against you.

How we utilize that anger is what matters. Feeling and acknowledging anger isnt something to be avoided. We dont have to suppress our anger to keep from reacting in harmful ways.

Having a better understanding of anger has the potential to help you in many facets of your life.

In physics there is something called the observer principle. This refers to the phenomenon of how simply observing something has an effect on it. The minute you start watching something, the thing that you are watching changes. If you are going to watch some cells on a slide under a microscope, you turn the microscope light on, right? And the cells are going to react to that light.

The same is true of our own emotions. Once we start paying attention to our feelings, thoughts, and physiology we are already starting to make huge changes in how they affect us and how we interact with the world. We are shining a light on our own internal shenanigans. Those big shifts in emotional health start with flipping the light on.

Being a therapist who understands anger doesnt mean I dont ever get angry. Nor does being in therapy. Nor does being a Buddhist. Or just being someone who continuously works on my shit, as exhausting as it is to do so. Maybe some people transcend... but Im not one of them and I dont think Im remotely close to being one of them. But all of those identities have helped me observe my anger differently so that I dont weaponize it into harmful action. And Im happy with that result. So Im sharing what I know.

In this book, we are going to discuss the common triggers of anger, using some new research on the brains rage circuits. Then we are going to look at what happens in our body when we have an anger response. After the science-y part of what anger is, were gonna do the unfuckening part. Were gonna go through all those light-shining activities that help us understand our unique and personal anger responses, and discuss how to channel our anger into better relationships or barnstorming social action. And Im gonna share all the work Ive done in my life around learning how important forgiveness is for my own-damn-self. We are going to discuss ways of living with our very real and valid anger responses without losing our shit or swallowing our rage like so much poison. Because if feeling anger is OK, you can be angry and still be OK.

Another important note: Im going to talk a lot about how anger is a response . Not just to situations and other emotions... but also in connection with other emotional health issues. And because that is true, it means we cant talk about anger without talking about the possibility of underlying mood disorders or anxiety disorders. And because Ive written books on those subjects, some of the information from those books have been revisited in this one. Not to be that asshole who is padding her book with lots of fluff and bullshit, but because I hate nothing more than when an author says, Hey you should go buy my other five books to really understand this shit.