Getting Over Getting Mad: Positive Ways to Manage Anger in Your Most Important Relationships (6 page)

Everyone enjoys a drumbeat. A drum is the most natural musical instrument. And when you're mad, nothing helps right away as much as connecting with the primal part of your being. Drumming helps you get out of your head and back into your body. Any kind of drum will do—just get a good steady rhythm going. If you don't have a drum, a round oatmeal box and the palm of your hand makes a wonderful noise. Beat gently. Not in an erratic way, but in a disciplined, measured manner. Spend at least ten minutes, and soon the beat will start going on its own. When you feel the drumbeat, your body starts to respond, you sway, you start falling into the beat, you move with the beat. Notice that when the beat of your heart and the beat of your drum are in step, you feel exhilarated. Your racing thoughts are slowing down. You can feel your body.

Although you can't learn to play when you're mad, playing can help you avoid getting mad in the first place. Many people who sit in front of computers all day are numb from the neck down. They know that they need to get back into their bodies. One way to do that is through drumming, playing the piano, or dancing.

It's hard for people with low self-esteem and blocked emotions to express rhythm. If you've been taught that you're dirty, you can't move your body to the beat. Dancing or learning to play a musical instrument teaches discipline while tapping into sensuality.

As children many of us had horrendous experiences with music that have tainted our view of ourselves. A choir director told one of her junior high students, “Just move your lips because you can't sing.” Another told an eight-year-old aspiring drummer, “Playing drums is unladylike.” Separated from our sense of rhythm, ashamed of our bodies, uncomfortable with our sensuality, it's amazing that we're doing as well as we are. William Congreve said, “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” By incorporating music into your life you can change your hostile energy. Music gives you a positive way to feel what you're feeling without hurting yourself or others; it can smooth your ruffled edges. By expressing yourself through music, you're demonstrating a willingness to move forward, to let go of negative and hurtful behavior, and to find healthy ways to face the things that upset you. Music is a natural stress reducer, a good joy maker; it's been shown to lower blood pressure and alleviate depression.

Make a tape or CD of the music that instantly elevates your mood, then next time you're annoyed or frustrated, play it and give yourself a lift. Sing in the shower. Join a choir or go to a concert, and you'll no longer feel so lonely.

Music is a communal thing. Perhaps the lack of belonging and lack of community that we're all feeling contributes to the rise of angry acts. Music brings people together, makes them joyous, lifts them up. Do you suppose that if we could make more music together, be more comfortable with our bodies and rhythm, that there would be less violence?

Sing a song, learn to play an instrument, dance until you can't stand up. Then notice where anger has gone.

The tears that come with anger are cleansing. Crying is an energy phenomenon. Your emotions have been frozen, and suddenly they're thawing. Be happy about it. Crying releases so much pent-up energy that by the time you're finished you feel relieved, calmer, more at ease. It's as if the burden you've been carrying has been washed away by a river of tears.

I almost always cry when I'm mad. I used to feel ashamed about it, but I don't mind as much since I discovered that crying is actually good for the looks. That well-hidden fact is proven again and again in my women's groups, where crying is an honorable part of the agenda. When group members experience the benefits of weekly crying jags, they stop wearing mascara to the sessions. We first noticed the improvement in looks after Grace had a crying episode that lasted twenty minutes. Her husband had been laid off from his job at Boeing, and with three children to support money was tight. Christmas was around the corner and her youngest son needed oral surgery on his front teeth, which had been knocked out that afternoon in a skate board disaster. The dentist told her that she could pay in cash or charge it. Her credit card was maxed out, she was stressed out; life was looking pretty bleak. “It will work out, it always does,” she cried, “but right now I don't know how.” The financial burden threw her over the edge. “I hate dentists and teeth,” she yelled. As she paced the floor, Grace recalled how her brothers held her down while her abusive stepdad pulled out two of her front teeth with pliers. Her horror story caught us all off guard. We listened in shock as she cried, “He pulled my head back by my hair, forced my mouth open and yanked out my teeth. I've never told anyone; for some reason I'm been ashamed about it.” Grace cried and swore like a crusty old sea captain. She blew her noise, wiped the smeared mascara from her cheeks, sat down, and apologized, “I'm sorry,” she said meekly. “I look awful when I cry.” She sniffed and dried her eyes with a tissue.

“Your eyes are red, but you don't look awful,” Joan said. “Your face looks softer.”

Amy agreed, “You look so sweet.”

“Your eyes are wide open,” Linda piped in. “And you look younger.”

“Crying is cheaper than a facelift,” Grace laughed. “Since it's all I can afford, I'll have to stick with it.”

Sobbing melts away the scowl lines. After a good cry your jaw and brow lines relax; the tightness in your face melts away, and you look
softer, rejuvenated, and younger.

Tears are beautiful; they come from your core. When you cry, you start feeling that you're a mess because your identity is shaken. And as you cry, you become vulnerable, more open. Then laughter is possible. If you can really cry, one day you will really laugh. Tears and laughter are interlinked. Crying will help you relieve your tensions; laughter will help you dance and sing. If the first process has started, the second is not far away.

Crying is good for your looks.

The pain of life can sometimes be so sharp that there's nothing left to do but scream. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross is well known for her work with death and dying. In her workshops she advocates screaming. I've witnessed a hundred group participants, who'd lost a loved one or were dying themselves, one by one in front of a room full of strangers hit a mattress with a rubber hose and scream. In her lectures Elizabeth talked about the benefits of cathartic screaming versus masking the screams with tranquilizers. If you can scream instead of deadening yourself, you might avoid years of torture. Primal Scream Therapy is based on screaming away the pain of birth and childhood.

Remember the famous scene in the movie Network in which the man throws open the window and shouts from the top of his lungs, “I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore”? Well, perhaps you have felt that way too. Something has disturbed your peace and now you want to disturb the peace. Step outside and shout loudly to the heavens. It's OK to raise your voice even if the neighbors may wonder what is going on, and at least you won't be shouting at your loved ones. If you roar from deep within your belly, you might be surprised at how empowered you'll feel.

Taking responsibility for anger by raising your voice in the shower is far better than raising your voice at strangers, friends, and loved ones. Open your jaws widely and let it out. You don't have to go into the shower to scream, but I find that water running over my aching body is soothing. Let it all out. Feel the sensation of the water running over your head and down your body as you release the pain you've held in far too long. You're not hurting anyone, and you're healing yourself. You're cleansing your body inside and out.

A cathartic scream is therapeutic as long as it isn't directed at anyone.

Have you ever cried out in anger, moaned in pain, wailed, sunk to the bottom of despair? Have you ever heard wolves or coyotes howling at the full moon? Have you ever wanted to join in the chorus? If you have, then you know the cleansing power of wailing. It's a melancholy hymn and, like singing the blues, it makes you feel better. It's a meditation. A call to pay attention, be conscious, an invitation to wake up. Howling at the moon might cause your neighbors to think of you as a bit eccentric, but so what? Howling brings peace—people stop and listen, haunting silence fills the air. Howling meditation releases the clutter in your mind. And that's worth any embarrassment you might endure.

After graduating from college, Scott went back home to live with his parents. He broke up with his girlfriend and agonized over what to do next. “I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I was working in a temporary job at a nonprofit organization. I was living with my less-than-understanding father, and since my attitude kept getting worse, it was making my already tenuous living situation very shaky.

I'd been trying to keep a stiff upper lip, but one day, all the pressures came to bear upon my “pre-identity” psyche and I couldn't take it any more. I walked into the backyard, got down on my hands and knees, and for a good ten minutes I bawled my eyes out. I couldn't stop, and I bawled some more. In an ironic and touching moment, my dog came over and licked my face as if to say, “I'm your only friend right now, but I'm here for you.”

While lying on the broken concrete I had the thought and prayer (at that time my thoughts and prayers were one) that my elevator couldn't go any lower. I told God he could do whatever he wanted. I was broken and humbled.

The outgrowth was a new beginning. “Miraculously, my identity began to form,” Scott remembers. “An identity not dependent on my father's approval or wishes for what my life should look like, but my own identity.” Eventually Scott figured out a career direction and moved out on his own, married, bought a house, and found a great job. “But,” he says, “it was that breakthrough moment that allowed me to become me. It was a shedding of something akin to youth's eggshell.”

Any birth is painful, and we all go through birthing pains throughout life: those moments of agony when, as Scott puts it, “my elevator can't go any lower.” Dark nights of the soul, existential fury, the blues and melancholy, hopeless dejection, pity parties, despondency, and angst are like birthing pains that free us from a shell that not longer fits so that we can grow into our new self.

Wailing will help you relieve your tensions.