Anger – Is It Better to Suppress Anger or to Control It?
Anger – Is it better to suppress anger or to control it? What do you say?
But, the best solution is not to get angry at all !
We were shocked to see a young mother beating her son, who is 3 or 4 years old, very badly. She was shouting at him and beating him with a water bottle which was full of water. Then, we came to know that the boy had got lost in the crowd and after searching for a long time they had found him. In that anxiety and helplessness, she got angry with that kid and started beating him uncontrollably. This happened a few months ago when we went with my family to Tirupathi.
One more incident, one evening when we were in a restaurant, I was just watching outside. A few young boys were chatting happily and making fun of others. All of a sudden, I do not know exactly what happened, they started beating each other and it became a big fight. One of them hit the other very hard and punched him on his eyes resulting in a cut on his eyebrows. How much anger he had developed to create a bleeding cut just by hitting using his hand!
Please come up with incidents preferably from your own life/friends/ family members, in what kind of a situation did the anger give rise? What form did it take? Was it a sign of dominance or helplessness? Observe yourself and others in the next few days, and reflect on your observations.
Anger has no age bar😊. You might have seen a small kid getting angry when he/she is denied something he/she asked for. Everyone(young/old) gets angry sometimes.! A study reports, almost everyone in prison says he/she did not commit that crime intentionally, in a spur of anger they had done and then they are regretting now for having got angry uncontrollably which has changed their entire life.
We can see, in general, there are some shallow reasons for getting angry:
Frustration: When we are unable to do what we want to do even after trying over a long period, frustration might set in. This is the most important cause of anger.
That too when someone else does not put in the effort as much as we do and achieve the same, our frustration goes high. The worst case is when we cannot do that with all our efforts but the other cracks it without much effort, that’s all, our frustration reaches its peak 😊
Irritation: When someone or something bothers us. We generally tend to get irritated and hence angry.
Jealousy: It may lead to frustration, which again leads to anger.
Ego: People with ego problems tend to get very angry when someone/thing challenges their ego (or superiority complex)
In each of the above cases, it would be generally observed that the main cause was helplessness. Wasn’t it?
Sometimes, we get angry at the spur of the moment for some reason. But, that anger is only short-lived – Instantaneous
In some cases, anger may last longer and its impact is more harmful.
Now, a question arises! Is it better to suppress anger or to control it? What do you think?
It is alright not to express anger, as it would make a situation worse. However, suppressing it forcefully will tend to accumulate it inside which would burst out at a later time.
By control of anger, we mean that even when we become angry, we do not express it, and contain inside the anger from spreading.
The best solution is not to get angry at all. Anger does not help anyway.
Note that we are not talking about suppressing nor even controlling the anger, but not getting angry at all in the first place.
But how do we achieve it?
Developing Understanding, i.e., right understanding, which means seeing things as they are in their true form.
I will talk about Right Understanding in detail sometime later!
