Anna* was prone to anger. Not too often. But at certain moments anger took hold of her so completely that she tore everything to shreds. Both what she generally liked and what she did not.
She tore apart the people she loved too. In those moments she felt no difference. She simply could not stop, think, or feel anything other than anger. Anna regretted it deeply afterwards.
But when an outburst of anger happened, she simply had no will to do anything about it.
Attempts to Control Anger Through Willpower
It cost Anna a great deal, both in relationships and in her career. She looked for ways to deal with the situation and tried many things. First, she became convinced that approaches in which the key element was willpower did not work.
Anna understood a great deal, intellectually worked through strategies and plans of action, but they were useless. Because bringing them into play in the moment of an outburst was simply impossible — as already mentioned, will was unavailable then.
The failures of intellectual methods based on an effort of will brought shame and, over time, depressive episodes.
Mindfulness and the Emergence of the Observing Part
Anna might have allowed for the possibility that she was possessed by an evil demon, but she was an atheist. So she looked for salvation in something that had at least some evidence behind it. Mindfulness brought relief during depressive episodes. So it became a permanent part of her life.
At some point Anna noticed another “side effect” of meditation — she began to become aware of herself during moments of anger. In the sense that she began to clearly feel that part of herself which understood what was happening and understood where it was leading. That part suffered and was horrified by the destructive action of the anger. But she still had no will to stop what was happening.
She still seemed to fall into another dimension, into a film where she was simultaneously a powerless spectator and a demon of anger acting according to a script that could not be interrupted.
Anna began to wonder how to connect these two dimensions, her ordinary reality and the hell of her anger. She thought that if she could bring even a tiny grain of her will into that place, she might have a chance. But how?
The Body as a Bridge Between States
Providence did not abandon her. One day on a train she saw a woman reading The Body Keeps the Score. Anna half thought, half fantasized that maybe her body could help her and become a bridge between the dimensions.
She spoke to the woman who was reading the book. The woman turned out to be a body-oriented psychotherapist. Anna was encouraged by her account that bodily sensation can sometimes remain accessible when the capacity for reflection and conscious self-control narrows sharply.
But Anna did not dare to fully immerse her in her problem. And the question of exactly how to connect them remained open. Intellectual ways, through consciousness and will, Anna already knew this for certain, were no good.
Then she went deeper into the literature on meditation. She felt that if she managed to focus on her breathing during an outburst of anger, her rage would die down. But how was she supposed to focus?
Meditation and the Search for Access to Bodily Sensations
One day at a retreat she asked a meditation teacher this question. She asked it from the heart. She badly wanted to find an answer, a simple one, not overcomplicated, one that gave her something to do — she no longer had the strength to keep thinking. But she was also ready to accept the absence of an answer. I do not know whether this particular thing mattered. But it was there in the story Anna told — so it is here too.
The teacher looked at her carefully. He noticed a bracelet of green agates on her wrist. Anna loved it; it was handmade, a gift. “When you meditate, hold it in your hands. Move through the stones. Feel them with your fingers, one after another. They are all round, but not in exactly the same way. Feel their unevenness, their roughness. Feel how they move along the thread. If you can do that while keeping your focus on the breath — do it. If you forget about the breath, that’s fine, just keep going. Hold it in your hands in ordinary life as often as possible. Walking through the office — hold it. Meeting — hold it. Coming into the house after work — hold it.”
“Well, strange, but why not try?” she thought. And she began meditating while feeling every stone of the bracelet.
When Consciousness Caught Onto the Sensations
One day she “exploded” with the bracelet in her hands. She had asked the children to clean the house; she could not do it herself because of work — she came home late. And now, yet another day, it had not been done. This was one of those episodes that tormented her. She was already screaming, she was in the hell of her anger.
But her fingers, her body, were moving through the stones. One after another, almost independently of consciousness. At some point consciousness caught onto the sensations. In the next moment she was able to feel the cool air entering her nostrils, noticed a slight tickle and the warmth of the exhale.
After a few breaths she was thrown out of the anger. She sat there emptied out and pleased, having cut her anger off in mid-sentence. The surprised children peeked out of their rooms. Inside, she smiled at them.**
This did not become a final victory. Anger did not want to surrender. Later it began taking back what it had become used to. What had happened became a battle won. But it was not yet victory in the war.
But Anna now had will, and the feeling that she could learn how to deal with her anger. She certainly was not going to give up.
About the next battle — in the next article.
* — the name is fictional, the story is real, and permission to publish it was obtained. Any other similarities are coincidental.
** — this is one person’s story; I have no data or grounds for assuming how effective it would be for others.