19 Apr Mindful Anger: Pathway to emotional freedom – lessons learned from Andrea Brandt
Anger has never been a stranger to me. Over the years it has come to visit, sometimes for short blasts, sometimes for long intervals.
I haven’t always liked these visitations.
Definitely have not liked the ways angry parts have made a mess of my inner or outer worlds. Yet through these encounters I have a glimpse of what Andrea Brandt points us to in her book Mindful Anger: a pathway to emotional freedom.
Many years ago I met Andrea in a training. Her calm, thoughtful way of being made an impression on me, knowing she was someone I wanted to follow.
Andrea’s first book 8 Keys to Eliminating Passive Aggressiveness showed me how insidious passive aggressive behavior can be. It “forced” me to look at ways I said or did things that were not in sync with who I wanted to be. Certainly those behaviors did not get me the results that I wanted in life!
This new book Mindful Anger brings a subtlety to the variety of anger styles we can have – doing all that without making any style, any angry presentation wrong.
How nice is that?
Instead, Andrea invites us to explore our angry parts, or styles, in a mindful way. She offers exercise after exercise to see what is going on.
Anger is an indication that something is wrong, and its energy fuels us to action. They key, of course, is knowing enough about how anger works and then exploring it to find out what is wrong so you can figure out the best way to correct the problem. That’s the task you will accept as you move forward in this book.
Yes. Sign me up.
This gives us a way to see into and underneath the anger. Andrea then opens up the reasons we get angry and why we might be fueled into action.
Some of the explorations are to notice if our boundaries (internal or external) are getting pushed too far, or to inquire into unmet needs that aren’t being met. Getting deeper awareness of what’s going in inside us opens the door to finding the wisdom in our anger.
Then Andrea gives an excellent way to use mindfulness (replete with exercises!) and demystifies our experience of anger.
Walking us even deeper into what happens in our bodies when we’re angry, Andrea teaches us about how to catch anger in the act. There’s actually a whole chapter (wonderful, by the way) on that.
How we can revise and release angry beliefs
Building on the body responses, because when our bodies are angry we are physiologically driven, Andrea then suggests ways that our beliefs play a role in anger. This chapter gives exercises on how to revise these old beliefs “that have outlived their value.” Tying into that is a whole chapter on “Anger and Childhood Wounds” – necessary explorations that help untangle the past from the present moment.
Of course, this well thought out and written book doesn’t leave us in the muck of our lives.
Instead Andrea gently prods us to use her five steps to mindfully release anger, invites us to move on to forgiveness and gratitude, and maybe best of all talks to us about transforming anger into communication.