Of Anger and Helplessness
For far too many years, I felt alienated because of my lack of anger. As a young man, I saw first-hand the results of outward, destructive anger and vowed not to resemble that crowd. Anger would give me anxiety, and I’d convert one negative energy for another. I would practice various forms of avoidance and escapism not to be externally angry. In my efforts to avoid anger, I internalized it all without understanding what I was doing. I felt helpless. Helplessness is the other side of coin as anger and they feed one another endlessly if you let them.
In my meditations, I developed an understanding of what anger is at its core. Anger is the mechanism to protect. Through feeling angry, we are given the immediate energy needed to act towards, or in response to, something important in the here and now. Our Fight-or-Flight responses are provided instantaneous agency through anger. Considering the speed at which all this may happen, we may not always understand what we wish to protect initially. All too often, an action is taken before a thought is given to it. Only when the dust settles, do we stop to understand what transpired and have the space for other emotions to rush in and fill the void left behind by the absence of anger. By that point, the damage is done, sometimes irrevocably.
What is anger that is unactionable? Where does the energy go if not in a reaction to a stimulus? It becomes helplessness if not given another appropriate outlet. Helplessness is the inability to protect what is important to us and offers fuel to anger. Whereas anger is quick and decisive, but at times blind, helplessness knows precisely where the focus lies yet cannot impact the outcome. Helplessness lingers and festers, unable to solve the problem that created it. One side of the coin yields the other if not addressed directly.
How does one escape the cycle of anger and helplessness? The short answer is being present and mindful, but the theory’s execution is more problematic when needed. We have lesser control over our emotions but more significant control over what we do with them. We can still be impacted by our environment but steer our reactions to it. We lay groundwork not to regret our actions later by avoiding the impulse to knee-jerk react to enraging things. In processing before responding, we limit the number of situations that transition from anger to helplessness.
We are human; we are living, breathing entities imperfect by the nature of constant change. Even when attempting to understand something before responding to it, we will continue to make mistakes. Our understanding is limited and flawed, and we all have areas of our life where the need to react overwhelms the desire to process. As we narrow our focus to what is genuinely essential, the likelihood of angry outbursts diminishes.
Regrettably, most of us have instances in our past wherein the opportunity to manage a reaction has long since passed. These areas of life, whether we were the villain or the victim, have already transitioned into helplessness. We wish we could go back in time and do things differently or are unable to let them remain in the past. We want to protect ourselves from something, ourselves or another, but understand the impossibility of it in the present. If we let these instances remain in our active thoughts, we will be cored out from the inside as helplessness yields new anger with no where to express itself. The new anger causes more problems, and the cycle continues. I was locked in this cycle of the old ruining the new, and the lack of ability to fix the new became more weight to carry. Eventually, my strength faded and I was forced to lighten my load. I only pursued this path after all attempts to bear more weight failed.
To accomplish the feat of putting things down, I had to be honest that I am not the source of all problems. In my desire to help others, not only did I ignore myself, but I was perpetually angry at my failures to resolve the world’s issues. I set up impossible goals for myself and punished myself for failing to accomplish tasks beyond my control. In failing, my feeling of helplessness from not solving problems (that were not mine to solve) generated more internal anger. As I actively avoided anger, I became either anxious or depressed and devolved into a state of being utterly incapable of functioning.
Ultimately, I had to forgive myself for taking on other peoples’ problems and allowing myself to fall into that trap. My desire to help has never wavered, but the responsibility I put on myself has. My focus now is considerably more on understanding what I want to protect and what is within my power to accomplish. I can only control so few things, and I try to maximize them instead of yearning for things I cannot affect. The relieving of cosmic and infinite responsibilities enables me not to feel helpless all the time, which removes a primary source of anger. The result is a calmer me, with more space to react to what is truly important.
The process of forgiveness and living in the present is an arduous one with many setbacks. I continuously feel I’ve only taken a couple of steps on a road that dips beyond the horizon, but I try to remain grateful I made any at all. I still find myself rapidly overwhelmed, and my capacity to stay as calm on the inside as I appear on the outside is not where I want it to be. I still have more areas of my life to forgive, or at least put down with the understanding the kind of closure I seek is impossible, but putting any weight down makes taking steps forward easier. I am a momentum-based person, one quickly swept off my feet, but I will continue to try to move in the direction I choose rather than make up the ground I lost by reacting poorly.
18 Sept 2021
~Monk Anchorwind