How To Process Rage, Healthily

We’ve written before about managing various emotions, including “negative” ones. We put that in “scare quotes” because they also all have positive aspects, that are just generally overshadowed by the fact that the emotions themselves are not pleasant. But for example…

We evolved our emotions, including the “negative” ones, for our own benefit as a species:

• Anger keeps us safe by protecting us from threats
• Stress keeps us safe by making sure we take important situations seriously
• Disgust keeps us safe by helping us to avoid things that might cause disease
• Anxiety keeps us safe by ensuring we don’t get complacent
• Guilt keeps us safe by ensuring we can function as a community
• Sadness keeps us safe by ensuring we value things that are important to us, and learn to become averse to losing them
• …and so on

You can read more about how to turn these off (or rather, at least pause them) when they’re misfiring and/or just plain not convenient, here:

The Off-Button For Your Brain

While it’s generally considered good to process feelings instead of putting them aside, the fact is that sometimes we have to hold it together while we do something, such that we can later have an emotional breakdown at a convenient time and place, instead of the supermarket or bank or office or airport or while entertaining houseguests or… etc.

Today though, let’s talk about how to actually process the first one, anger. Or, in its extreme form, rage.

All the rage

We’re going to use this word because although anger and rage may be considered synonyms, the latter conveys an extra meaning, which is that it is all-consuming on an emotional level.

• A person experiencing anger may write an angry message in response to a news article they read online
• A person experiencing rage more likely threw their phone down and cannot compose a message at this time

There are two common ways that people will try to deal with feelings of rage, and both of them can cause problems:

1. The first is repression, or suppression, more colloquially called “keeping a lid on it” or, less favorably, “bottling it up”.
2. The second is expression, or acting out, and may involve such things as screaming one’s rage or punching a pillow.

Let’s look a those one by one…

Bottling it up

As we mentioned earlier, sometimes we must put our feelings aside for a moment, but if we never get back to them, never process them, then either they will simply cause further problems down the line, which come in two main forms:

1. An unplanned explosion when something becomes too much (a person “finally losing it” upon being subjected to “the last straw”)
2. Somatic (bodily) expression of the unprocessed emotions (physical tension, autoimmune disease, heart problems, ulcers, and so forth)

Letting it out

Punching a pillow, screaming, breaking disposable things (e.g. bottles, plates, etc willingly sacrificed to one’s rage) are certainly more healthy than, saying, beating one’s partner, or child, or taking other such violent actions against others.

It’s also more healthy than the self-harm that some may otherwise engage in when one’s rage is directed towards oneself.

However, it’s still not great, because often it will only enhance the feeling of the rage, without actually processing, which can exacerbate the underlying emotion.

Anyone who’s had a violently abusive partner, or parent, will be able to attest that that person did not become any safer, and certainly not any more emotionally healthy, after a violent outburst.

So, what to actually do about it?

Embodied awareness

The trick is to experience the rage, and observe that feeling without getting lost in it.

See also: Answering The Most Difficult Question: How Are You? ← this is important, because sometimes it’s easy to get so caught up in an emotion that we are effectively nothing more than a conduit for the emotion, rather than a conscious mind experiencing an emotion—which latter is what we need to be.

Another good tool for this (i.e. in addition to the method we described in the above-linked article, which we do heartily recommend checking out) is the RAIN tool with which you may already be familiar, and/but now we’ll discuss in the specific context of rage:

• Recognizing: becoming aware of what you are experiencing; a lot of the time we go through life in autopilot, but for this we’re going to need to “snap out of it” for a moment and be fully awake to what we are experiencing.
• Accepting: “OK, so, I’m experiencing rage”. There’s no point in denying it, or being defensive about it; these things won’t help you. For now, just accept it.
• Investigating: “Why am I experiencing this rage?” Maybe there is an obvious reason, maybe you need to dig for a reason—or dig deeper for the real reason. Often it may be because of something going against some strongly-held value, or else it might be piquing some insecurity that we have. Important: your feelings may be rational or irrational. That’s fine. This is a time for investigating, not judging.
• Non-Identification: not making whatever it is you’re feeling into a part of you. Once you get too attached to “I am angry” etc, it can be difficult to manage something that has become a part of your personality; you’ll defend it rather than tackle it. Right now, it doesn’t matter how justified or righteous your rage is; you want to observe it, not to be it.

There are numerous possible outcomes here, and none of them are necessarily wrong. For example:

• You might realize you were overreacting to something that isn’t actually that big a deal in the grand scheme of things (in which case, you can probably move on from it now)
• You might expose (to yourself) a deep emotional wound you hadn’t previously paid attention to, and now you understand why you feel that way (in which case, you may want to explore that feeling more)
• You might find a desire to take some action to put the world to rights (in which case, this action could be a good idea or a terrible idea; for now, just observe the desire either way; you can decide whether it’s sensible to act on it later)

Here, Dr. Gabor Maté (author of “When The Body Says No“, and many other excellent books) talks about this, though he uses Recognize/Allow/Investigate/Nurture as the acronym, but it’s the same tool:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Where to go from there

In the case of the second item there, taking it to therapy may be a great idea if that’s an option that seems reasonable to you.

See: How To Prepare For Your First Therapy Session

If you prefer self-therapy, then here’s a good book to consider:

Healing Trauma – by Dr. Peter Levine ← it may not sound like this is relevant from the title, but we promise you it is; the main focus of the book is somatic experiencing and processing of emotions

If you intellectually consider that what you need is to let go of your anger/rage, but you’re not sure how, then check out:

To Err Is Human; To Forgive, Healthy: How To Forgive (And Why) ← this includes advice for if the person you need to forgive is yourself

Finally, as a catch-all resource, here is a great list of methods:

How Healthy People Regulate Their Emotions: Eight Things Mentally Healthy People Do

Take care!