What To Do When You're Angry | Matthew Brensilver, Vinny Ferraro, Kaira Jewel Lingo

1. Apply the “RED” Framework to Anger

When anger arises, practice the three-step framework: Recognize it (see that it’s there), Embrace it (let it in), and Look Deeply at it (understand its roots and messages). This comprehensive approach, inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh, helps manage anger skillfully.

2. Untangle Wisdom from Delusion in Anger

When anger arises, ask “What’s the kernel of wisdom here?” to identify what the anger is trying to signal (e.g., a boundary transgression or harm), and then act assertively, not aggressively or passively, to address it. This helps you respond skillfully rather than being deformed by anger.

3. Trace Anger’s Causality to Find Love

When angry, trace the path of causality back far enough to discover “something worthy of love” (e.g., the other person’s overwhelm or your own need for protection), rather than immediately pinning the anger on the external trigger. This shifts perception from blame to compassion.

4. Meditate Directly on Anger

Practice meditating with anger as the primary object of awareness, observing its sensations and thoughts without rumination, to consciously experience its unpleasantness and decondition its hold, leading to a deeper faith in love. This teaches your nervous system that anger “sucks,” disincentivizing it.

5. Create Space from Anger with Grounding

When anger arises, slow down, go inward, and connect with physical sensations like your feet on the floor to establish a sense of groundedness and determine if you are physically safe, creating space to relate to the anger rather than from it. This helps you respond wisely instead of reacting blindly.

6. Personalize Compassionate Self-Talk for Anger

Adapt compassionate language to address your anger in a way that resonates with you (e.g., “Oh, my dear little anger, I see that you’re here” or “Thank you, anger, I see you”), potentially by placing a hand on your heart, to counteract shame and create distance from the emotion. This softens your approach and makes anger more workable.

7. Identify Underlying Emotions of Anger

When anger arises, investigate what emotions might be beneath it, such as fear, sadness, or uncertainty, to address the root cause rather than just reacting to the anger itself. This helps you understand what anger might be covering up.

8. Depersonalize Anger’s Origin

Consider that anger is a deeply impersonal, evolutionary emotion shared by the species, rather than solely a personal failing, to help contextualize and unhook from it. This prevents you from demonizing your own anger.

9. Reassure Your Mind You Will Act

If anger is signaling a need for action (like setting a boundary), reassure your mind that you will address the situation assertively and clearly, as this can help diffuse the intensity of the anger and prevent it from building.

10. Act Assertively, Not Aggressively

When responding to anger’s “kernel of wisdom,” choose assertive action (e.g., saying “no” clearly and humanely) rather than aggressive lashing out or passive suppression, which requires courage and vulnerability. This ensures your actions are informed by wisdom, not deformed by anger.

11. Allow Anger’s Natural Half-Life

Practice recognizing, embracing, and looking deeply at anger (RED) to allow it to play out its natural half-life of a few minutes, preventing it from being re-upped and causing prolonged damage. This reduces the incalculable damage of prolonged anger.

12. Identify Your Anger Patterns

Ask yourself what your typical patterns with anger are (e.g., peacemaker, victim, quick to anger, suppressive) to gain self-understanding and begin repatterning your responses. Understanding your specific patterns is a crucial step in unlocking new behaviors.

13. Discover Anger’s Root of Care

Explore whether your anger is born out of a deep sense of care for something, as recognizing this can alleviate self-judgment and provide a different perspective on the emotion. This helps you see the value in your anger.

14. Listen Deeply to Anger’s Urgency

Listen deeply to the “affective urgency” of anger in your body and mind (e.g., the urge to “do something, stop something, hate something”) with metacognitive awareness, similar to listening to a child, without being mesmerized or fully collapsing into its narrative. This ensures the “other” (your anger) feels heard without taking over.

15. Practice Love While Setting Boundaries

Understand that “love” (broadly defined as collaboration, empathy, care) does not mean capitulating to injustice or avoiding boundaries; you can act with love, set firm boundaries, and speak up for yourself without being carried away by anger. This allows for clear, compassionate action.

16. Use “Dead End” and “Love” Mantras

When caught in anger and rumination, use the mantra “dead end” to stop unhelpful thinking, and “love no matter what” (understanding others’ motivations without condoning actions) as a cleaner-burning fuel for action. These mantras help shift your mental state.

17. Avoid Replaying and Reigniting Anger

Be mindful of the tendency to replay an anger-inducing event in your mind, as this rumination can reignite and deepen the emotion, preventing clearer thinking and resolution. This helps break the cycle of self-perpetuated anger.

18. Recognize Disproportionate Responses

When your emotional response to a situation feels disproportionate, investigate if it’s rooted in past experiences or trauma rather than the current event, to avoid misattributing the cause. This helps in relating to the present situation more accurately.

19. Respond Calmly to Misbehavior

When addressing misbehavior (e.g., in children), respond from a place of calm, mindfulness, and love rather than anger, as this approach can achieve necessary boundaries and teaching with less pain and a shorter duration. This leads to more effective and less painful interactions.

20. Prioritize Repair After Unskillful Reactions

If you react unskillfully due to anger, prioritize repair with those affected, even if it’s not immediate, as the opportunity for repair is often still available and can mend relationships. This acknowledges that mistakes happen and offers a path forward.

21. Retain the Option to Apologize

Acknowledge that you will inevitably “mess up” and react unskillfully sometimes, but remember that you always retain the option to apologize later, which can be a valuable opportunity for repair. This provides a path for reconciliation and self-forgiveness.

22. Practice Noble Silence in Relationships

Experiment with periods of “noble silence” (e.g., from evening until morning) in your relationships to reduce miscommunication and conflict, allowing for a calmer and more mindful interaction. This can prevent unnecessary arguments.

23. Challenge Negative Self-Perception of Anger

If you associate anger with weakness, failure, or destructiveness due to past experiences, recognize this conditioning to allow for a more open and less shameful approach to feeling and working with anger. This helps overcome internal barriers to processing anger.

24. Understand Your Anger’s Nature

Reflect on whether anger typically acts as a destructive force in your life or if it serves as a developmental achievement, such as a counterbalance to apathy or passivity, to better understand how to work with it. This idiosyncratic understanding is key to effective engagement with the emotion.

25. Reframe Anger’s Origin

Instead of solely blaming external transgressions, consider that anger often arises from a strong “seed of anger” within, which can help shift perception from external blame to internal understanding. This encourages self-responsibility and deeper insight.

26. Use “There Is Anger” Language

Practice saying “there is anger” instead of “I am angry” to create distance from the emotion and make it feel more workable and less personal. This linguistic hack helps to unhook from identification with anger.

27. Internalize “Anger Cannot Work Out.”

During meditation on anger, consciously experience its agony to “burn in” the maxim that anger (as a destructive force) “cannot work out” or is “a dead end,” consolidating your motivation to choose more skillful responses in the future. This reinforces the futility of unskillful anger.

28. Rewire Inner Dialogue with Warmth

Experiment with talking to yourself in a supportive and warm way during moments of anger, rather than capitulating to it, to rewire your inner dialogue and choose a different, more skillful path. This builds self-compassion and effective coping mechanisms.

29. Acknowledge and Value Anger’s Presence

Acknowledge anger when it’s present and try to see value in exploring it, rather than immediately trying to get rid of it, to foster genuine self-inquiry. This provides the willingness needed for deeper exploration.