What's Beneath the Flames: Understanding Anger, Uncovering the Vulnerable Emotions It Conceals and the Path to Healing

Uh, such a generic Buddhist title. But anyway, uh Inner Vision, Outer Com at Omega And so uh but it'll be good. It's a beautiful location and uh great opportunity to connect So next time I'll try to come up with a better title than that, that just sounds like every other Buddhist uh retreat title. Everything I do is supported entirely by donations, so

The Venmo is Dharma Punks with an X NYC and if you can give anything no matter uh what it helps keep me being able to do this. And then on the website There's the PayPal button and then there's also a Patreon uh link so you can use Uh, that's like patreon dot com, Dharma Punks with an X N Y C. So um thanks for your support, keeping me doing this stop by the eight AM.

Uh morning meditations Monday through Friday. So tonight's talk, um, understanding anger. When you have big topics like this, it's always a challenge to know how to just start. What to start with.

Survive at all costs impulses. Those are the classic instinctive innate withdrawal impulses that help us survive threats. These are kind of universal impulses. And then we also have um relax and approach impulses, which are all activated by the ventral vagal system, which is different from your sympathetic nervous system. And those are behaviors that encourage us to rest and connect with other people. So those are positive approach impulses.

to a certain degree discussed, wired into us. But, you know, the impulses are transpersonal, transcultural, they're not learned. Well, all the above are hardwired into a degree. Emotions are visible cues to ourselves and others. such as sadness, fear, anger, anxiety, disappointment that are constructed There's no such a thing as a universal emotion. The way people experience disappointment, sadness, jealousy, envy differ from one culture to the next.

And if you ever want to read about it, the wonderful neuropsychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote about how a book called How Emotions Are Made, and it's a great overview that shows that withdrawal impulses are kind of innate, our emotions, which are how we signal those states to other people and to ourselves. The way we signal them, visible cues, uh you might, in the presence of uh somebody, have an innate automatic response. to where your heart races and it's an impulse to become alert.

And that's not something that is learned, but then whether you interpret that feeling in your body is anxiety, lust. excitement, surprise, or fear. Depends on your cultural conditioning. I once met a woman who told me of um uh that she had realized deep into her therapy that what she had assumed to be lust that she felt with certain men was actually the the survival impulses of fear. She had just m misconstrued the feeling of her heart racing, telling her to leave as excitement and lust.

So it's very easy to mistake f you know, one f innate physiological state in our body for uh an emotional message. that is telling us to do something that is either useful or not particularly useful. Um, so uh f you know, I mean, people very often mistake not only lust, but uh excitement can be mistaken for fear, l you know, uh and so on and so forth. So

Uh there are two kinds in general of emotions. One is called primary emotions, and these are the kind of very raw emotions that arise when we're vulnerable and they're not exactly the kind of emotions that we feel good about s h having other people see. And these emotional states that are primary are very often without a story attached to them. So one can feel shock or grief or fear or sadness.

or even an immediate burst of anger, uh, without there being a story, um, without the layers of meaning we pile atop. uh to uh mm to our experiences. It just can be like a very strong's c culturally ingrained response to something. So for instance when I saw the first times and well the first still when I see the video of uh the policeman with his foot on George Floyd's neck, I get enraged. And that's a natural primary emotional response to aggression. Um

Secondary emotions are far more complex. They're shaped by um social conditioning. And secondary emotions are very often for example, like shame, pride. Involved layers of narratives or And interpretations. And so they they have a story with them. Primary emotions generally don't have a story, a set of thoughts, a set of you know, w you know, when y you're in that emotion you don't really have a story if it's primary, if it's secondary, then you will have a whole history of grievances or

or um meaning attached to it. And the most important thing to know about secondary emotions is that they generally defend uh the discomfort of our primary emotions. So for example, and this is where if you haven't heard or followed anything, but it's very important to understand that Primary emotions have no story, they're very, very fast. They are often learned before we acquire language. They have no layers of meaning. They are just the kind of very fast

emotional responses and are very often vulnerable. Whereas secondary emotions have stories, they're much more uh They look better to other people. We're not as embarrassed by them. They d feel less vulnerable. Um and they often defend. against more authentic immediate emotional responses. So let's look at a few. Um guilt very often masks feelings of discomfort.

uh or powerlessness especially, I should say. So um when we're powerless in a situation that we can't control, um Very often instead we'll feel guilty because it creates a sense that we have some ability to change. a situation. Um very often parents feel guilty about their lives that their children might be leading and maybe to a certain degree they did play a role in their early attachment schemas, but very often you know, sometimes parents sit by helplessly as their children make

poor choices that had nothing to do with early attachment experiences. They're just poor choices. And the parent feels guilty that they can't intervene or change the situation. And that's just a way for individuals to try to feel more

a greater sense of agency where there really isn't any. Uh jealousy is an emotion that defends against our insecurity in relationships. People who feel very anxious in relationships who always expect abandonment rather than paying attention to that anxiety, they fixate on an external threat. someone they believe is an interloper. And so jealousy defends against uh insecurity in relationships. Pride can protect us against feelings of inadequacy.

So somebody who uh as experienced a sense of uh not living up to others. Uh um or has been has felt a sense of shame about their own accomplishments or inadequacy might inflate uh create an ego scaffolding of pride to protect them from those feelings. So um you get the idea. uh secondary emotions that have stories to them that have whole uh like narratives that we can live in and bathe in very often are defenses against a deeper emotional state that is very vulnerable.

Um we might think of anger as a primary emotion, but psychologists have long shown it can be either a primary immediate response Or it can be a secondary defensive response. It determi it depends on the situation. And it's interesting to say that because anger is pretty much the only n withdrawal emotion that also has significant left hemispheric involvement as well as w right hemispheric involvement. But you don't need an

really pay attention to that. So anger is a primary emotion when it's in response to immediate aggression. Or violation, dishonesty, uh or injustice. In these situations, anger provides the strength that allows us to push away an immediate threat that's very present and could cause us or someone we care about harm. or allows us to set boundaries. So for example, someone who's completely continuously promised to um

do something in exchange for something that we've done and never does it. Uh, the anger we might feel is good in that it would help us set a boundary with ourselves and with them to say, You know, you made a assertion that you would uh acknowledge or in some way um uh you know uh r pay me back for something I've done for you, whatever. But you haven't, so I'm setting a boundary and I'm not going to engage with you in this way uh again.

So in those situations it's healthy. I can think of an immediately healthy example of anger. In my own uh case, I was out um at a club. watching uh fun band, the O Cs, with Kathy, and there was an extremely drunk um guy who was pretty uh big and who was r d dancing in a way that was completely not taking into consideration anyone else's bodily integrity. It was really flailing his arms and slamming into people that were not in a pit, but just were standing on the side.

And I uh saw him lurch towards Kathy and I felt this enormous protective anger and I just literally put my hands to, you know, push him away and shout it. Adam and he looked and he was startled and

You know, it was not a particularly uh uh thought out response. It was just a kind of primary emotional response to an aggressive act. Um There are times when healthy anger so it needs to be immediate acted on immediately, but there are times and situations where the threat isn't imminent where we feel anger simply to give us the

energy to set a boundary. And that really requires one Stepping away from the situation, processing the anger to the point that we know exactly what boundary we need to set. And so that we can communicate it, so that we're not venting or raging in a way that just adds more unskillfulness to the situation, but um that makes it clear to ourselves and to that person that we're now setting a boundary, that we're not going to uh for instance

um engage with them again. You know, if somebody is a um a freelance uh uh writer, graphic designer, uh somebody who works creatively in freelance, they do this work and then the client waits six months to pay them and that person is not getting a little bit angry so that I can't exp you know, confront the situation and set a boundary, saying, I'm not gonna work with you again unless you uh uh pay me. Uh

within a specific period of time and this is not acceptable, well then the person is going to be uh r essentially mistreated in all of their business dynamics. It's only because people can feel a degree of anger when they're being taken advantage of, when someone's being dishonest or not. um in some way giving them the uh reward that's been promised.

for something that they've done, that it allows us to basically say, enough's enough. And so in that sense, anger is very healthy. But for many of us, anger um eventually winds up as an unhealthy defense against our vulnerable feelings of abandonment. disappointment or loss. There's for example, times in our life where we get into a romantic relationship with someone and they don't eventually want to be in the romantic relationship. And that's not

uh a form of dishonesty. That's not a form of mistreatment. That's simply people um at times uh realize that a certain b uh pairing isn't um

uh doesn't work for them. Uh and so they leave the relationship. And in that situation, if we stay angry, rather than feel the grief and the disappointment, what happens is one, we stay stuck in this repeating story that never goes away, that guards us from the grief we really need to feel, and It keeps us lingering in a s in a misperception, which is that somehow when relationships don't work out, it's unfair. Frankly.

Uh that's the nature of most relationships that are romantic. Only a very few of them, I can say, from personal experience, do have any lasting quality to them.

Another case where anger is almost entirely a defense is very often When somebody loses a loved one, and rather than feeling the grief of that loss, they get stuck in the anger about maybe that individual's final treatment by a hospital or um by a uh or just anger at some element And in that sense Um anger essentially inhibits the process of grieving the loss, and grieving is while a certainly a very vulnerable and difficult emotional state, it's the way that we truly

integrate our losses, our abandonments, our our experiences of disappointment, and in some way um learn from them. So for example Here's a classic one I've I've heard very frequently. Um suppose you have an individual who grew up in an a a family system where their needs were only sporadically met. Uh, maybe there was a divorce and one of the caregivers disappeared or maybe

Uh the parents were overworked, but in any case there was only unreliable attention available. So that individual grows up to be an adult who's got anxious attachments.

And then they uh people with anxious attachment have a way of continually Uh being attracted to emotionally unavailable people because it through repetition, compulsion, keep The same exact story going uh that went on in their childhood creates the illusion that they can finally win and uh get love from somebody who's emotionally ambivalent about them.

So again and again and again this anxious individual dates someone who's people who are not emotionally available or or truly um uh committed to them. And then the relationships break up and then the anxious individual gets angry. angry at the other person who from the very beginning was avoided.

And the problem is is that so long as they stay angry, they never learn. They just keep going back again and again and again and again to emotionally unavailable people. It's only when an anxious person finally gives up the anger and feels the original sadness over their original childhood experiences, the feels the disappointment. feels that pain that eventually when they meet other people who are avoidant or not fully available.

that they no longer have any desire. It's only from grieving that they learn truly This whole pattern I'm in of continuously seeking unavailable people is not working. So In that sense, when anger defends against our grief or our sadness, it stops us from learning. It stops us from seeing the truth. It stops us from resolving situations. It just leads us to a state where we're r brooding, but we're still repeating the same unskillful behaviors over and over and over again.

Uh, another problem with this kind of anger when it's uh secondary anger based on abandonments or rejections, is that very often Uh, the original anger that was um more appropriate, which was towards a parent from the past who wasn't emotionally available is deflected onto people in our present who really don't have the same responsibilities as parents have. You know, it's our parents' responsibilities to be emotionally attentive when we are children.

And if they fail, a child has every right to be angry about that. That's a primary emotion. But if in adult life we're consistently getting angry at people who Uh we date for a little while and they're not emotionally available or they don't commit to a relationship. and we feel anger towards them. What we're really doing is just deflecting the anger that we felt or originally that was never resolved. And in no way do the present people deserve anger, you know.

w nobody has the obligation that you date as an adult that your parents or my parents had to be available. So, um

Uh there's a myth that all forms of anger are considered to be unskillful in Buddhism, but that's actually not true. Um in a wonderful sutta, the samanfala, samana f what Samana Fala Sutta Samana Fala Sutta, which is uh one where the Buddha interacts with a famous king uh who is surrounded by all of these um kind of uh teachers that's been taking advantage of the king's goodwill. And there's one teacher in specific, a spiritual teacher called Ajita Kesa Kambali.

And Ajita is a materialist, he's kind of like an E Elon Musk type character, very greedy, uh egotistical um doesn't believe that there's any m moral consequences to bad actions, believe it's totally fine to uh treat people however you want and the Buddha calls Ajita uh Katukara, which is I mean, it's very often uh uh translated as lickspittle. Now I have no idea what a lickspittle is. Uh but I can tell you that the better translations, the Buddha is calling this teacher an idiotic sycophant.

And I've never heard of a person who calls someone an idiotic sycophant who isn't a little angry. So I think it's pretty clear to say that when the Buddha was confronted by people who were aggressively distorting, uh, or who were taking advantage of other people. that he got angry. But the Buddha didn't have hatred. He never carried or clung or attached. to his transitory anger. And it was only in very rare situations where he would become

angered and that was only when he was protecting other people or warding off people who were being aggressive. So from a Buddhist perspective Um, anger when it's a defense against abandonment, disappointment, sadness, when it's just the way we greet every relationship that doesn't work out, every friend that doesn't show up. When instead of feeling sad we go to anger, in Buddhism that's a form of clinging. It's a refusal to accept

um what is been shown to be impermanent and unreliable. So in staying angry, for instance, with a friend who keeps um uh not responding to phone calls. It we'll just keep

calling them rather than feeling sad and realizing, okay, this friend isn't available right now. I'll have to call somebody else. That's w that's the gift of sadness and grief is that uh when we go through the process of feeling them, then we learn and we stop returning again and again and again to people who can't uh in any way meet our needs.

Anger on the other hand, very often uh when it's uh the way we defend against sadness, it just keeps us going back again and again and again. So you know when it's healthy anger, because healthy anger will help you set a boundary with someone who is in some way

directly promised you something or has in some way directly aggressive towards you. But if you're angry over someone or a situation where just someone has become unavailable or has not promised directly that they're going to do something for you, it's just a sadness i you know, it's just a mask for sadness, then anger is unskillful.

Now many contemporary therapies such as IFS describe all of these secondary emotions as protectors. They're defense mechanisms. That again shield us from exiled emotions like sadness and grief. But in this view of IFS, Anger isn't inherently bad, it's trying to protect us from emotional pain. And even though we need that emotional pain to learn and grow and not get stuck. if we view our anger as something that's just

uh if we get angry with our anger or if we feel ashamed about our anger, that's not really doing anything. So um in IFS, the idea is to develop a way to dis identify with your anger to stop blending with it, to stop thinking those anger stories are you. And rather in disidentifying, stepping outside of it and talking to it, expressing to the anger, I see

why you're there. I see b that you want me to be angry because it feels so much safer than having to experience the sadness over this person or or group of people that I am no longer uh c connected with, but At the same time in IFS, we by disconnecting, dis disidentifying with, we can then go to the feeling beneath it. the sadness that needs to be felt felt and we can create a safe way to be with it. And in Buddhist visualization meditations, we're doing the same thing.

We're um creating space to disidentify with the part of us that's angry, the Chaita Sika in Buddhism, the part of us that's angry. And um so this is a very powerful way to deal with anger as a protective part, to visualize it in some way. and to talk to it, because in talking to it and visualizing it, you're no longer identifying with it. You now it's something distinct from who you are. In some IFS uh related uh practices, they visualize anger as a distinct

guardian or warrior, but a a warrior that's overly aggressive. That's like one of those military people that always wants to go to war and is not helping us. And so in visualizing it, we acknowledge, hey, I know that you think you're the only way to protect us, but You're I know you're trying to keep me safe, but actually in this situation there's no one to go to war with.

It's just a matter of sometimes people that we want to be connected with aren't available or n or are focusing on other things in their life and that's not a situation where anger helps. That's a situation where allowing us to feel sad, to grieve, and then to learn that, okay, I can't keep going back to that person. I have to go back to other person. People. So in IFS very often they ask the protective anger to step back.

Not be banished, but just to give space so that we can connect with uh more vulnerable emotions beneath it. Um We practice staying with them in the body. Uh, very often the f the real primary emotions that are vulnerable b vulnerable, like sadness, grief, loneliness, um uh fear, whatever that are being uh hidden by our anger. Uh they're f very embodied. Anger is a story. It's very got a lot of left hemispheric involvement. So it's a narrative. It's always a story about how other people

should be acting differently. Um but in you know um in IFS and Buddhist meditations, you we're going to the body and we're finding the emotions that are beneath that story. And grief is very often in the chest, a hollowness, or a sense of a little bit of nausea in the throat or the sort of contraction or tightness in the belly. Um and we greet it in Buddhist practice with compassion. We don't greet anything with aversion. We just ask the anger to step aside.

and staying with uh so this requires a lot of patience. Um, it's not easy, but even the shortest um meditation practice, um And Uh so what we're gonna do in our meditation is we're going to first visualize a situation in our life where anger is a primary emotion, where it's healthy and we're gonna figure out what kind of boundary would be the most efficient based on our long term goals.

And then we're gonna do a more um IFS type visualization meditation where we're going to visualize anger in its secondary emotion, its its more defensive form as a protective figure. um a strong presence and we're going to acknowledge it but then ask it to step aside so that we can touch into um the more vulnerable affects lingering beneath. So I hope something in that made sense. Maybe it just sounded like a lot of rambling to you, I don't know.

But in any event, what I'd like you to do is to find a really comfortable seated position or lying down on the floor and use this as a time where you are uh encouraged in fact to go off screen because I can't imagine anyone who feels more relaxed and comfortable while having a camera broadcasting them to a group of other people. So don't feel any need to be um

uh deflates. Some people when they do that like to pull their belly in as tight as they can, and that's fine too. So either push it out as far as you can or pull it in, whichever kind of uh engagement of the muscles works for you. And then bringing our attention to our shoulders and our arms. down to our elbows, our forearms and our

hands, our fingers, our palms, and just what we're gonna do as we breathe in is just tighten everything there. Lift up the shoulders, straighten the arms into like really stiff. And then make fists and just tighten, contract every muscle group there, keep on contracting, contracting, and then as we breathe out, just release and drop. those muscle groups

create an anchor for our meditation. That's a place where we keep returning to after we've noticed our minds have wandered away into thoughts about the future or the past or other things. You need an anchor, something to return to. So one anchor is just the feeling of your Self-breathing, somewhere where the breath in the body is very, very comfortable. And something that's very apparent. You don't want to find a very subtle area where the breath is.

lack of attention from others. This is a situation where someone has expressly uh entered into an agreement or some kind of Commitment where they're not respecting That's the same thing. So for example, a neighbor who's playing music loudly too late at night.

a a colleague who's claimed credit for your work, a boss who's or someone that you've worked for that's not Um Paying you back for something you've done, a situation where Um someone's actions are directly thoughtlessly intruding upon your safety.

Not righteous, but good.