Reframing Anger, Examining Control

“Stay,” I command my puppy, Zuki. And, as though bound by an invisible tether that holds him in place, he remains where he is.

I know this training is good for my dog. I know the longer he stays, the more patience it teaches him, and allows us to live a calmer, less frenzied life. But sometimes I wonder what it means to have this degree of control over another being. And what it means when that control is tested.

Because every time Zuki doesn’t obey a command or chews on the curtain or the carpet, or barks incessantly and yanks at the leash when he sees another dog, I feel an anger course through me. It isn’t just that he lost patience; for me, it represents something more: he has gone against my wishes, disobeyed. As much as I try to suppress it, I feel the anger bubble up through me, and sometimes it spills out through a sharp word or a slight tug of the leash.

Most days, he’s a good dog, the boundary-testing limited to small, unimportant things, like not sitting immediately or getting up from a stay. So I carry on, and don’t always stop to think about what these small doses of anger do to me. Truth be told, as much as I hate to admit it, I relish the control I have over another being, and take pride when people tell me ‘he’s so well trained’. But when I do pause – like today – I’m scared by how much I enjoy the power I have over Zuki.

What is this joy I experience from this control? What happens when, like a child who grows up to become their own person, I need to relinquish the control? And what does it mean when Zuki doesn’t follow through?

Research has found that having control over one’s environment - even if it’s simply illusory - has been linked with greater happiness. But research also shows that those who want to have a higher degree of control (e.g. perfectionists) are not necessarily unsatisfied with their lives, but the perfectionism trait attenuates the relationship between life satisfaction, psychological well-being and perceived control. This means that having control is not necessarily a bad thing, but choosing what you have control over - and being willing to let go of the outcomes for things you don’t need to have control over - will result in greater life satisfaction.

So how to achieve this fine balance between control and letting go? Well first, it’s important to recognize that control - as with all ‘negative’ emotions - stems from fear. Fear of unpredictability, fear that we - or those we love - won’t be safe if we cannot know how things will turn out. The truth is, unpredictability is just a part of life, and living in an environment of fear and anxiety, we resist this tenet of life. Often, by embracing it, it can lead us somewhere new and exciting, or, at the very least, to a place where we will grow.

My anger is the destructive way I express my fear. It is the way I try to re-establish power, and Zuki testing it, tests me too.

And so, I’m trying to do the work. I’m trying to explore where my anxiety and anger comes from, what pinpoints my fear. And I’m also trying to form a new relationship with anger. You see, for much of my life, I’ve found anger to be an extremely undesirable emotion. It wasn’t something I questioned until the last few years, when, in a therapy session, my therapist asked me why I don’t express annoyance or irritation – even at her. And indeed, there are studies that show, while women experience anger as frequently and intensely as men, they are better able to control it.

But I wonder what this degree of containing myself does to my psyche and my health. Does it allow the anger to build and build inside me, desperately searching for an outlet to release it? Once it does release, does it become so much more explosive, less controlled? Research has shown that suppressed anger is linked to self-blame and anxiety, as well as physical ailments such as increased blood pressure. Psychologists have talked about the dangers of anger suppression in terms of these outcomes as well.

I’ve been trying to reshape my relationship with anger – to accept it without judgment, as a necessary and normal emotion that doesn’t need to be shunned. I know I need to dig deeper, to understand why expressing anger is so distasteful for me, why I judge it so heavily. In doing so, I hope to be able to manage my anger better by expressing it more frequently – like a pressure cooker slowly letting off steam – rather than letting it crescendo into a wave that threatens to drown me. And I’m also trying - and failing - to give up the need to control, to let things go a bit more. Because, what else is anger but failed expectations?

In learning about anger, I’m also becoming a better writer, a more empathetic writer. In the short story (which has become a novella) that I’m writing now, the protagonist, Rahil, is presented with seven elixirs, each of which is an unwanted emotion that someone else has left behind. He drinks anger first, and I’ve been struggling to depict how he experiences his daily life after consuming it, to show the different shades of anger, and how sometimes, it can be a valuable release. And through this short story, and training Zuki, and learning more about my own anger, I’m slowly beginning to reframe how I think about anger.