How to Deal with all this Anger

Rage defines our moment, and righteous indignation can be motivating. But what about when our anger becomes destructive or debilitating?

1.

It’s hard to choose a single affective quality that defines America right now, but I think the defining one is anger. The Trump regime’s rage, and that of its core constituency and propagandists, is well-documented. To choose but the most recent example, which I saw this morning, consider when an American government communique has spoken like this:

But my focus this week is not on their rage, but on ours. On mine.

I’ve struggled with anger for my entire life. I grew up in a safe and supportive home, but both my parents had violent tempers. There was occasional physical violence, and very frequent verbal violence: shouting, insults, threats. It wasn’t until my twenties that I realized this was not a universal experience. Together with self-judgment and shame, anger is the quality of mind I’ve worked with the most in meditation, therapy, and other modalities. In a way, having a husband and child has helped in this work, since it’s made it more urgent, more necessary.

There are, of course, many kinds of anger, many experiences of it, many ways in which it can help or harm. Some anger is merely irritation or impatience, but the rage I feel in response to that illegal, inaccurate, and hateful USDA notice may be different. Perhaps it is “righteous indignation.” Perhaps it motivates me to take action, donate money, write articles, and vote for candidates who might reduce the amount of hate in our politics, rather than increase it.

But even in the latter case, I often experience anger as corrosive. It is exhausting, it makes me miserable, and it bleeds over from politics into the rest of my life. A year ago, as the 2024 election results came in, one of the predominant emotions I experienced was dread — not only of what Trump would do, but of this weight I remember carrying around during his first term, which is now omnipresent. The “background hum of dread” I once called it.

Probably the best way to deal with anger is to do something — to take action. And I hope you are doing things that are impactful, even if you’re just impacting your family or neighbors; that’s a great place to start. But here, I want to focus on how I’ve been dealing with anger internally, in my own body and mind. Since lately, I’m experiencin a hell of a lot of it.

2.