Coping with anger and frustration (follow-up)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a coping exercise that a doctor gave us on the KDA chat room. The article, Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter, provided an exercise routine to refocus when you are angry or frustrated or having problems coping. This week, one of my favorite bloggers, Mary Jaksch, wrote in ‘Goodlife Zen’ about the benefits of becoming more ‘mindful’ (refocusing on the present). It fit so well with the coping exercise, I felt it needed to be shared.

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How Mindfulness Transforms Ordinary into Extraordinary

By Mary Jaksch
When the mind is neither in the past or the future and we are completely present, our experience changes in a significant way. Suddenly life seems more spacious and more peaceful.

When we are mindful, we are available for life, and aren’t trapped in our own little world. Whether it’s peacefulness, or anger, or boredom, or elation, or fear – mindfulness allows us to notice what we are experiencing right now.
 

Mindfulness means bringing full, soft attention to the task at hand

All of us tend to let our mind drift when faced with a boring task. The good news is that if we pull ourselves back into the present moment, the task is transformed and boredom soon disappears. So, whether it’s washing the dishes, or cutting carrots, or driving in the rush hour – mindfulness can transform ‘lost’ time into islands of ease.

The first step of mindfulness is to notice what our experience of this moment is like. Whether it’s peacefulness, or anger, or boredom, or elation, or fear – mindfulness allows us to notice where we are at. But we need to go beyond that, we need to become intimate with what is there.

The second step of mindfulness is to connect so deeply that we become what we experience. [The coping exercise we were taught allows this to happen]

Pause for a moment, look away from the screen and take one complete, deep breath. Did you experience your breath? I expect you’ll say ‘yes’. But what about going deeper? Did you become the breath?
 

Mindfulness transforms

Thich Nath Hanh says: “There’s a seed of anger in every one of us. There is also a seed of fear, a seed of despair. And when the seed of anger or fear, we should be able to recognize it, to embrace it tenderly, and to transform it. And the agent of transformation and healing is called mindfulness.”

Mindfulness has the power to transform clinging into generosity, anger into compassion, and isolation into intimacy.


It’s important to be compassionate towards the part of you that wants and wants and wants, and never gets what it yearns for. And with the part that is angry, or sullen, or resentful, or irritated. And with the part that is lonely, aloof, or preoccupied. Or with the part that is fearful, anxious, or rigid. Meet these parts of yourself with tender regard.