Waiting For Trains That Never Come
Why There Is A Third Choice For Dealing With Your Anger
Waiting for a train that will never come feels a lot like hoping your anger will resolve itself by itself. But what if it doesn’t?
What if that train never comes, and your anger never finds an outlet or resolves itself meaningfully? You’ll be left holding that anger on an empty platform, seething with frustration as it grows heavier with the passing minutes.
Anger is a natural, and often intense, emotion that everyone experiences, but how we deal with it varies greatly from one to another. Traditionally, I feel as though people express their anger outwardly or suppress it inwardly, but I believe both of these approaches can be limiting in resolving anger and harmful to ourselves and others.
Expressing our anger feels natural most of the time and may provide temporary relief, but it also leads to hurt feelings, unresolved conflicts, and is likely to cause deeper relational issues. But bottling up the issues inside of you, while it may seem safer, is harmful to ourselves as the anger builds up and festers, leading to mental health issues and an eventual – and likely – break.
So, I’d like to present a third choice in dealing with anger: let it go. The path less talked about is that sometimes resolution comes from letting the anger pass over and through you. Letting go does not mean ignoring or suppressing the emotion, but it is about allowing yourself to release it so that it no longer controls you. It is about feeling the emotion and taking a pause to reflect on it. You do not need to throw it back at someone or bottle it up to resolve anger. Realizing that the train may never come frees us from waiting on a platform leading you nowhere.
In this essay, we’ll explore why letting go of anger is not just a healthier alternative to expressing or suppressing it, but the best way to achieve true emotional freedom and peace.
Throwing Beehives
If you feel the need to throw anger in someone’s face, you might as well throw them a beehive. They’ll appreciate it about the same.
When we feel anger, one of our immediate impulses might be to express it outwardly and release the emotion thereby “getting it off our chest.” Whether this comes across as shouting at a colleague, criticizing a friend, or venting to a total stranger (which is super common), expressing our anger in this fashion is one of the most common forms of emotional release. And while it may provide some short-term relief, it can also have destructive, long-term effects.
In the short term, that heat of the moment passion of anger, it can be cathartic to let it out. There’s an immediate sense of relief, quite literally like letting off steam from a kettle. It can feel, in that moment, as if you have “fixed” the situation and gotten your points across or taken control of the emotional tides. However, this is often not the case, and we are biased to believe we handled things better than we actually did.
The problem with careless venting and letting out the anger in this way is that things said cannot be unsaid. They’re out there, and no amount of apologies can take back harmful things said in anger.
Throwing anger at someone — whether through words, actions, or passive-aggressive behaviour — creates emotional damage first in the other person and then in you as the person becomes defensive and shuts you out or throws anger back at you. In this respect, relationships can be harmed, people you care about can be hurt, and feelings of resentment may begin to grow. What may seem justified at the moment often leaves lasting emotional scars, both for yourself and others involved.
Anger can create a power imbalance in relationships in a sense, causing the receiving party to feel attacked or vilified. This can lead to that party feeling defensive and getting angry back at you too — often after letting it simmer and get worse. It can also lead to broken trust, lingering tensions, and in severe cases may even end the relationship altogether.
After the emotional torrent has subsided, we often will feel some sense of guilt for how we misappropriated and mishandled our anger. The regret we experience is a sign that reckless release of anger — especially directed toward others — is not truly satisfying nor is it constructive.
Our culture sometimes encourages us to “speak our minds” and “stand up for ourselves” without necessarily encouraging the kind of self-control or empathy required to ensure that doing so is meaningful and constructive. While this assertiveness is important, it is critical to distinguish the difference between assertiveness and aggression. Aggression, which often arises from unregulated anger, can be harmful. Assertiveness is attainable without the need for recklessness.
Throwing anger around only begets more anger. It does nothing for resolving the root problem. If I yell at someone, they’ll get mad, maybe they go and yell at someone else. It’s much like a hot potato situation where we are passing anger to each other as a means of getting rid of our own, and that isn’t healthy for anybody involved.
Bitter Bottle of Anger
The only thing bottling anger inside of you does it make you bitter and cynical. It weighs you down, suffocates you from the inside.
The second common response to anger is to internalize and suppress the emotion in an attempt to avoid conflict or to appear calm and in control — to appear stoic at times. Some people may feel that expressing anger is an inappropriate response and that it’s a sign of weakness, so they instead, they will choose to bottle it up inside, keeping the frustrations hidden. And this might work, but it only leads to an eventual blow-up of some sort.
At a first glance, suppressing anger may seem like a mature or reasonably responsible option. Many people think that avoiding confrontation and keeping their cool is a form of self-control. Bottling up their emotions may seem to be a better choice compared to shouting or acting impulsively.
The illusion of control over anger is valued in cultures which respect restraint and emotional discipline. People may view expression of anger as unprofessional, unladylike, or emotionally immature, so people will choose to keep the emotion to themselves.
While this may work in the short-term, it only gets harder as stressors build and the anger never resolves. Smaller and smaller things will begin pressing on the anger response as they continue to be internalized. While suppression offers temporary relief, it can have a long-term consequences on your health.
Over time, suppressed anger can manifest in forms of anxiety, depression, or stress (which itself can bring about numerous health issues). These, coupled with anger, can lead to feelings of isolation and resentment. Essentially, unresolved anger poisons your perception of the world and of your relationships. It taints nearly every aspect of your life — and because it’s suppressed, you won’t allow yourself the chance to notice and stop it.
Physically, it can wreak havoc on your body through increased stress hormone levels. And we all know stress does bad things to a body. Changes in eating habits, aches, pains, headaches, forgetfulness, fatigue, getting sick more often, clenching jaws, and more. An abundance of stress disturbs your physical health much more than you might think, and with anger being a key factor in stress, it’s no wonder that bottling up your anger will make you feel terrible.
So, while suppressing anger might seem like the safer or more dignified response, it only postpones dealing with the emotion. Anger you bottle up doesn’t disappear. It builds and will eventually erupt, often in unexpected ways at unexpected times. Small frustrations can accumulate over time, leading to bursts of rage, passive-aggressive behaviour, or emotional outbursts that harm relationships and damage your emotional well-being.
Letting Go of Anger
But there’s a third choice. You don’t have to throw the anger in someone’s face or swallow it. You can learn to let it go. Only then is it truly gone.
The most liberating choice to make is to simply let go of the anger. Letting go of your anger doesn’t mean denying that you are angry or pretending not to feel it or pretending to feel some other emotion entirely. It means accepting your anger for what it is — natural and temporary — and then choosing to release it before it takes root inside of your or explodes onto other people.
Releasing your anger involves acknowledging it without judgement or resistance to it. Instead of fighting back against it or harbouring it, you allow yourself to fully experience the emotion, process it, and choose to let it go. This can be done by practising emotional regulation techniques, like perhaps deep breathing to calm yourself, mindfulness, or reframing the situation in a way that diffuses the anger.
First, you should accept that your anger is valid rather than deny its presence. Being angry does not make you a bad person. The key to that aspect is in how you handle your anger. Once you acknowledge the anger, the next step is to actively choose to not let it control you. Like letting go of a heavy weight, you simply decide not to carry it anymore.
Now, forgiveness plays a crucial role in letting go of anger. Many people think that forgiveness is something that works to absolve the other party of responsibility, but in reality, it’s an act of self-liberation. When you forgive, you release yourself from the anger that is gripping into you, allowing you to move forward and heal.
Forgiveness does not mean condoning hurtful behaviour or the people who have wronged you. It makes it so that your anger will not define you. Learning forgiveness can be challenging. In many cases, anger stems from perceived wrongs by others and by ourselves. The act of forgiving frees both parties — whether it is for someone else or yourself. Forgiving — but not forgetting — is a critical component.
Letting go of anger brings a wide array of psychological and physical benefits. It brings a sense of peace and relief that you are no longer carrying the weight of an unresolved anger, which can mean more room for joy and compassion to bloom. Letting go of anger means you reduce the built-up stress. Letting go of anger means you can interact with others from a place of emotional clarity and openness, fostering healthier relationships.
Learning to Let Go
One of the most effective ways to let go of anger is through mindfulness practices. Mindfulness helps you become more aware of your emotional triggers and allows you to respond to anger with intention rather than automatic reactions. This is also a key factor in overall emotional regulation and emotional intelligence.
You can try to be mindful by breathing during anger-inducing situations and stressful moments. Focused breathing has been proven time and time again to be an effective method of self-regulation and helps to create a momentary space between yourself and the emotional trigger.
Mindful awareness can also help. This is simply done by noticing the emotion and calling your conscious attention to it. By saying something as simple as, “I feel angry,” you are acknowledging the anger and can create a sense of distance inside you which allows your to rectify with the emotion.
You can try to reframe the anger as a means of letting it go. Instead of viewing it through the lens of anger, you can ask if there are things you may be misunderstanding, or how the other party may be feeling, or if the situation is even worth being angry over (like crying over spilled milk).
Reframing allows you to see the bigger picture, reducing the emotional intensity of the situation and making it easier to let go of the anger.
Being kind to yourself is another key aspect of letting go of your anger. Recognize that anger is a natural emotional response but that it doesn’t have to define you. Practice self-compassion by treating yourself with kindness and understanding — like you would offer a friend or want offered to you from a friend. Sometimes, with emotional responses, it’s about meeting yourself where you’re at.
The more often you practice letting go of anger, the easier it becomes. Emotional resilience grows with each act of release, allowing you to handle future conflicts or frustrations without being overwhelmed by them. It is, therefore, in this constant pursuit of emotional regulation that you defeat your anger once and for all. It stops having a hold over you. You release your anger, and your anger releases you.
Conclusion
In this essay, we explored three ways of dealing with anger — expressing it, suppressing it, and letting it go. While throwing anger at others or bottling it inside may seem like the only options, letting go is the healthiest and most liberating choice as it reduces overall harm to yourself and to others.
The next time anger floods through you, pause and choose the third path. Let it go. Allow yourself to experience the emotion and then consciously release it. It is only in understanding our emotions that we can become unshackled by their influences. We can feel, and we can act, but we do not have to do both at once.
And so you must ask yourself: What if I learned to forgive and let anger pass through me instead of lashing out or bottling it up? What would my life be like if I didn’t let anger dictate my reactions?
Letting go of anger is ultimately an act of freedom and self-love. By releasing anger, you are no longer a prisoner to it. Instead, you open up space for peace, understanding, and growth. Staying angry does nobody any good, and waiting for meaningful amends from holding onto your anger is like waiting for a train that will never come.
Yours truly,
D.
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