"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." It is one of the most shared lines about anger, and it is nearly always credited to the Buddha.
The Buddha did not say it, at least not in those words. The idea comes from Buddhaghosa, a Buddhist commentator writing in Sri Lanka in the 5th century. In his great work, the Visuddhimagga, he compares an angry person to a man who wants to hit another, and "picks up a burning ember or excrement in his hand and so first burns himself or makes himself stink". The tidier coal version, put in the Buddha's mouth, turns up in a 1987 self-help book.
We kept the ember and dropped the excrement. Both make the same point: the one holding it suffers first. Wisdom loses a little in the retelling, and gains a little in politeness.
The usual advice for letting go is to let it out. Hit a pillow. Punch a bag. When that was put to the test, people who hit a punching bag while thinking about the person who had angered them came away angrier, and more aggressive, than people who did nothing at all.
Anger has its uses. It tells us when a line has been crossed. But how we go about releasing it matters, and some of the most popular ways make it worse.
What anger does to the body
Anger switches on the body's alarm. Adrenaline rises, the heart speeds up, muscles tense, blood pressure climbs and attention narrows to the thing that angered us. The word knows it. "Anger" comes from the Old Norse angr, affliction or sorrow, from an older root meaning narrow, tied together.
That alarm was built for real danger. Most of what angers us now, the traffic, the email, the remark at dinner, is not dangerous at all. The body responds anyway. Our nervous system cannot tell a rude email from a bear.
And an outburst has a cost of its own. When nine sets of findings were pooled, heart attacks, strokes and dangerous heart rhythms were all more frequent in the two hours after an outburst of anger than at other times.
The habit has a cost too. Across 25 sets of findings in people who were healthy at the start, anger and hostility went with 19% more heart disease events over the years, and in people who already had heart disease, with a 24% worse outlook. The link was stronger in men.
Why letting it out makes it worse
The idea that anger builds up like steam and has to be released is old, and it feels true. The tests disagree.
In the punching bag test, angry people were split three ways. One group hit the bag while thinking about the person who had angered them. A second hit the bag while thinking about getting fit. A third did nothing. Afterwards, the first group felt the angriest, and when given the chance to blast the person with loud noise, they were the most aggressive. Doing nothing worked better than venting. Steam, it turns out, is a poor model for feelings.
The wider picture says the same. When 154 sets of findings covering 10,189 people were pooled, activities that calm the body, such as slow breathing, mindfulness and meditation, reduced anger and aggression. Activities that rev the body up, such as hitting a bag, jogging or cycling, did not reduce anger overall. The calming ones worked for students and non-students, offenders and non-offenders, alone or in groups, in person or on an app.
So the goal is not to discharge the anger. It is to let the body come down.
Why anger lingers
Anger lasts longest when today's trigger touches old pain. An unanswered message can feel like a lifetime of being ignored. A sharp comment can hit an old feeling of not being good enough. The trigger is the match. The fuel is often older.
The word "resent" says it plainly. It comes from the French re- and sentir: to feel again. Every time we replay the scene, we feel it again, and the anger is renewed. A grudge is a film we keep paying to watch.
Going over and over it feels like working it out. Mostly it keeps the anger company. Think Carefully: The Way You Think Might Be Rewiring Your Reality has the students measured just before the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, where those who tended to dwell on low moods were worse off weeks later.
Naming the feeling helps first. How Your Thoughts and Emotions Shape Your Body, Mood and Choices has the brain scans: when people looked at upsetting pictures and put the feeling into words, the brain's alarm response was lower. Naming our own anger may work the same way: "I am angry" is already a small step back from it.
When the replay starts, ask a different question: what did I need that I did not get? Respect, safety, fairness, being heard. Naming the need takes some of the heat out, and it points to what to do next. Marshall Rosenberg's is built around exactly this: finding the need under the feeling, and asking for it plainly.
Calm the body first
Before you work anything out, let the body settle. And it helps to know when the fuse is short.
Sleep is one. In one test, 142 adults either kept their usual sleep or cut it back for two days, then rated their anger while an irritating noise played. Short sleep made everyone angrier, and it stopped them getting used to the noise the way rested people do. Hunger works the same way. 7 Communication Tips for Your Relationship has the 107 married couples who checked their blood sugar for three weeks: on the evenings it ran low, they were angriest at their spouse, measured by how many pins they stuck in a voodoo doll that stood for them. Alcohol is the third. When 30 experiments with men who drank socially were pooled, alcohol made them more aggressive. So when anger flares, check the basics first. Have you slept? Have you eaten? Have you had a drink? Some arguments are really about a missed lunch.
Then pause. Notice what is happening: a tight chest, a hot face, clenched fists or jaw. Then slow your breathing down, with a long, easy breath out. Sit somewhere quiet, or step outside.
Move, gently. A slow walk, a stretch, shaking out your hands. Gentle is the point: the tests that worked lowered the body's arousal rather than raising it.
Mindfulness helps over time. It trains the pause between the trigger and what we do with it, the moment where we still have a choice.
Emergency Stress Relief: What to Do When You're Completely Overwhelmed, linked below, has what to do in the first minute when the feeling is too big to think through.
Step back
Once the body has settled, it is easier to see the situation from a little further away.
Then try a harder question: what might have led this person to act this way? It is not an excuse for what they did. It loosens the grip of the story we have been telling ourselves about them. Understanding is not the same as agreeing.
Gratitude helps too. Across five sets of findings, from surveys to daily reports to experiments, more gratitude went with less aggression, and the link ran through empathy: grateful people found it easier to feel for the other person.
It also helps to talk to yourself as if from the outside. 5 Ways to Build Your Inner Strength and Live a Fulfilling Life has the people preparing a speech who thought through their nerves in their own name, "Why is Sam nervous?", and felt less anxious and spoke better than those who used "I".
Big decisions can wait. Anger changes how risky things look. How Your Thoughts and Emotions Shape Your Body, Mood and Choices, linked above, also has fear and anger pulling in opposite directions: frightened people saw more risk ahead, and angry people saw less, even about things unrelated to what upset them. So the email, the resignation, the final word can all wait until the heat has gone. Seneca, the Roman writer, put it in one line nearly two thousand years ago, in his essay On Anger: "The greatest remedy for anger is delay."
Write it out
Putting anger on paper gets it out of the loop in our heads without feeding it the way shouting does. Write freely about what happened and how it felt. It can be messy. Nobody else needs to read it. Paper is a patient listener.
How to Build Resilience When Everything's Falling Apart has the engineers who had been laid off and wrote about their thoughts and feelings on losing the job. Eight months later, more than half had full-time work, against fewer than one in five in the groups that wrote about other things or did not write at all.
Forgiveness, if and when
Forgiveness is not the goal, and it is not owed. But it is worth knowing what the alternative does to us.
In one test, 71 people brought to mind someone who had really hurt them. In some rounds they rehearsed the hurt and nursed the grudge. In others they tried to see the person's side and imagined forgiving them. Nursing the grudge raised their heart rate and blood pressure, made them sweat and frown, and some of it lasted after they stopped. Forgiving thoughts left them feeling more in control, and their bodies calmer.
Seneca made another point in the same essay: to wish someone well, "even if he has done you harm, is the mark of a great mind". It is also, it seems, kinder to your blood pressure.
So forgiveness may come, or it may not. Lewis Smedes's is a gentle guide for anyone who wants to try. Either way, you are not the wound, and the person who hurt you does not have to keep living rent-free in your body.
Boundaries after anger
Anger's real message is usually simple: something is not all right. Once the heat has gone, that message is still useful.
Anger can even help, in the right moment. When people expected a confrontational task, they preferred to do things that made them angrier first, and the anger improved how they did, though it did nothing for a task that needed no confrontation. The energy is useful. What matters is where it goes.
Boundaries made in the middle of anger tend to be rigid or punishing. Boundaries made afterwards can be clear, firm and kind. You can say no. You can walk away. You can protect yourself without a fight. A calm no carries further than a shout. 5 Types of Boundaries for Healthier, Happier Relationships, linked below, has how to set one that holds. For anger in close relationships, Harriet Lerner's shows how to use it to change a pattern instead of repeating it.
When it is more than anger
If anger often feels out of control, if it frightens the people around you or leads to things you regret, or if it is tied to a past trauma that feels too big to handle alone, get help. Talking it through with someone trained in this is a strength, not a failure.
If you are ever in danger, or someone else is, call your local emergency number.
Put down the coal
Go back to Buddhaghosa's ember. The man picks it up to throw at someone else, and burns his own hand first. The punching bag works the same way: it keeps the coal hot. Put it down, and the hand can start to heal.
What helps is plainer: let the body calm down, name the feeling and the need under it, step back, let big decisions wait, write it out, and decide what boundary to set. Forgive if and when you can. Anger is meant to pass through you, not to move in.
The next time anger rises, before you say or do anything, breathe out slowly and walk once around the room.
Know what you need, and not sure how to say it? 5 Types of Boundaries for Healthier, Happier Relationships — what a boundary is, why yes comes out when we mean no, and how to set one that holds.
Too wound up to think straight? Emergency Stress Relief: What to Do When You're Completely Overwhelmed — what to do in the first minute, the next ten, and afterwards.
Know someone still carrying an old grudge? Send them this, and maybe the story of the ember.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional. If anger is putting you or someone else at risk, get help today, and in an emergency call your local emergency number.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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