How to control anger?

The following excerpt is from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: How to control my unjustified anger?

Acharya Prashant: If it were really unjustified according to you, it couldn’t have had any life, it couldn’t have been able to gather any momentum. It is only after a while, it is only as an after-thought, and it is only intellectually, that we call our anger as ‘unjustified’.

Deep within we authorise ourselves to be fully angry and destructive. Superficially, to keep up with social norms and moral pretence, we tell ourselves that anger is unjustified and uncivilised and needless.

But in spite of such admissions, anger keeps recurring. It is because the source of anger not only remains in tact within, but is also continuously fed and supported by us.

It’s like feeding the root, and trimming the shoot.

The tree may at best appear pruned and limited, but would nevertheless would have all the energy and vitality and power of it’s powerful roots, roots that are being fed continuously.

How do we justify our anger?

We justify our anger by feeling short-changed, by feeling cheated or victimised. By continuing to assert that we are incomplete, while simultaneously bemoaning the incompleteness.