Sometimes you need to listen to anger, even though it can be hard. Anger is frightening; anger is sometimes cold and careless; anger can be stupid and hurtful with what it says and how it says it. But if you listen underneath the hurtful things, you can hear the sounds of sadness, fear or frustration. Someone that is angry feels all of his emotions; someone who is angry stops thinking sometimes because the feelings are just too big, too impossible to say the right way.
When you are sad, and you don’t think you can change it, sometimes you get angry instead, because feeling helpless is very frightening. If someone has done something very wrong to you and it’s made you lose something or someone, or even a part of who you are, of course you will feel sad. But at the same time, you will not be able to say anything about what you have lost, and this makes you very sad indeed. Sadness brings you down, and makes hope go away from your heart. So you might get angry, because being angry can feel much better than sadness.
And of course it is the same for other people! So listen for the sadness inside of the anger. Listen for the fear: the fear of being alone, of being helpless, or being not good enough or being someone that does not deserve love. This is a hard fear indeed! But you can hear the sound of this fear even inside the anger, and the same with the feeling of frustration, of trying and trying and trying again and again and having all your hopes dashed and all your work go back to nothing.
Anger feels so much better than any.of these things! Anger can be dangerous and unkind, cruel and unforgiving, yes, but if you can listen you can come back when the person is no longer angry and talk with them.