Are You Attached to Your Anger?

Paul Gauguin, like most artists forced to work a day job, hated it, ran off to Tahiti to paint, and offered up the following mocking advice in his journal: “Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.”

An artist clear on how little chance she has to run off to Tahiti would happily throw a coconut at Paul’s head if he wasn’t already dead and buried. Still, toiling away at her day job, an artist can’t help but wonder, “Is this really the way I should be living?” Such was the question that a former client of mine, a painter named Patricia, couldn’t get off her mind, saddled as she was with a forty-hour-a-week day job.

That day job, working in a Manhattan restaurant, hadn’t seemed so terrible when she was in her twenties. Now that she’d turned thirty, it had become unbearable. She knew that she was lucky: the restaurant hadn’t closed, as so many others had; meals there were expensive, which meant that her tips were large; and her immediate boss was no angel but no monster, either. She knew that, on balance, as day jobs went, hers was pretty excellent. But it was still unbearable—and how little painting she was getting done!

To begin with, we could not come up with any great answers. Could she perhaps take a year off and live on parental money and do a lot of painting? No—her parents hated her decision to be an artist and absolutely would not support her; nor could she see herself asking them for money. Might another day job suit her better? No—this one was great, as day jobs went. Maybe she should train in some career and become a therapist, a life coach, or some other professional? No—how long that would take and how far that would take her from painting! Maybe, like in a romantic fantasy movie, she could snare a rich man who would support her? How likely was that? Nor was she very likely to stand for that!

What then? Waste money on lottery tickets? Drink a lot and drown her sorrows? We finally agreed on a short-term, six-month plan. The plan focused on her getting much more painting done—much more—and taking the demands of being a professional artist much more seriously. Did creating this plan allow her to give up her day job? No, of course not. It did however provide her with a glimmer of hope.

As might have been expected, the first month of the plan proved rocky. We had agreed that she would check in via email every day and she missed many days; and often on the days when she did check in, her message amounted to “Didn’t paint today.” But the second month was better and by the third month she was painting quite a bit, three and sometimes four times a week. Then she stopped abruptly.

“It’s rage,” she said at our next session.

Her situation enraged her. It enraged her that she had to work that day job. It enraged her that customers spent a hundred and fifty dollars a person for a meal at the restaurant where she worked. It enraged her that she had so many finished paintings accumulated with nothing to do with them. The commodification of art enraged her. What she saw in galleries enraged her. The world enraged her—more so every day.

But her rage ran deeper and wider even than all that. She hated the way her parents wrote her off and dismissed as indulgent and ridiculous her desire to be a painter—even though her father was a well-known painter! She hated how she had been bullied in childhood and made to feel scared by her father’s rages and tantrums. She hated with a burning hatred the world’s cavalier injustices, the millions upon millions of shameless outrages perpetrated daily.

“How would you describe your relationship to that rage?” I wondered. “Are you ‘for it’ or ‘against it’?”

She thought about. Then, after a long while, she said, “I’m attached to it.”

That was a big-deal insight.

“And? Do you want to stay attached to it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Okay. Let’s try the following.”

I explained the idea of visualizing her mindroom and described a couple of the changes that she might want to make to help her release her anger. One visualization, hanging a still life painting of ripe and rotten apricots, captured her imagination. I could see her picturing it and thinking about it.

“Should I be angry that an apricot turns rotten?” she said after a while. She shook her head. “Maybe I can let go of some of this rage by focusing on process. You know … maybe I’ll make some ‘defaced apricot’ paintings. I want to play with that idea. There’s something there for me to learn.”

She gave it a try—and it helped. She began quite enjoying painting her “defaced apricot” paintings and she could feel herself detaching from at least a portion of her anger. The daily grind remained the daily grind for Patricia but she continued painting. Then a gallery accepted two of her “defaced apricot” paintings; and shortly thereafter one of them sold for its asking price. That wasn’t the end of the story, of course; but it was a lovely landmark.

Are you attached to your anger? Would you like to release some of it? And, if you would, how might you go about doing that?

“Maisel’s thorough explanation of his technique will help readers who are looking to push through their mental roadblocks and improve their emotional well-being.”―Publisher’s Weekly. Redesign Your Mind, available for purchase now.