It can be difficult to know how to honor anger. Anger is either avoided and repressed (passivity) until it explodes, or it’s constantly on edge – volatile and eruptive (aggression).
Why would we want to honor anger?
Anger gets a bad rap because of its propensity to fuel violent behavior. But, anger isn’t the bad guy in and of itself. When anger is unprocessed or unexamined, it can require healing. But it is a powerful, emotional tool that we can and should give honor to.
Why we need anger
Anger is a crucial emotion that allows us to stay safe. It’s trying to protect us. It’s our defense, by way of emotion.
Fear (“I”m scared!”) transmutes into fury (“so I’ll fight!”).
The fight response is automatic and at the subconscious level. It’s a detection of threat or danger. It is the limbic (most primitive) part of our brain automatically kicking in to save us. Our biology protects us so we can survive by coming to our rescue to fend off the source of threat.
This is a natural strategy the system uses for safety and survival.
(Some people’s systems respond with fleeing or freezing. These are also attempts to stay safe and protected.)
The problem with anger is not that it has destructive potential because, well, that’s the whole point of it. If there’s a threat to our survival, we need to cultivate some measure of destruction strong enough to fend it off. It needs to be gnarly enough to kick our systems into “fight” mode so we win the battle against whatever’s trying to hurt/harm/eat us.
The destructive potential is at the dysregulated emotional level when the threat it’s responding to isn’t actually a threat and we’re not in an actual position of needing to survive.
The threat or perceived danger becomes distorted through a variety of traumas (intergenerational, relational, developmental, societal, cultural). Other factors that can distort your perceived danger are, a lack of modeling of healthy relationships to anger, lack of overall emphasis on emotional intelligence, and/or a lack of mindfulness.
As we go through our human experiences, we aren’t taught to heal ourselves. So the anger – for those who didn’t have it modeled to them as healthy and constructive – becomes a deleterious experience. This experience can, when acted out, create devastating consequences (in any domain).
Understanding Anger
Anger isn’t “bad” in and of itself, although I know it can feel unpleasant when it’s dysregulated (usually on the 5-10 side of a 0-10 scale).
When anger is at its best (0-5 side of the 0-10 scale), it’s a constructive emotional experience that’s eliciting the inner fire we need to empower ourselves to set appropriate boundaries. Anger helps us use our voice for advocacy efforts. It helps us forgive ourselves and others. It pushes us to assert limits on how we allow others (and ourselves) to treat us. And finally, it allows us to set what we deem acceptable.
Anger (at the 0-5 level when mindful mind can explore its message) cues our system that we’re being treated in a manner that we’ve deemed unacceptable. We need to honor that feeling by using it to discern how safe (at a relational, psychological, emotional level) any given situation is, with any given person, in any given environment (micro and macro levels, e.g. partner or boss and government, or country’s person in power).
It’s our indication about whether or not there’s justice, equity, mutuality, respect, safety (universal human needs).
We honor anger by learning to trust ourselves to use it in that way. As a measure of discerning what needs are going unmet and then by asking ourselves what we can do to get them met.
When it’s not pure adrenaline intended to keep us alive, anger is often a secondary emotion.
There is usually a deeper and more vulnerable emotional experience that underlies it- say something like, hurt, helplessness, discouragement, overwhelm, perplexed..
How to Honor Anger:
We an emotionally regulate any experience of anger by exploring its underlying message, soothing our nervous systems reliably – proactively and in the heat of the emotional trigger.
Anger occur on a spectrum, anywhere from frustrated and irritated to rage and fury. We’re in a best position to understand and heal anger when it’s in a stage we can connect to (usually 0 to 10 on that scale).
What helps?
- Cultivate an insatiable willingness to tolerate the feeling long enough for it to soften
- Unrelenting curiosity: What is this emotion tying to protect me from? How real is the threat in present time? Did something trigger a childhood wound? What is this fear? What story does it tell? And what do I need here? (rest, forgiveness, trust, stability, power, healing, etc.)
This helps you identify the ACTUAL need in present-time.
Through this process, you’re able to remind your nervous system and your subconscious mindbody that there is no actual threat here right now. This helps you slow down long enough to listen, hear, respond, and compassionately honor the depth of the experience.
What else helps?
Ritual: Through journaling, dance, art, or any other type of reliable and sacred experience, you begin to liberate your soul. Your body learns to trust your mind. You learn to love yourself through anything and everything; anger included.
Breathe: When you take 5 slow deep breathes into your belly, destructive anger becomes an impossibility.
Advocate: Use your voice. The anger may need you to have its back. It may be the fuel for a movement, a revolution, and end to injustice. Let it serve its powerful purpose in this way. It starts with a commitment to be your own best advocate.
Process: Talk it through. Reflect on it! You need time to understand this anger. Reach out to sophisticated friends who can hold you through it. Bring it to therapy. Meditate on it.
Give to the earth: Don’t forget, the earth is here to support you. Find a sacred space in nature and release the anger into the earth.
If you’re ready to elaborate on any of the above strategies for healing your relationship to anger, join my upcoming The Numinous Path Membership– opening 2020
Want more? Check out my blog post on How to Stop Caring About What Other People Think
