Why would I want to explore my anger? It sucks and I feel crappy when I am angry!
When you have that perspective about your anger, you are telling yourself that you don’t want to feel something. And what happens when you try not to feel a feeling? You push it down with something. You overeat, overspend, drink too much, etc.
Or you displace it onto someone or something else. You yell at your kids, you kick your dog (you better not!), you break things. I once accidentally broke 8 crystal wine glasses by tossing a box out of my way when I was a teeny bit upset!
The other consequence of not feeling something is that this practice continues to disconnect you from your essential self. The more you disconnect from what you really feel, the more you lose touch with how you really feel about…well everything! And as you become more disconnected from yourself, others have a harder time connecting to you.
So that’s my case against not feeling your anger. Now I want to make my case for why it’s great to feel it. Your anger is a signal. It has a message for you. Sometimes that message is that you don’t like what someone else is doing and you need to set a boundary on what you will tolerate (more on boundaries in my next article).
Sometimes the most valuable signal that your anger is sending you is to look in the mirror. If you are angry at someone else because, “he should not do that!”, take a look at where in your life you do that. Last month one of my clients was upset with a friend who constantly complained about being alone but did not really do anything to put herself out there or create a relationship for herself. I asked my client to ‘hold up the mirror’ and ask herself where in her life is she complaining or not taking responsibility for her relationships. She contacted me a few days later to say that opened up a big door for her to look into and she realized that she was relying on her boyfriend for her social life and getting angry at him for going on with his friends when she had not cultivated a local circle of friends.
My last point about owning and even embracing our anger is that it’s much easier than you might think. When you stop resisting anything, you will find that it will flow through you with ease. Remember, feeling your anger does not mean that you ARE your anger. It’s just a feeling. We are never our feelings. They are just vibrations in our body that we temporarily experience. So go ahead… I personally guarantee that it won’t kill you! And feeling your anger doesn’t mean you are going to act on it. Those are two completely different concepts. You can feel it and chose not to act. Or you can feel it and choose how you WANT to act. Feeling strong emotion does not mean you will be out of control. Just notice it, feel it, breathe and sit with it until it passes. Don’t get caught up in thoughts about your anger, just focus on the feeling. If you do this, it will pass pretty quickly.
