shifting my relationship with anger

photo by Nathan Kelly

Sometimes, I feel disconnected from myself and others — like an imperceptible screen exists, separating me from my body, from touch, from pulse.

Over time, I had resigned myself to the way the disconnection would come and go. I kept brushing up against something I couldn’t quite place. What was it? I could observe myself minding the screen, not daring to engage with or to see what was beyond it. It felt like something to avoid. Or rather, something from which to protect myself.

I recently discussed this experience in a session with Ari Felix, a lovingly perceptive writer, astrologer, and planetary priestess. They reminded me that “what you avoid is what you take shape around.”

My guardedness suddenly shifted into curiosity, guiding me through the screen and, to my surprise, delivering me to my anger — hot, pulsating, and very much alive within me.

I had disowned, avoided, and grown around my anger. The screen may have had a protective function, but it was also an obstacle to intimacy (with myself and others).

My caregivers had modeled anger to me as a scary, violent, and uncontrollable spirit that possessed its host, engulfing everything and everyone in flames. Anger, in that household, was destructive.

I grew up believing that in order to have the connection and love that I desired that I needed to completely disown my anger, and as a result, discard my own needs, desires, and boundaries. Many times, my anger was trying to protect me or motivate me to act, especially when others had violated or taken advantage of me. But because I did not feel safe in expressing my anger, it would sour into resentment, which somehow felt more corrosive to my relationships than the anger itself. Instead of preserving intimacy, disowning anger created distance within myself and from others.

I am realizing now that anger is not an inherently destructive force. Anger can be a generative/generous expression of self-determination. It can protect and motivate us. It can move us past thresholds and initiate change. It can allow us to negotiate and to live our lives in tandem with others who may have different intentions, values, desires, and needs. Professor and storyteller Brené Brown says that “Anger is a catalyst, an emotion we need to transform into something life-giving.”

I have begun shifting my relationship with anger by reimagining my languaging around it. What if anger was not an uncontrollable wildfire from hell? What if anger could be a loving and fierce nudge in my core, my solar plexus, to speak up for myself? Or what if anger was my advocate, my guardian?

As I work through my own anger and guide others to work through difficult emotions, I see the value of softening into the fullness of our experiences. Rather than disown, avoid, or harden against difficult feelings, what might allow us to safely engage with them? Creativity, curiosity, humor, sweetness, something else?

What emotion are you not allowing yourself to feel? Or perhaps, what emotion do you not feel safe to feel in your body or feel safe to express with others?

With gratitude,
Kristen

~

Work with me.
Read my newsletter archive.
Enjoy my perspectives and wish to support my work?
Donate here or here.