Don’t fear your fire: Relearning anger
Anger is integral to our Self, core essence, being, or any other word you want to use (insert here). Anger is our fire - our inspiration, our passion, and our creativity.
We learn that anger is not helpful or productive, we fear it, and we feel shame about it. “Why am I so angry?”, you may find yourself asking. The reasons may fall somewhere in between ‘My boss is a jerk’, to ’There are injustices all over the world and I can’t do anything to fix it’. Let me be clear, these are valid reasons to be angry, and the anger might be telling you something.
Our emotions, including anger, are signals saying ‘Hey! Pay attention to me! Do something to help me!’. Usually when we experience anger, it’s our body’s way of communicating from our internal world. It may be a signal of unmet needs, lack of boundaries, threats or dangers, injustices, a need for self-protection, a sign that something needs to change, or a signal of underlying emotions (sometimes anger can be secondary to feelings like sadness, disappointment, embarrassment, or fear - but that topic is for another time).
Ask yourself these 2 important questions:
How do I express my anger?
Where do I channel my anger?
Our unexpressed anger lives deep in our body, and may manifest in different ways like feeling burnt out, experiencing lack of fulfillment, lack of connection, or even disease or illness. If we aren’t expressing our anger, it remains deep within our body, but it doesn’t go anywhere on its own.
Expressing anger means outwardly communicating the anger. You probably express anger in a variety of way: stomping, yelling, rage rooms, throwing your phone across the room and then regretting it… all very common things we do.
Channelling anger is a bit different because the energy is directed in a different way. It’s actually redirected. A redirection of the anger means the energy is used to fulfill something. Think art projects, competitive sports, singing, writing, helping others.
Now that you have identified how you express your anger and where you channel it, I am going to introduce disembodied anger and embodied anger.
Disembodied anger is disconnected from our core essence. It is reactive and it isn’t concerned with the potential harm to self or others. It is the unpredictable reactivity we might experience. Disembodied anger isn’t wise or intellectual, and you may experience a disconnection between mind-body. Disembodied anger may look like difficulty expressing emotions, physical symptoms like muscle tension or headaches, emotional detachment, and social isolation. Disembodied anger is like a firework - unpredictable and fleeting.
Embodied anger, on the other hand, has a controlled quality and is connected to our core essence. It is grounded in the physical body, and is wise and intellectual, understanding its role in protection and safety. Embodied anger is like a volcano - rooted in an awareness of Self and others.
(Shout out to Anne Berube, author or ‘The Burnout Antidote”, who explains the role of anger in healing from burnout).
When we experience embodied anger, we can express our anger from a place of wisdom and channel it into something bigger and more meaningful.
Embodied anger may be the beginning of your adventure or project. It may be the push to connect with others in a meaningful way. It may challenge you to step out of safety and try something new.
So don’t fear your fire, embrace it, become empowered by it, because it burns big and has so much to teach you and so many places to lead you.
