Hello!
Today I want to take some time to talk about anger.
Specifically to speak about why anger isn’t actually a ‘bad’ emotion, why it’s not something we want to try to get rid of, why we shouldn’t have any SHAME about being angry when we are, and why allowing ourselves to feel, express and process our anger in healthy ways is one of the most empowering things we will do for ourselves on this path of life.
I want to explore why trying to suppress, get rid of, deny or ‘transcend’ our anger can actually TRAP us in unhealthy dynamics, and why learning to embrace our anger so that it can help us GROW is so important in life.
Anger isn’t something that is ‘wrong with us’ - and it’s not happening because we are doing something wrong or are failing spiritually/emotionally in some way - rather anger is a STEP on the path from being stuck in situations, places and relationships that don’t feel good for us to finding actual peace, answers and solutions.
Anger is a part of the path of healing - it’s not in the WAY of us healing - so long as we know how to work with it. Listen to it, understand it and flow with it.
So let’s take some time to explore this today and see how we go!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In my experience - anger is one of the most misunderstood emotions. Before you read this I have two videos on youtube that explore anger in a way that may serve you:
Why Premature Forgiveness Is Killing You
How To Get Out Of The Anger/Hopelessness Spiral
The Bad Wrap Of Anger
In the self help/spirituality worlds, we often hear anger being spoken about as being a ‘negative’ or ‘low’ emotion - and it’s especially demonized in the current new age/love and light/self help movement as something that’s immature, dangerous, and leads us to being manipulated. We are being told that anger is bad on some level in many different ways, and being told that we ‘should’ be doing everything in our power to transcend it.
Even those of us who are wanting to do our ‘shadow work’ or who are looking to actually process our pain and move forward in this way often feel a lot of shame around feeling anger. We feel like if we are feeling it we should be ‘processing’ it and ending up being ‘happy’ and peaceful and we may get to a point where we feel like we must be doing something wrong if we aren’t ‘moving on’ as quickly as we think we should be.
Many of us have learned that anger means that we are emotionally immature and need to ‘forgive and forget’ and that if we can’t do that, this means we’re holding onto a grudge.
There’s the old adage that unforgiveness is a poison that we unintentionally swallow ourselves rather than pouring into the person/situation we are upset with.
We may have experienced situations in our lives where others made us feel deeply unsafe, unsettled and not ok when they were expressing THEIR anger, making us fear our own anger and what we may do/feel when we’re angry.
There’s also the fact that in our culture it’s very common to see that those who are raised as traditionally masculine are taught that anger is the ONLY emotion that they’re allowed to have/express - leading to a LOT of unhealthy expressions of anger that end up spilling out all over people and places that don’t deserve it. And on the flip side we can see that those who are raised as typically ‘feminine’ are often socialized to believe that any expression of anger is unbecoming/not ok and that it must be suppressed at all costs.
Some people have been raised to believe that anger is something that makes them ‘strong’, where others have been told over and over again that their anger is not ok, not welcome, not attractive and must be changed immediately.
So is it any wonder that we are all mixed up and turned around when it comes to feeling, processing, healthfully expressing and getting the messages from our anger?
Anger On The Vibrational Scale
In my experience, and looking at the vibrational scale of emotions (which you can find in the book “Power VS. Force” by David R Hawkins), I’ve found that anger, just like ALL other emotional states - is just that - a state we are meant to naturally process and pass through. It is neither good nor bad, but rather a natural and normal step on the path from pain to pleasure.
If we can look at the scale not as a scale of ‘good and bad’ emotions, or as something we are going to pass through once in our lives, finally arriving at ‘enlightenment’ and then staying there forever - but rather as something that demonstrates what it looks like to healthfully PROCESS an experience that hurt us, a process we will journey through MANY times throughout the course of our lifetime - we are going to be able to make MUCH more sense of what we’re looking at and what we may be experiencing.
You see, at the very bottom of the scale we see ‘victim state’. What this means is that when we are feeling trapped, like we have no power, no autonomy and like we are being harmed in some way that we don’t understand/can’t remedy - this is the WORST we can FEEL as a human being.
That’s all it means. It’s not a ‘flaw’ to be in a victim state. It’s not something we ‘choose.’ It’s a state that occurs when we are living life and are thrust into a situation where we don’t feel like we have love, safety, access to getting our needs met and or a PLAN to make our way towards having those things.
This state happens to all of us. This state was something we experienced a LOT in our childhoods when we were in a position of literally NOT having control over our lives and circumstances, and it happens to us as adults because we don’t have total control over our lives and circumstances.
This state can be incredibly traumatizing to be in, and often we have painful, visceral memories of being in these kinds of states as children that stick with us into adulthood - leading to feelings of either deep shame, blame and guilt - because when we are children we don’t have the capacity to see that our pain may have been coming from those we fully relied upon for everything, rather we had to turn our pain in on ourselves.
Many of us were either outright or subtly told that the reason we weren’t getting the love, support, safety and provision we wanted WAS because we were ‘bad’ in some way, others of us used our childhood logic to work out what we believed to be the reason we were being neglected/abandoned/abused in some way and this is where we get really TRAPPED in that victim state.
When this happens, we then start to live in a way where we genuinely believe that in order to find the freedom, love, happiness and provision that we want, we need to change these ‘bad things’ about OURSELVES, instead of being able to see the truth - that we were in a situation where we were being victimized by those who had power over us and that the real answer as adults is to now work out where our needs weren’t being met, how we were being harmed, and how we can remedy that to the best of our ability now that we are adults - which INCLUDES going through the EMOTIONAL processing phase of anger, sadness, grief and so on.
When we are victimized as adults, the process is much the same. We have to first acknowledge and go through the process of feeling our deeply painful FEELINGS that are going to come up as a result of that victimization, and we then have to slowly work our way towards figuring out where our power lies in terms of creating something better/safer for ourselves, to the best of our ability.
‘Enlightenment’ if we can understand it for what it truly is - isn’t so much a state we arrive at and then exist within forever. Rather, it is a state of UNDERSTANDING how things work, how to be in a state of GROWTH, EXPANSION and self expression within the confines of our reality.
It means getting to a place where we have processed what there is to process, where we have felt what there is to feel, where we have then gathered the information from that processing that allows us to see where we can take steps towards something better, we have taken those steps and we have found ourselves in a BETTER place - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It means having done both the inner and outer work to create a new environment for ourselves where the harm is no longer being done, or where the pain that was once there is no longer there OR where we have come to a place of accepting whatever pain lingers in a way that we can lovingly hold ourselves through the inevitable waves of pain and painful emotions that are GOING to continue to come up in the face of chronically painful circumstances.
Where we have reached a level of acceptance of what is, that allows us to have peace within it to the degree that that’s possible, or where we have shifted the circumstances enough that we are now getting our needs met and are thus naturally in a state of pleasure and comfort.
Which means that in certain circumstances, we are going to come to the realization that we DON’T have complete power to fully transform our situation into something that would FEEL good for us - in the sense that we can’t fully remove whatever harm is being done, or that we can’t fully create a healthy/safe environment for ourselves, that we can’t fully heal a physical issue, that we have some sort of mental health struggle that we may not be able to fully ‘transcend’ or that the pain we experienced in our path has left some permanent scars that we may feel get ‘triggered’ from time to time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Let’s take a break here and come back next week for our next installment!
How do you feel reading that anger is not bad, but actually a tool that can help you? I would love your thoughts!
<3
Are you sick of the self help roller coaster that leaves you constantly striving and never arriving?
Are you ready for a true spiritual path that connects you to yourself and reality so you can feel good about your life?
Then come check out the Mystery School.
The school is a 4-5 year self paced program that includes written lectures, videos, worksheets, practices and a community all designed to help you develop a clearer view of yourself, your life and reality at large so that you can better design a life that actually works for you.
