Sitting with anger
My normal response to anger is to crush it down, denying the feelings and giving them no space. If it does manifest, depression, or the more immediate tears of frustration are likely. I’ve lived in spaces where everything was dependably my fault, and also learned how to work that out for myself – it saved a lot of time and stress, where expressing anger would lead to a lengthy, miserable browbeating and the same sorry outcome.
Other people work differently with anger. I have been on the receiving end of anger as justification for action. I’ve been shouted at because I had ‘made people angry’ and I’ve been hit in that context, too. I’ve felt physically very threatened by other people’s anger. What happens here is that the feeling of anger is identified as being caused by the other person, which justifies anything you do to them in response. I never want to do that, so what does that leave me in terms of handling rage when it erupts within me?
I’ve been trying a thing. I get myself some space as quickly as I can, while the anger is still boiling and fresh. I sit with it, and I listen to where it’s coming from, and I ask questions. Why, exactly, am I angry? The mostly likely answer is that I feel threatened and vulnerable, my anger an attempt at defence. I may feel ignored, put upon or mildly mistreated. I might be reacting to injustice. It’s entirely possible that someone has pushed an old button for me, and done so in all innocence. Like a small child, I keep asking why. Why does that hurt? Why does that threaten me? Why am I offended?
By this means, if I am trying to defend wounded pride or justify being in the wrong, I eventually face up to this without savaging anyone else, first. If I am dealing with a triggering of history, I spot it, and do not swipe back at someone who, from their perspective, really wasn’t intending any harm. Last but by no means least, if my careful reflection identifies someone who really was taking the piss, I firm up my boundaries and calmly work out exactly how best to deal with it. On the whole this is getting me results I am happy with.
Anger denied and anger not permitted makes a person vulnerable. If you can’t fend off what isn’t welcome, you are settling into a victim role and are easily mistreated. It’s not a way to live. Anger denied has, for me, largely transformed into self hatred, and I’ve carried destructive levels of self-loathing for a long time. Maybe I don’t have to be that person any more. When I let myself get angry for the right reasons, think it through and take non-violent and productive action, I feel better in myself. I feel stronger, safer, more capable. With time I think I could stop carrying this internalised violence towards myself that has come from swallowing other people’s aggression. Worth a shot at any rate.
(Previous ponders of anger are here – https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2014/09/12/anger-management/ and here – https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/angry-druid/ )
