Why are you angry?
Hello 👋,
How are you? I hope you are doing well and choosing kindness over everything- to yourself and to others.
Probably like many of us, anger is an emotion I am very familiar it, in different varieties and intensities even- you see, anger was one of the ways I'd express myself, either actively or passively. I had what could probably be described as deep-seated anger stemming from what I now realize was mostly unresolved, unaddressed and repressed issues.
Sometimes my anger is very much justified, other times, I can’t for goodness sake fathom why I am angry. I sometimes even acquire/ share other people’s anger- in some situations it's perfectly reasonable and in some the rightful owner of the anger is wondering why I am so worked up. It can be ridiculous!
When I read that anger can sometimes be a secondary emotion, it totally made sense to me. At the core of most of my anger lied stronger emotions that has been suppressed for any number of reason. It could be because these other emotions require vulnerability (which I am just trying to embrace) or that I have been conditioned to find them unacceptable.
Beneath all these anger might lie the emotions we can’t communicate adequately, could be from fear, stress, shame, jealousy, frustration, shame and maybe even plain hunger. As you can see, most of these are emotions we were taught either verbally or implicitly that aren’t acceptable, and shouldn't be publicly performed or felt. It could be from past experiences trying to mirror itself again, and could also be from repressed memories.
Personally, it was(and still is) easier to be angry than admit what I truly am feeling. I mean, I’d rather be angry than be vulnerable if we are keeping it real. I'd rather stay angry than let my friend know that I miss her than to revisit that relationship. I'd rather be angry than grief over the life I wanted but never got to have. Best to be angry at myself for a number of reasons than admit that whatever choices or decisions I made were the best considering the circumstances I had to navigate. It’s much easier.
With this knowledge, I know to question my anger now, even if I can’t deal with it for whatever reason, identifying what is making me angry is helpful, because I can compartmentalize things, I can file it under the will address/won’t address folder mentally. I also ask myself if the anger and/or it’s root cause is justified, because really, like I said above, I acquire anger on behalf of others.
Anger is in itself neither totally good or bad, it all lies in how we express and or address it. When expressed with calm and little or no vindictiveness, it can be helpful, and if suppressed, like almost every emotion, suppressing doesn’t fix anything, it stores and saves until the body can't take it anymore and bam! the outbursts.
Learning to deal with anger is not the easiest, it takes having honest conversations with oneself to identify the source, express it if necessary and then letting go. It'd require work (like everything else) but it definitely is doable and I hope to continue to address the things that makes me angry because it hardly ever serves me any good, and I do not care for frown lines:)
Have you been able to identify your relationship with anger? Do you know what emotions lie beneath all the anger and what triggers it? I'd love to hear all about how you navigate anger and it sidekick emotions, whether you think them good or bad. Drop an email or leave a comment, you know whatever works for you!
It would be nice if you shared this with your people as well, get the conversation going, see what interesting stuff comes up. See ya next time! ✨✨✨