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Anger

Anger is fun.

Actually, anger is hard, but it's a great issue. When we're talking about issues, we're really talking about anything that keeps us distracted in some kind of personal experience. Anger is very important to talk about because I think it is one of the most misunderstood and misdirected issue.

Anger is often misdirected because we don't know what to do with it.

I really wanted to give air time to anger because it's universal and everyone has it. But so many of us feel that if we experience and feel anger, we're bad people. I'm having bad feelings, therefore I'm bad.

So often that part of us gets suppressed. We hide it in the background and pretend that it's okay. And then of course, it's going to creep back up and that's why it gets misdirected. It gets directed into ourselves, or we don't know how to handle it.

The energy that gets created can be a great motivator. If that serves, it can have a very useful purpose. Anger is a reaction to something. When you feel that you or someone you love has been attacked, or something is unjust, you have this surge and suddenly you have the energy to do something. That can be a lifesaver.

We have this shame associated with anger, like we shouldn't feel that way.

We feel like we should always just be at peace and happy. And so that anger very often gets turned inward or it gets misdirected, or it gets, you know, changed in some way. And then it be, it becomes very dangerous.

You can vent on someone who really doesn't deserve it because you're suppressing and having trouble dealing with something, so you throw it out here or there. And then you're inappropriate with the Starbucks barista or something. You are expressing it, but because you haven't really met it and worked with it, you're not free. It's important to sort of put it under, a microscope and take responsibility for it.

Some people talk about depression as if it's anger turned inward. It takes a lot of energy to sit on top of that. I had a student once and we were just musing outside of class.  We were talking about some kind of food, or something really trivial. And I said, “Oh, I hate zucchini when it's cooked like this,” or something like that. I don't do well with the nightshades. The point was, she said, “Oh, I can't believe you use that word. I teach my children. Never to use the word hate.” I thought about it and said, “well, if they aren't allowed to express something as innocent as that, what are they going to do with those angry feelings when they come up? They're just going to assume that it's bad.” We have to teach ourselves how to have those feelings and how to express them appropriately.

Just because one feels anger doesn't mean one needs to get violent, or that you're a bad person. Anger can be a motivator for action. You just have to do it with awareness. The problem with anger is that it can switch very quickly into rage, and rage is blind. They say that blind rage is when you've been hurt so badly, it just doesn't matter.

You notice that anger often speaks in absolutes.

“You always do this to me.” “You never take out the garbage.” All of that energy gets in and then it just sort of lashes out.

A great example is road rage. People get very angry on the highway. And what is each person angry about? That our time is being wasted, or in some way we feel devalued by the action of some other person in the world.

We take it personally. “You're making my life miserable. You went out of your way to put your car in front of mine.” It brings me to wonder if maybe that anger is already there. Traffic is a wonderful context to experience and express anger, because that frustration that we can't do anything with— there is no appropriate action to take that out anywhere. We're left with that feeling, stuck in our car. We just kind of lose it a little bit.

I have anger because I'm a karmic human being like everyone else. When I recognize that in myself, I can decide that I want to work on it with the energetic consciousness tools. A beautiful thing you can do with VortexHealing® is just meet something with the consciousness of love. Even before releasing it, to just bring love to it. Seeing it for what it is. It allows space to have an experience of it in safety and in love.

And then that little space is everything in the world. The difference between “I am angry,” and “I have anger in my system” is everything. When we bring love and consciousness to it, we recognize it for what it is. It's something that's arising in the system. Then we bring our energetic consciousness tools in to release it and transform it to actually let it go on a physical level. Anger takes a hard toll on the physical body— that tension involved in it. It often shows up in the liver. It's rough. You need to address that. You need to allow it to release from the body, the energetic pathways, and the chakras in the system, and then allow yourself to awaken out of it or be present with it in love.

Anger is a part of grief.

It's a natural part of the grieving process, but of course we don't want to be angry at the loved one we've lost. So, it's very natural to suppress or misdirect that as well. When we're in so much pain, it's hard to see what's going on. And we don't want to be inappropriate, but we just don't want to feel it. It's perfectly natural to shove it back, but then we're walking around in existence pain, not knowing why we feel disconnected and not knowing why we can't be happy.

This is what our issues do to us and why we want to take a look at them. To see anger for what it is, without judging it misdirecting it, or turning it back in on ourselves, which becomes very self-destructive.

We have all been angry.

I can so easily misdirect it. I think that often happens because we don't give ourselves and other people permission to experience anger. I think that's key to processing and to working with it. If you suppress it, it can't be worked with in that way.

A lot is changing in modern parenting to address this. You see the modern parents and they're like, “it's okay to be angry, but that's not appropriate behavior.” Which is a world of difference from “Keep your mouth shut.” There has to be a structure for how to process anger safely. When we see anger in someone else, it's scary and threatening to us because we know anger. If you see someone angry, it can bring up your own fears. Even if they're not violent, it can be very threatening.

Anger has all of this energy to it. It's a motivator. It calls for big action. Why do we yell? We start yelling at each other because we don't feel we're being heard. “I'll just raise my voice so you can hear me,” but it's got all this energy that's hard to work with. And so that can be very threatening.

We can use anger to hide other issues because it's a stronger position to be angry than to be hurt.

I don't want to generalize too much, but I think men have a little more permission to be angry, so sometimes they'll take some of the other things that are harder to express, like hurt or pain, and express it as anger. I tend to cry before I'll express anger, because I'm so frustrated. I think that's social conditioning. I do think that's changing, but these are a lot of the norms that we grew up in. I do think hurt and anger are so closely. We talk about how issues create identities. Hurt, pain and suffering creates an identity of ‘victim’, and then anger creates an identity of ‘victimizer’.

I think it's important when look at our own pain, to see the ways that we have caused pain as well. There are two sides of the same coin. Anger can come from feeling threatened. It can also be fear with a target. It's important to look at both identities that get created from pain from isolation. That's what our issues do. They keep us in isolation and anger is a handy way to shoot something right back out.

“I don’t want to feel this and therefore, it's your fault.” “I don't want to feel this and therefore we're going to do this.” Not that it can't be a great motivator when used appropriately, and there are times when we should get angry, but it can also be one of those behavior patterns that hides and redirects.

Anger comes from pain, and then there's a threshold or something that says, “enough”. So it gets redirected. If you don’t face it, you have this energy and you don’t know what to do with it. Spiritual people don't often give themselves permission to feel the ugly stuff. But you have to. That's part of being in form, and that that process needs to be honored. It's sacred. So we work on our stuff, but we bring love to it as we address it.