Anger

Written in 2022

Most of us are never taught how to express anger.

Instead, we learn how to hide it.

We swallow it.

We silence it.

We convince ourselves that it has disappeared.

It hasn't.

It simply finds another way to speak.

Sometimes through criticism.

Sometimes through sarcasm.

Sometimes through emotional distance.

Sometimes through depression.

Whatever path it chooses, anger always asks to be felt.

Words spoken in anger can leave wounds just as real as physical injuries.

The skin may remain untouched,

but something deeper remembers.

Our nervous system responds to emotional attacks much the same way it responds to physical ones.

Pain is pain.

Fear is fear.

And relationships begin to fracture.

What fascinates me is that anger hurts everyone involved.

The person on the receiving end feels attacked.

The person expressing the anger suffers as well.

For years, I believed anger was something to avoid.

Something dangerous.

Something that should be controlled.

Everything changed when I began working with conscious breathing more than twenty years ago.

For the first time, I stopped analyzing my anger.

I felt it.

Beneath the anger was pain.

Beneath the pain was fear.

And beneath the fear...

was life itself,

trying to move again.

That experience changed the way I understand anger.

Today, I no longer see anger as the opposite of love.

I believe they are two expressions of the same life force.

Love is what we experience when that life force flows freely.

Anger is what we experience when it becomes blocked.

The problem isn't anger.

The problem is what we learned to do with it.

Many of us grew up believing that anger was unacceptable.

Perhaps we were criticized for expressing it.

Punished.

Ignored.

Or simply made to feel ashamed.

So we faced an impossible choice.

Express our anger and risk losing love...

or bury it deep inside ourselves.

Many of us chose the second option.

But when we suppress our anger, we don't only suppress our anger.

We slowly lose access to joy.

To spontaneity.

To love.

Because we cannot selectively numb our emotions.

When we close the door on one,

we close it on all of them.

That is why healing is not about getting rid of anger.

It is about giving it a safe place to move.

In my practice, I use different therapeutic approaches.

Sometimes I invite people into an imagined conversation with the person who hurt them.

Sometimes I ask them to hit a cushion or a mattress with all the strength they have.

To someone who has spent a lifetime fearing anger,

that simple invitation can feel impossible.

And yet,

when they finally allow themselves to express it,

something remarkable often happens.

Their bodies soften.

Their breathing changes.

Peace quietly returns.

Over the years, I have come to believe that emotional maturity has very little to do with never feeling angry.

Real maturity is being able to feel anger

without turning another human being into its target.

To allow it to move through us.

To listen to what it is trying to protect.

And then,

to let it go.

Perhaps freedom begins the moment we no longer need someone else to carry our pain.

We become truly free

When we can be angry,

Cry,

Or laugh...

Without making another person responsible for what we feel.