The Healing Power of Anger

If you watch the news, you will see that our collective anger is showing up all over the place. It is sad to see members of the United States Congress refusing to listen to one another because they insist their position is right and the other’s is wrong. This angry positioning is also showing up on freeways, in terrorist attacks, towards people of color, and via white supremacists – not because society is breaking down, but because life is asking us to acknowledge how much anger we have!

So, take a moment and recognize, without shame, that you too have anger. We all do. Yours may never erupt in a fiery rage. It may be much quieter, showing up as resentment, frustration, impatience, or irritation. What happened when you were young, and anger naturally arose inside of you? Did your parents get angry when your anger showed up and then punish or shame you? If that happened, you may be punishing yourself by judging yourself for being angry.

Now, what do you do with your anger? Do you try to pretend it is not there, even hiding it from yourself? Do you try to be nice when inside you are irritated or even seething? Do you do your best to push it down or release some of the pressure by projecting it onto somebody else? We all pay a price for being at the mercy of anger. It dramatically limits your ability to experience things as they are. It is almost like putting on a pair of fractured glasses that splinter your view of life.

When you don’t have a healthy relationship with your anger, it influences everything from underneath your everyday awareness. Anger is like molten lava. When it is contained and meets a barrier that stops it from flowing, it will erupt. When you calm down after your anger erupts, you may fall into deep shame around your thoughts and actions. You then may promise yourself that you won’t do that again, but this is putting a lid on your anger, which only starts creating pressure. And when the pressure increases enough, the fire of anger erupts and takes over again.

If you begin to watch anger rather than falling into it or trying to stuff it, you will see that it usually arises when your life is not showing up how you think it should be. If you look, you will see that even though it is a fiery emotion, it comes from a sense of impotence and fear. It is startling to realize that underneath all eruptions of anger is a sense of helplessness and fear. The truth is that when you are feeling angry, you are also feeling vulnerable.

How would your life change if you saw anger as a natural part of life? It is your fire that allows you to say “No” when you need to say “No” and a firm “Yes” when it is appropriate. What if it is your teacher, showing you the places where you still react and attack in your life? What if anger was a doorway back into your heart, allowing you to make contact with the vulnerability that it is trying to take care of? And what if trying to get rid of anger only creates more anger and befriending it turns its toxic energy into a force for healing?

So, the invitation is, at least for a day, to hold the intention to be curious about how and when anger shows up inside of you, to see it without judging it. Remember, we are all caught in our conditioned minds’ propensity for anger. What we are exploring is how to create a different relationship with your anger so you can use it skillfully when it is necessary rather than having it use you. Anger can either be an ax that can deeply hurt someone, or it can be a surgical knife that can save someone. Get to know your anger so that it can bring healing rather than devastation.

If you want to explore this further, I invite you to read the Feb. 1^st newsletter. Not sign up? Click HERE to sign up. You can also listen to my radio show that will air on Feb 8^th and 15^th HERE. After that, it will be on demand, and you can listen anytime HERE.

Offerings:

I invite you to join me again on March 12th at 5:30pm PDT for the next free live call: The Magic of Acceptance. We have all bought into the belief that if something is not the way we want it to be, we must fix it, ignore it, get rid of it, or rise above it, not realizing this is an endless game of struggle. Join Mary in exploring the art of acceptance and how to bring its magic into your life. The event will last about an hour. (Can’t make it? You can still participate. Click the link to learn how) Learn more and Register Here

Our world is in the throes of a transformation. So many people are awakening to life again. To help support this Great Awakening, I feel called to drop the price for my courses down to $149 to make them more accessible to more people. If you’d like to see my self-paced courses, please click HERE.