What do I do with all this anger?
You feel it.
You welcome it in.
You sit with it and breathe with it until it starts to speak a language you can understand.
You let it bring you through the time lapse of all the times you’ve felt like this in the past.
You let it connect the dots for you.
You let it build a story
Not of victimhood
But of values.
Your values.
What you are willing to stand for and against.
Where your body says the boundary between ok and not ok lay.
How you want to leave the world when your last breath leaves you.
What you want to do with this one precious little life.
When we avoid or suppress our anger, we’re really avoiding and suppressing our own values and boundaries. When we are unwilling to feel our anger, we are really unwilling to feel the strength of our own convictions.
When we fear our anger, what we’re really fearing is our own power.
Anger, at least in this moment in time, is the key into our authenticity. More specifically, making space to feel our anger is the way we will learn how to make space for who we really are and who we really want to be.
Many people are afraid of what their anger will tell them to do. Leave your emotionally abusive partner. Create firm boundaries with codependent parents and siblings. Leave the church that raised you to believe there is a hierarchy of people based on their race, gender, and sexual orientation. Stop playing small. Stop hiding your unique gifts from the world. Stop letting in the voices that tell you that you are broken, worthless, and not enough.
Step into the sea of change. Get comfortable in the discomfort. Admit that life is full of uncertainties and that we must be ok with sitting in these unknowns.
That is what anger wants to tell us. That is what anger tries to tell us through tension in the jaw; what truths have you left unspoken? Through tight necks and shoulders; what burdens are you carrying that were given to you without your consent? Through constricted hearts and chests; what boundaries have been crossed that you’re not honoring?
This is our work, my friends. This is the work I’m passionate about supporting others through. This is the work I’ve personally had to do over the last 10 years. This is the work that, I believe, will heal our broken world.
It sounds counterintuitive, I know. Shouldn’t we be focusing on cultivating more love and compassion in a world that is already so angry and divisive?
Oh but my friend, when did we start believing in this false dichotomy where love and compassion are on one side, and anger is on the other?
Anger is not hate.
Anger is not explosive.
Anger is not a way to assert power and control.
We must disentangle hate from anger. We must learn how to be with our anger in a contained way; in a way where we can feel the expansiveness of it’s energy; in a way where we can receive it’s messages clearly and succinctly.
When we do this- when we begin to uncouple anger from hate - we actually see and feel that anger is not the opposite of love. Not at all.
Anger is the antidote to hate.
Anger is a form of love so pure that I think maybe part of the reason we’re afraid of it is because we’ve never before felt like that kind of love was possible. We were never shown how to feel love so unadulterated and honest. That kind of love can feel overwhelming in a world of conditions, hate, and division.
What do I do when this kind of anger feels too overwhelming?
You mustn’t rush into feeling your anger all at once. That’s how we become dysregulated and overwhelmed. That’s when we succumb to the fear and go back into the safety of our old patterns, beliefs, and behaviors.
When the fire of anger is too hot in our bodies and minds, we do what we’ve been taught to do since forever. We dowse the fire with water.
Below are three songs to support you back into more water. More softening. More flexibility. I hope they support you as much as they’ve supported me.
…**Advanced apologies for this clunky transition**…
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Eliza, I love these words so much and want to quote this whole piece! You articulate this so beautifully. This is so important, and especially so for many of us women who've been raised to suppress and fear our healthy anger. Thank you for giving voice to it with so much wisdom and clarity 🙏
This is exactly where I am sitting so stuck in my therapy right now…I don’t know how to feel anger and love; to hold anger and love simultaneously with respect to my parents. My body turns it back on me as guilt and shame and tension and pain.