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I have a confession, will you listen? Under the surface, I’ve felt that there has been a layer of anger that had been simmering for quite some time. It’s not that I always felt angry but every now and then, I could feel the ferocity of it rise and fall. Usually, it popped up when someone made me feel insignificant and small. I didn’t like the feeling at all so my brain only knew how to shun it. In fact, I now know that it evoked feelings of shame. And this shame threw me into a cycle of self-punishing thoughts. You see, the thing is that at some point in my life, I learned that anger wasn’t an acceptable emotion, so my solution was to suppress it. The problem with this strategy is that suppression doesn’t eliminate the anger. It just exasperates the emotion and provokes unexpected leakage in, often in the most inappropriate moments.
I didn’t believe I was an angry person but then why wouldn’t it go away and why did I associate so much shame with it? When I think back, I suspect it started when I was a young teenager. I was raised to question everything yet as is the case with many parents, they didn’t expect that I would question everything they asked of me. Now I’m not blaming them at all, they were doing the best they could with the tools they had but I challenged them a lot because I perceived certain responses as unsatisfactory. Some truly were and in other moments, I was just being a brat. To me, “Because I said so” without an explanation was the most infuriating response. But whenever I felt angry and tried to communicate it, I was told that I wouldn’t be dealt with. I felt shunned and unheard with no way of expressing that feeling to them. Granted, I now reflect and accept that it also must’ve been maddening for them to be constantly challenged and questioned by a thirteen year old.
Yet no matter how much I pressed for a more satisfying explanation, I felt it rarely ever arrived. Somewhere along the road, I felt like I wasn’t important enough to be provided an appropriate explanation. Ah, here we are, the origin story of my feelings of inadequacy! Can you think of the first time you felt inadequate? Are you afraid that it’ll make you seem ungrateful if you admit that your primary caregivers may have had a part to play in your unhealthy patterns? Don’t be. You can love them and accept that they may have contributed to something unknowingly. In my opinion, blame and grudges are too heavy a burden to carry. Ultimately, the lesson I learned was that any expression of anger, healthy or unhealthy, was “bad” or “unwelcome”.
Throughout my teenage years and twenties, this perception persisted. It wasn’t as if I was always angry, but it leaked out in the stupidest ways. Whenever I felt dismissed, I reacted and said things that I normally wouldn’t even think of or shut down completely. It was embarrassing because this isn’t how I felt or wanted to react and sometimes the words I was afraid of the most just flew out before I could stop them. If the words weren’t the problem, then the tone was equally unwelcoming. Distressingly, I felt justified in my anger until immediately after cooling down, when the guilt and shame set in. “Only if I hadn’t”, I would think to myself. Has that ever happened to you? You wish you could erase the words that were just said but it’s too late and now you’re sitting in a self-made pile of shame. The wrong words and tones can cut deep into the heart. I’ve been on the receiving end a few times but also have been the culprit in other moments. I can attest that a reactive lifestyle is exhausting.
Whether I was driving and couldn’t make the next green light in time, or the weather didn’t turn out as I expected it (hello, there’s a weather app!) or upon any perceived mistreatment by someone (too frequently, was stuck in my head), I didn’t know what to do with the feelings of anger and frustration. My head used to feel like it was on fire, which led to some pretty embarrassing moments with strangers and worst of all, in the company of the people I loved and cared about. It was clear that I had to do something about it. So eventually, I asked myself, “How do I control my anger?”. Alas, avoiding situations that would elicit any feelings of anger made logical sense at the time. Sounds great, right? Wrong! The reality is that we can’t always control the situations we find ourselves in and moreover, we can’t control how other people will make us feel. Ah, another lesson I had to learn the hard way. Attempting to control the uncontrollable just breathes more life into the anger. Now I’d find myself in a cycle of frustration and felt shame for feeling the way I did because, to me, anger was an unacceptable emotion. What a ridiculous predicament!
The truth is that I’ve recognized that there are a lot of patterns I picked up throughout the course of my life that don’t serve me anymore. A part of this journey is accepting where I’ve been, who I am and who I want to become. I realized my inability to accept my anger has been the very undertaking that’s led to further frustration with myself. Learning that a core emotion is unacceptable and shameful wasn’t my fault, but I know better now. It is my responsibility to accept it, understand it then release it. So, let me ask you a question, if it’s acceptable to feel joy then shouldn’t it be acceptable to feel anger? Perhaps it isn’t the anger that’s the issue. Perhaps, it’s how we learned to associate negative connotations with certain emotions. I used to perceive sadness as a weakness and my anger as shameful, leading to a flat-out rejection of these emotions. Over time, experiences have taught me to view this approach as a flawed blueprint.
I believe allowing myself to feel certain emotions but closing myself off from others will lead to an inadequate human experience. This isn’t about losing myself in the emotions but allowing them to flow through me and learning how to express them in a healthy way that feels authentic. Experiencing anything either in excess or in lack seems detrimental to the balance that I want to attain. It's not until I started viewing my anger with curiosity that I learned that anger is not my enemy but in fact one of my greatest friends. It’s telling me where I feel violated or feel a boundary has been crossed, whether it’s true or perceived is another matter. That’s where my personal work is, in the space between feeling and reacting. I accept that it’s easier said than done. But the distinction is that feeling angry is different than being angry. So, now I’m taking a step back before I jump to react and recognize all my emotions are just an invitation to take care of myself in some way. So how will you take care of yourself this weekend? Hopefully, by welcoming what you feel and asking what you need before you react. I know I will. Have a great weekend!