“Huh, DrDeb?” some readers must be thinking.
And then probably other readers are thinking, “Yessss! Told ya my anger is good!”
See, your anger – whether you love having it or hate it – is part of you. We’re all born with it. Think of that red-faced newborn, screaming. In fact, if the baby doesn’t scream, then we get worried.
It serves a purpose: It’s always trying to tell us something.
But we’re told the anger is bad so we try to shut it down. Right?
Now, tell me – does that work?
No.
Because out of nowhere, there is a sudden explosion and all the pent up anger that was not allowed bursts forth much to many people’s shame and embarrassment.
But the truth is that on the other side of the “embarrassment” scale are the ones who are not only not embarrassed by their anger, but love it. Those are the rage-aholics. And they are – sorry to say – not honoring their anger either. They’re abusing it.
So let’s go back to the title and start with some definitions.
“Honoring” means listening.
Listening to its message.
Your anger is trying to tell you – and the world – something. What is that?
Do you really think it’s trying to tell you that you don’t like it that a car is passing you on the left? Really?
Ummm….I don’t think so.
Your anger came from deep within. It’s been there for many years. And whether you’re embarrassed when you go ballistic or whether it ends up calming you (more about that in another post), it has a message.
And that message is not that the guy just cut you off in traffic. Nor is it that your husband didn’t remember to call the kid’s school. Those things are just the triggers for something much deeper going on inside.
What? What is it?
Well, that is your job to figure out.
That is what honoring your anger means.
It means “reading” the message that your anger is trying to tell you.
Why should we do that, anyway? What’s the point?
That is the real question.
Well, think about it: Why is that anger there – from the minute we are born – anyway? What purpose does it serve?
One way of looking at this is that even if we don’t care what the message is, if we only would listen, maybe it would stop erupting unexpectedly, much to our humiliation and regret.
It’s kind of like that small child that keeps bothering us. Once we listen, the child may quiet down.
Maybe if we listen and discover its message, it won’t bother us anymore. That may be a good enough reason to begin trying to pay attention to it.
But what if there were a deeper messsage?
What if we can benefit enormously from listening? Right now, we may be thinking of the anger as troublesome and getting rid of it a good thing.
But what if there are treasures – gold and jewels – buried inside us and the anger is only trying to lead the way there?
See, getting to the answer to that question can open up a whole world about yourself. A world of feelings, experiences, and things that need to be addressed but never were. And addressing them can set us free.
Not only setting us free of the anger but of all the bad feelings we carry around daily.
Maybe getting to the answer can actually change our entire outlook on Life, on ourselves, the people in our lives, and our place in it all.
Why do I suggest this possibility?
If we begin with looking at infants and how their anger shows up, we can see that
(1) it is pretty normal to be angry
(2) it is a way of communicating wants and needs
(3) it is for people who are not able to communicate those wants and needs in a clearer way
So it stands to reason that if we can dig a bit deeper and discover what our true wants and needs are that were never met – what is underneath the anger, what is driving the anger – then maybe we can get them met after all.
Wow. “DrDeb, are you saying that our anger is trying to tell us we have unmet needs and to meet them, we need to listen to the anger’s message?”
Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.
Now it becomes a bit clearer how very important this turns out to be.
So how do we get to understand the message underneath the anger?
This isn’t an easy process, but it at least begins with asking yourself why you think you were angry.
A key to getting a deep answer is to recognize that whatever happened in that moment is not the real reason. Rather, the immediate experience was like the real reason in some way.
The fact that it is like the real reason is why you got triggered by it.
It is now up to you to figure out in what way it was like the original thing that happened to you. Here are some questions to ask yourself –
* did it frighten you like something else once did?
* did it seem like an injustice like the earlier event?
* did it feel like an abandonment the way that once happened?
And so on. Generally, triggers will make us feel like a form of abuse, neglect, a trauma, or some other injustice that we experienced.
Each time this happens, when you go through the questions to discover how you really feel, you can jot them down. After a while, you might notice a pattern forming.
For example, “It looks like every time I get angry at you it feels as though I’m being falsely accused of something.”
Then you can go back into your memories to see if being falsely accused was something that either happened to you or you witnessed happening to others.
The next post will give a person and a family story to illustrate this process – and the unmet needs that the anger tried to convey.