Ten Reasons Why Your Anger is Good For You
1. Your anger is not wrong
The feeling of anger, jealousy or frustration cannot be wrong – it’s an experience you’re having in your body. Your behaviour may be problematic, but it’s important to not judge the experience, however much you might want your behaviour to be different. Some people project their anger outwards and explode, whereas others hold their anger inwards and seethe. Others disconnect from their anger altogether, but if this is you, there will be a sign. You may do things that you don’t really feel good about doing, even though you may try and fool yourself into thinking that these things feel good. Anything you do regularly to excess is usually a giveaway.
2. Your anger represents a need
We are born fully connected to our instinctive selves. We scream when we need something, trusting that someone will come and meet our need. In the process of the need being met, we learn to trust our own experience of having needs, of experiencing our energetic self. If our needs are not met when we are young, we will have not yet have developed sufficient awareness to understand that other people’s behaviour towards us is not personal. Of course, the impact is felt personally, but the lack or inappropriateness of the other person’s response is not about us, however much we might be told it is. It is of course usually not malicious on their part and the need not being met is not the problem. Our movement away from our experience of the need is the problem. Even if we are not told it is our fault, we may assume, understandably, that there is something lacking in us, instinctively. That there is something lacking in our inborn life force that presents itself as that need.
3. You have not had the opportunity to learn to naturally shift focus from your instinctive self
In order to grow into successful adults, we need to learn to do many things. We have to learn these from outside – how to play nicely with and listen to others, and defer our own needs, how to communicate, how to learn, and so on. To do this successfully, we need to focus less on our instinctive selves, which want to scream, grab, fight and demand, and more on developing appropriate social behaviours. When earlier needs are met, this is a natural instinctive progression.
4. Your experiences led you to develop a false idea of who you are
When our early, personal needs for reassurance and autonomy are not met, we do not make our entree amongst others as easily. Society can be a brutal place, where survival depends on inclusion. Usually, a sense of longing is an attractor for belonging. If we have already experienced our longing as misplaced, we cannot trust this feeling. This then further deepens our sense of not being ok. We trust our longing even less. We stop trusting in and identifying with our passionate, perfect, instinctive selves. Even worse, we have now created an entirely fictitious idea of who we are, and a role that fits it.
5. Your life forced you to keep moving
We cannot focus on this sense of loss of our essential selves. Life has more urgent considerations. We need to continue to grow, to learn, to make friends, to develop skills, hobbies and interests. So we push these decisions we made about our worth in our early lives to the background and then we forget altogether about what is lacking in us and we pretend all is well.
6. Know that the judgements you made about yourself remain
In time, the loss of our instinctive self becomes problematic. Maybe we struggle to find or keep love, maybe we cannot achieve success, or perhaps we cannot take care of our resources. These pointers are similar to the signals of exploding, imploding and disconnecting. They are perfect, timely reminders of this lost connection to our entirely trustworthy instinctive passionate self.
7. Know that the very thing that you most don’t want to feel is what will save you
Luckily, for each of us, this lost personal passion is woven into the very fabric of our forgetting. When we are triggered into an explosive rage, or we hide to the point where we feel empty and lifeless, or we are filled with resentment but just keep giving, we are forced to notice that something’s wrong. We can then direct our attention to the experience of rage, fear or depression and learn to consciously reconnect with this energy, given time and support.
8. Know that you can do this
You can find a new perspective, within, with a new kind of awareness. This awareness, as talked about in meditation and in Gestalt therapy, is the perspective of the space within which all phenomena arise, so it is outside the realm of good or bad, right or wrong. Consider learning how to meditate, to find this perspective within which you cannot get being you wrong. You may need to do yoga, dance or Tai Chi to really get a sense of being your body. Therapy can help you explore this rising energy of feeling that life will ultimately demand that we face. When you can connect this energy (that we call ‘feeling’ but which is really your original instinctive life force) to the energy of your awareness itself, within this human form and without the somatic distortions of fight, flight or freeze, then you can truly come home and be who you really are, your truest self.
9. Know that this is who you really are
This reconnected you is you at your most profoundly and personally powerful. You do not need to shout, placate or hide. You just need to listen to this now whole sense organ of life. Then you will know who to be, because your being informs you, step by invisible, certain step. You will find yourself, right here as this sense organ that is hosting the reunion between presence – the energy of your existence – and absence – the energy of your awareness.
10. Welcome home
Being home won’t always be easy, but it’s real.