I know it feels weird but you can re-welcome your anger
Much of the literature out there about how to deal with anger actually teaches you how to properly suppress it, rather than work with it. There are all the tips and tricks about how to quiet it, reduce it, and make it disappear, but embodying it? That's a little harder to come by.
Anger, rage, that feeling of losing control in an emotional storm - these types of energies, and others, have been deemed all kinds of things, from inconvenient to sinful; from energy that gets in the way and should be ignored, driven out, done away with to energy that is ultimately destructive, unproductive, immature and even evil, and needs to be repented.
Most of us, whether through some kind of religious upbringing or the way we were parented by our actual parents and also educational and societal experiences, were taught to exile anger, madness, and rage. Maybe you were told to go to your room until you had calmed down, which really means: your anger isn't welcome here, don't come back until it's gone. Or perhaps you were told that anger isn't an appropriate response, and you were to turn the other cheek instead, which primed you for abuse and martyrdom.
For the women in the room especially, raising our voice, having any kind of seemingly 'negative' emotional response, and defending ourselves has seen us be branded as troublesome, unhinged, unreliable and even (ridiculously so) untrustworthy.
And so we took those energies, the ones that seem to burn right through us, and voted them off the island, exiled them from our bodies, banished them from our experience.
Or at least we tried. Because you can never really banish energy, you can only suppress it, hide it, and ignore it for so long before it starts coming out in other ways to make itself finally realised, heard, and tended. But because we have been such good students of propriety, we get stuck in cycles of energy rising, and energy suppressing, round and round it goes, gathering momentum and strength, until the very energy that just wanted to be held, experienced, and pointed in the right direction, does end up becoming something damaging.
Our work is to let it live, let it be, and make its way through us.
"Anger, Madness, Rage, Oh My" is a series of affirmations, prayers, and prompts to aid us in re-welcoming exiled energy for the purposes of de-moralising emotion, allowing feelings that we've been afraid of for so long to have their voice and time, and re-imaging a way we can experience them in our bodies and lives that lead us to greater depths of connection and healing.
And that's where we begin: Re-welcome your anger.
I know… it feels strange, but that's just the programming speaking. You don't have to be angry; you only have to let the anger be. When you feel emotions like anger, madness, and rage, it doesn't mean that you have to become them; it's that you're experiencing them. Anger has important information for you, whether verbal and cognitive or embodied and unspeakable… emotion is energy that needs a direction to spend itself in. That's all. You can do that.
Let's look at it from this perspective: when you were a child and you were expressing anger, this is what you needed to hear from a caregiver:
"I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay here with you while you feel this; you won't be alone. No feeling cancels out your value and my care for you. I know this is hard. I love you in this moment like all other moments. It will pass, and today can still be a good day."
How did that feel in your body to read?
To re-welcome anger and establish a new and healthy relationship to it, take those words, and direct them to all the parts of you that are laced with anger, that have it tucked deep with them; those nooks and crannies in your soul and body where anger fled to hide, tell it: I'm not going anywhere, no feeling cancels out your value. I'm listening.
Feelings need to be felt, not banished. They need to move through you; you can't hide from them. And they will move through you… no feeling is final; remember that.
AFFIRMATION: Exiled anger, I welcome you back. Banished fear, I recognise your presence. Tell me your story; I'm listening. I'll help you move through me; I won't ignore you or demonise you; at least, I'm learning not to. Let's build something beautiful from our experience together. I choose to believe that that is possible.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
From this week’s series, "Anger, Madness, Rage… Oh My!", with a subscription, in the App.
