Your anger can lead to transformation
The only way to move past our illusions and live in peaceful, authentic presence is to experience the transformation of our pain.
To be clear: pain doesn’t strictly go away, and there’s no ticket to a pain-free life.
Sorry about that. But pain can be transformed into something generative.
Pain doesn’t have to be traumatic, and trauma does not have to stay with us forever. To work through these things, we must be honest about them and examine them. That requires us to tune in to our anger, examine our loss, and feel the grief. Transformation is like life itself: terrifying, painful, yet possibly… good.
If you grew up around explosively angry people, then anger might have become a dangerous thing for you. If other people’s anger has been (or is still) the source of your pain, I wouldn’t blame you for wanting nothing to do with it. On the other hand, some of us weren’t raised with anger at all, so we had to learn it like a foreign language.
Whatever place anger has taken up in your story, as an emotion, anger is your body’s way of telling you that something you hold dear has been blocked or violated. Whether it was your body, or your hope, or just your plans for the evening, something messed with you, and that’s important information to know. Anger is your body’s way of communicating to you that something isn’t OK and needs to change. Anger is an advocate!
Listening to our anger is a powerful way of identifying things we value, what we hold dear, etc. Sometimes when coaching leaders, I invite them to consider what it is they cannot leave unchanged in the world, and what would leave them angry if they left it undone. Anger can be a helpful guide once we tame the temptation to follow it up with violent action. All emotions move us to action, of course, but anger is perhaps the most volatile, because what it represents is so sacred. As we breathe through our anger, reminding ourselves we are not in danger,* we learn valuable things about ourselves and the world around us.
Hiding behind anger, we often find sadness. Sadness that the things we expected to happen didn’t pan out that way. Sadness means we experienced loss.
This means sadness and anger are really about hope as well. You would never be sad if you hadn’t had hope and positive expectancy in the first place. If I’m at all right about the cosmic anger we carry at the injustice of this universe, then it means we also carry something deeper and more generative than anger: at the bottom of the well isn’t just impotent rage at the unfairness of life, but an expectation that life is meant to be good and safe and enjoyable. At the bedrock of your soul sits a powerful advocate that can move you towards wholeness.
Let me put it this way: God never intended for shit to be this jacked up and your body hasn’t forgotten that.
Put your hand on your heart and take deep breath in, and out.
Repeat after me:
If I am angry, it is because my expectations were dashed.
If I had expectations, it is because I believed good things could happen to me.
If I believed good things could happen, then I was once a person who hoped.
If I was once a person who hoped, I can become that person again.
If I was once a person who hoped, the giver of life intended good things for me.
*When I say we are not in danger, I am referring to how the nervous system interprets everything for signs of danger. Past memories of painful things can trigger your body into a danger-avoidance-state which is a matter of internal perception and isn’t always objectively true. If you actually are in danger from a partner, leader or anyone else, however, then please do not hesitate to seek help. You are worth safety and dignity.
CONSIDER THIS: "We should not fight our anger, because anger is our self, a part of our self. Anger is of an organic nature, like love. We have to take good care of anger. And because it is an organic entity, an organic phenomenon, it is possible to transform it into another organic entity... So don't despise your anger. Don't fight your anger, and don't suppress your anger. Learn the tender way of taking care of your anger, and transform it into the energy of understanding and compassion." Thich Nhat Hanh.
Written by Jonathan Puddle
Instagram: @jonathanpuddle
Website: https://jonathanpuddle.com/
From this week’s guest series by Jonathan Puddle "Life After Birth" this week, with a subscription, in the App.
