Anger is an emotion often experienced as being a ‘negative’ emotion. This is absolutely not true. Society has taught us that feeling immense anger is ‘bad’ so we suppress it and hope that it will go away, rather than working through it effectively. Suppressing an angry emotion can be detrimental to our health and well-being.
When we are in a state of anger, or a state of much unresolved anger, we can start blaming, judging and chastising others, in doing so, creating disharmony not only in ourselves but in others too. It is not easy to see a person who is angry and hurting us with their rage and anger as someone who is in immense pain… but when we don’t see that we risk reacting with blame – or blaming and hurting back, damaging our own souls in the process.
Anger is expansive in nature. It breeds upon itself and multiplies to become a deep wound in the soul. When we feel much anger in our souls it is very difficult to feel love and experience how expansive love can feel. It is so important to our well-being that we start seeing anger as simply an emotion, and not label it as negative. When we embrace all our emotions, not just the one’s that feel good we can work with them and enhance our lives rather than letting them cause us great distress.
Hidden manifestations of anger:
Often people display their inner anger with unpleasant or undesirable behaviour such as abusiveness, alcohol or drug abuse, but surprisingly, there are quite a few manifestations of anger, that aren’t as easily recognised. Here are a few examples:
- Feeling bored
- Victimisation
- Breaking or constantly ignoring the rules
- Withdrawal when faced with conflict
- Constant late arrivals for appointments
- Avoidance of conflict
- Constant practical jokes
- Martyrdom
- Perfectionism
- Resentment
- Bitterness
- Teeth grinding
- Accident proness
- Daydreaming constantly
- Maniupulation
- Gossiping
- Righteous indignation
- Religious zealotry
- Chronic forgetting
- Frequent interrupting
- Procrastination
- Saboteur – this can be difficult to recognise as it is never displayed openly
- Chronically losing or breaking, spilling or burning things
- Truth telling that hurts,
- Deviousness
- Passive-aggressive behaviour
- Smiling whilst provoking
SHEN and Anger:
Anger can be a very empowering and energising emotion when released in the correct way. When recurrent anger is taken to the SHEN table and completed there, forgotten fear, shame, grief or frustration emerges, often revealing surprises about the causes of these old, buried emotions. Once you have worked through these, a solid place is reached within, where you no longer react as angrily as before and are no longer overly sensitive to slights, you will no longer respond angrily too threatening situations when none exist. You will begin to feel more strength within yourself and more productive and positive actions will naturally occur emerge.
