Being with Anger

I’ve been thinking a lot about anger lately. I’ve been thinking about it because I’m feeling a lot of it. It’s coming up in my couples’ therapy, in my individual therapy, and in my day-to-day life. I was doing some personal work today and heard from the healer that it was time for me to set aside the righteous anger I had as a child so that it no longer takes up so much of my life. We talked about how my go-to reaction to anger is to either use my manager parts to suppress it (usually with a mixture of intense muscle clenching and shame) or to let the angry part take over. She came up with the idea of putting the anger in a glass jar and putting it on a shelf so that it had a place in my inner world, but it was contained. I agreed that I need ways to help my angry parts not have to take over so much, but something in me balked at the idea of containing it in a glass jar.

At first, I wondered if my hesitation was because this felt like a direct contradiction to my couples therapist who suggested that I offer a lot of self-validation to my anger. “It makes so much sense that you’re angry right now,” I’ve been telling my angry parts when I remember to do so. I feel righteous anger about unjust things that happened to me in my childhood and my adulthood. I feel righteous anger at the injustices of the world: capitalism, white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, ableism, how hard it is to just get by these days, how isolated and disconnected so many people are, how hard it feels to find and access healthcare and community and true care. I feel deep anger at what is happening to the Earth and about the homeless crisis and about pointless bureaucracy that wastes people’s life force. I also feel jolts of anger at most sounds, including my dog’s barking, the sound of a glass clanking, my own typing, and, sometimes, even my own breathing. What is to be done with all this anger?

What I realized while talking with the healer this morning is that my anger needs to be honored. It needs a ceremony and an altar. It needs to be welcomed in and loved. This needs to happen, yes, in my inner world, and I need some sort of tangible reminder of it in the outer world, some sort of ritual object, maybe. In some ways, I’ve been practicing this honoring, too. Sometimes, when my anger feels too big to be contained, I take myself to my room and let my body act out my anger any way it wants. Sometimes I kick, sometimes I growl or make faces or clench my fists or stick out my tongue or yell without sound. Sometimes I dance or bounce on a mini trampoline. Sometimes I sing. Sometimes I take a walk around the block. I’ve suppressed so much anger for so long, I imagine quite a bit needs to be released from my body. As I let myself express the anger physically, I witness it, like a loving parent, letting a young one get it out of their system safely. I try to let it run its course, but if time is short, I will set gentle boundaries. “Ok, we have just two more minutes right now to do this, then we have to get back to work. It’s OK you feel this way. It makes so much sense that you’re angry right now.” Often, after one of these sessions, I feel a calm and a clarity emerge, giving me more internal space. Sometimes, in the hours and days following, I feel more embodied access to Self energy.

Then, there’s another kind of anger I feel: the anger at the little things, what feels like a constant low-level irritation combined with jolts of anger. This kind of anger happens all the time, especially at sounds. I hear a sound, I feel a jolt of anger, then my whole body clenches in response. A couple weekends ago, I was feeling more relaxed than usual, and my partner accidentally clanked a glass against the countertop. Because I was so relaxed, instead of feeling anger, I felt an intense physical sensation of panic in my chest, like icy cold knives were stabbing me. My mind started spinning and racing, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, my throat constricted, and I had to run from the kitchen into the bedroom to get some space, where I started hyperventilating. My therapist later identified this moment as PTSD – I had had a flashback to the sound of a glass unexpectedly clanking. Oh, I realized, my usual anger in these situations is a protector who keeps me from feeling the deep panic and pain of an exile I haven’t yet developed a relationship with. When I came back to the kitchen a few minutes later, I almost immediately got overwhelmed and angry about all the things that needed to happen: the floor needed to be swept, dishes needed to be put away, and on and on it went. My partner helped me realize that this anger was different; it was trying to explain the earlier panic, trying to make it all make sense. I realized that this anger is also a protector, again pointing my attention away from the panicked exile.

My anger at relational ruptures, at sounds, at injustices big and small, doesn’t belong in a glass jar on a shelf. These angry parts of me have deep wisdom, and I need them to let me know when a boundary was crossed, or to keep me from having a flashback, or to remind me of my values of justice and truth. Instead of a shelf, I will build an altar inside. I will witness my anger, reminding it of who I am now, and caring for the young parts who are stuck in the past. I will continue getting to know and validate my angry parts, appreciating the hard work they’re doing in the face of much internal and sometimes external criticism. I will love these parts and the parts they protect as much as I possibly can. I will build them a fire, contained, but a fire nonetheless, and let them burn whatever they want to burn, clearing everything out to make way for new growth.