We are taught anger is a “bad” emotion, that we should push it down and not allow it to come up – especially as young girls. We are taught to swallow down those feelings and ignore them, push them under the rug and pretend they don’t exist.
But Anger has a purpose, Anger does not come up to hurt us, quite the opposite! It is here to warn us, to protect us, it’s our natural “alarm” that something isn’t right.
Instead of ignoring it and making it the villain, we should embrace Anger, welcome it. Oftentimes Anger is the way our inner child has to communicate with us, so listen to what it is trying to tell you! You will make huge progress in your healing journey, once you start treating Anger as an ally and not an enemy.
For years, we are taught this and one day, things shift. And then it comes up, without any warning, fully consuming us: Anger.
Stronger than ever before, it scares us and makes us feel free at the same time.
We become angry at our parents for treating us the way they did, we become angry at patriarchy for being the way it is, we become angry at those who treated us badly and those who did nothing to prevent it and most of all, we become angry at ourselves.
We go from never ever letting ourselves feel anger, to fully being at its mercy. There is no inbetween. But how do we deal with it, if we were never taught how to?
It took me personally a long time to understand that anger is not the enemy. To fully welcome it, with open arms. It took me even longer to understand that anger in other people is not my fault, because as a child I was taught I was responsible for other people’s feelings.
My father is an angry man. Well, he’s actually an angry child, inside the body of a man. He uses anger to control those around him, through fear, sometimes without even being aware of it. It made me terrified of not only being angry myself, but also making him angry. It was only well into my thirties, after having welcomed my own child, that I came to a realization: my father’s anger stems from his own childhood trauma, it has nothing to do with me.
Anger isn’t bad, it’s a sign that something happened to us, that we went through something bad and that we need to heal. In his case, it’s the little five or six year old boy, who was left by his mother in an orphanage, without even as much as a goodbye kiss. It makes sense, his anger is valid, it has a reason! But he was taught to push it down, repress it, not think about the pain he feels, the pain that little boy never got to heal. Instead of nurturing the boy in him, he pushes him down and ends up throwing a tantrum, which comes out as anger and violence.
Ignoring your anger will only end up prolonging your healing process. Instead, welcome it, treat it like a teacher, listen to what is behind all its loudness.
When we don’t address the real issue, when we don’t work on our trauma and the reason behind our anger (issues), we risk getting stuck in a cycle of repeating our early trauma in adult relationships. Being stuck in a cycle of anger will prevent us from going forward in the grieving process and will end up only prolonging our healing journey.
Do you want to keep being angry or understand what is behind it?