It is well past dawn. I went to bed angry, probably more than a reasonable amount. I slept restlessly, frustratedly fighting my demons in my sleep. I woke with residual anger left unexpressed from the night before. I am human. I struggle with anger. I’m taking on my own anger, and my relationship with the emotion of anger, in a serious way as a ‘next step’.
It is worth observing that I do not face the challenge of anger in my experience as an indication that I have any perception that I’m ‘done’ with ‘everything else’, or that I am comfortable that I mastered other challenges in my life. It’s just time to take it on. I think I can make improvements and learn and grow, at long last, where anger is concerned. I am ready to stop running from anger, whether it is my own anger, or someone else’s anger. (Wow – saying that just made my heart pound in earnest. Anger – still scary. lol)
I’m not sure how much I’ll share about this particular challenge of mine, at least initially…and hasn’t that been part of the issue, for me, all along? I reject anger, refuse anger, deny anger, avoid anger, run from anger, cower in fear from anger, wish it away, rationalize it, fight it with words and actions, ignore it, take any conceivable step to dissipate it…even to the point of injuring my own heart, disrespecting and dishonoring my own experience, and damaging myself, and my relationships…all in the name of protecting myself…from…what exactly? An emotion. Of course, it doesn’t work out well in the long run. You know where it leads, right? I’m sure anyone who has ever been in a relationship with me knows… it explodes out of nowhere, unexpectedly, uncontrollably, and often disproportionate to the event of the moment, due to the impetus of long-time resentments that have built up from…wait for it… unresolved anger from earlier events. 😦 Not ok. And since I do understand that it isn’t acceptable to fuel conflict with ‘old business’ that isn’t relevant to the conflict of the moment, the frustration, helplessness, and ancient lingering rage of residual anger rarely gets addressed in a fair and honest way… I end up stuck with it.
I may be one of the angriest people I know…I don’t actually know for sure, though, because I have refused for so long to give myself the courtesy of really hearing myself and tending to my own heart and needs on issues of anger. (I wrote a lot of very different words here, initially…and deleted them. They were raw and visceral, and such an intimate look into my relationship with anger and explicit about my trauma history I couldn’t really consider clicking the ‘publish’ button. I am not that strong. Is it enough to say I am damaged and anger is a challenge I want to face next?)
I did something new with anger this morning. I told someone I was angry. Simple, clear, honest – no games or bullshit – I said “I feel angry about…”. Interestingly, doing that, and having the experience of being heard without any objection or rejection, or argument, seemed to allow the actual in-the-moment emotional experience of anger to dissipate. I would still say that the thing that I felt angry over would still be something I consider hurtful, and as an experience unsatisfying and unpleasant, but I don’t still ‘feel angry’. I feel a little lost though, at the moment; like so many things lately, I wonder what else about anger will prove to be very different than my fears.
Human endeavor; a complicated metaphor.
Where does anger fit in with my ‘Big 5’ for my relationships? (Respect, Reciprocity, Consideration, Compassion, and Openness) Lately three other words that don’t typically come up for me have been regular points of contemplation with regard to my own growth; holistic, coherent, and integrated. They seem important concepts relevant to my journey, but I feel rather like I did the first time I heard the term ‘mindfulness’…they are words. Something about each one seems urgently important to understand and to understand in the context of my own growth and healing…but for now they are simply words.
Building on what is…
50 isn’t far off now, just 39 days, barely more than a month. I’m eager to get there, eager to prove to the cynical 14-year-old me lurking in my memories that I lived to see 50, in spite of my grim certainty that seeing 35 wasn’t likely. I spend a lot of time building a better foundation for the next 50 years than I had for the first 50. I’m more fortunate than I can measure that I have so much support in that endeavor, and no noticeable resistance to it.
Hoping for something splendid and wonderful, however humble, however simple.
Evening Light 
I spent so much of my marriage in utter denial of my anger. I spent so much effort on denial that most emotions were collapsed to mere words, names for things that inspired no visceral reaction. I didn’t actually recognize that I was having emotional reactions until I had a panic attack, albeit one so mild I question whether it deserves the name.
About three years after my divorce, I realized that in spite of my strategic withdrawal from the relationship, I had buckets of anger and damage still affecting my reactions to unrelated situations. It was voicing that anger – sometimes with raised, unintelligible, voice and weeping, but usually by wordsmithing – that allowed me to mitigate the impact that damage was inflicting on my current relationship with myself.
When I wordsmith, the process of finding that exact word or combination words that describes exactly what I feel and nothing I don’t gives me power over those emotions. And sometimes when my emotional vocabulary fails, I can fall back on describing exactly the physical symptoms, and even that helps.
Wise observations, Jo. I wonder who ‘gets anger right’ and what they do, don’t do, or understand differently than I do? I like it that awareness, simple observation, and ‘choosing just the right words’ to clearly express my awareness is both powerful and easily achievable. 🙂