As in the Shame article prior, anger is a natural and important emotion. It stirs us to action and helps us set and affirm our boundaries, like a healthy No. It’s linked to our personal power and zest for life in the solar plexus chakra.
However, in our culture, anger is often considered unacceptable. We’re isolated for expressing anger. For a child, this is a survival threat as we depend on our caregivers.
Often, our experiences of anger are destructive. We see ugly, negative, and unpredictable examples in others and ourselves.
We don’t learn how to process anger or express it in healthy ways. Instead, we learn to suppress it. This can mute our capacity for setting boundaries, our ability to say no, and our own sense of power.
Further, we’re not told “you feel anger,” we’re told “you are angry.” Our anger gets entangled with our identity and we blame ourselves for having a natural emotion.
After an unhealthy expression, we can drop into a shame spiral for losing control, deepening our repression and coupling shame with anger. We can become afraid of our own emotions and shut them down completely.
This divorces us from love, joy, and the fullness of life, too.
This means that the suppressed anger is unresolved and stays with us. This puts us in a state of heightened alertness, and consumes energy keeping a lid on it. In time, we can develop toxic resentment and cause ourselves health problems from our suppressed inner volcano. We never feel safe, always remain on alert in a fight-or-flight mode.
Yet, if we have the resources, we can stay conscious when anger arises. We can stay with the felt sense of it without being overshadowed. We can learn to express it in healthy ways. Then it completes and we’re done.
If we don’t have the resources, those can be developed. We can learn to create a safe container for our anger to be expressed in. The first thing we need is the right space.
Your anger may have a story it wants to tell – let it speak. For example, many have suppressed anger from our teen years when we felt constrained by rules. When the story is done, we’re left with the felt sense, the anger itself.
We may need to vocalize or move to let it out. We may want to yell or stomp or push the wall. Or vent in writing, but always from the felt sense. Let the anger express without harm.
Slow it way down and stay conscious while we let it out.
At first, it can be very helpful to be guided through the process with an experienced somatic practitioner. This way we can learn what works for us in creating a safe space and how to process our emotions. Then our trauma can be allowed and healed.
With practice and resourcing, we can learn to be OK with how we feel and how to express in healthy ways. Our quality of life improves. We stop having to keep a lid on it, so more energy becomes available.
We regain our personal sense of power. Our no means no. Then our yes means something too.
Davidya
Thanks to The Centre For Healing for their exploration.
Thank you for this David! Another super important topic and experience to explore. Here is an article on anger I wrote in 2020, which may also be helpful for folks here:
Your Anger is Welcome Here, An invitation to folks who don’t get angry
https://medium.com/nature-of-work/your-anger-is-welcome-here-b228595873f3
Thanks for sharing, Dara.
I remember back in the 70’s, someone gave me about a book on anger. I thought, as a spiritual person, I was “beyond” that. (laughs) The book showed me I wasn’t. I realized I had an unhealthy approach. But it wasn’t until much later that I learned to actually heal what I had tucked away. And then somatics got me in touch with more.
I’ve noticed that, especially in spiritual communities, anger can get channeled into other more acceptable but nonetheless also fiery/frictiony (pitta) emotions: impatience, frustration, irritation, criticalness, resentment, disapproval. There’s often righteousness such as, “Of course I’m impatient. You’re so slow.” And of course, fear is always under the anger, whatever form it has taken in a moment.
Agreed, Sharon. Anger is generally considered unacceptable in spiritual communities, even considered a sign of “lack of evolution,” placed lower on supposed “level of consciousness (LOC)” scales. Some groups use fear and the suppression of anger to control, as it’s pretty difficult to express healthy boundaries if these energies are condemned.
And yes, some express their anger through related emotions. But most simply suppress it, never learning healthy expression. Physical expression can be a healthy way, but things like sports and dance are often discouraged as well.
I wouldn’t say fear is always under the anger, but anger is a very common way to suppress fear, and shame to suppress anger.
Dara’s link in the comment above has a great graphic that illustrates this.
But if anger is used to suppress fear, wouldn’t that indicate that fear is under anger?!
Considering the gunas, the progression of challenging emotions is from sadness to anger to fear.
Anyway, in step 8 of 12 Steps, there is a process called Fears and Resentments. Resentment, a pitta emotion, is always processed with these words: I have resentment about X because I have fear that…
Also, the basic fear, underlying all others, is fear of death. Hope this is helpful.
Right, then fear is under anger. My point is just that this is not always the dynamic. For example, if we’re afraid of anger, fear may be used to suppress anger. Or if we’re ashamed of being fearful, shame to suppress fear. No anger involved. The expression varies some was my point.
This isn’t just based on nature, but our experiences and how we learned to cope.
I’d frame it as survival fear. That’s pretty fundamental. Our childhood fears often stem from survival threats, like inconsistent or absent caregivers. We might say fear of death is behind that, but I’d suggest it’s more about fear of dying. Death itself is a release. Getting there is when we sometimes have rough spots, leading to fear. Those impressions express as aversion to dying and clinging to survival. And that, Yoga tells us, leads to suffering.