Disclaimer: This article and the upcoming part 2 tackle the concept of personal anger and how to overcome it in your life. This is about anger that you hold onto consciously or suppress it unconsciously. Both exist within you. If someone shows anger towards you, make the best and safest choice for your wellbeing. Their anger is not yours to fix, change, or tolerate.
Anger can present differently – whether it be through impatience, frustration, irritation, or intolerance – but it’s all too often part of our lives. Even as we focus on personal growth, anger can often linger. It is a deeply rooted emotion that doesn’t subside easily.
Yet, you have the power to shift your personal anger and transform yourself in a big way. When you do, you also uplift the overall consciousness of the world. It’s important to acknowledge that working to address anger can often be a lengthy process. This is in-part due to the variety of triggers, habits, and frustrations that exist within you, leading to your anger being felt or expressed.
Your anger or frustration is YOURS.
When something is bothering you, it is good to remember that it is bothering you. The other person may not even be aware of your feelings – others can’t read your mind or be prepared to change because of your feelings.
Your anger is yours to address. Although closer relationships thrive with healthy communication, it is necessary to remove the sole focus from what ‘made’ you angry to ‘why’ you are angry. Look past the surface trigger and to your inner self to uncover the genuine reason that anger is at the heart of your reaction. Why not react with sadness, disappointment, or any other nuance? Why is anger presenting as your knee-jerk emotional response?
It sounds logical to get rid of our anger, but the familiarity can be comforting. It can seem easier to hold onto anger than doing the inner work necessary to transform it. Not only does anger affect our emotional state, holding onto ‘inflammatory’ anger hurts our health, peace of mind, ability to focus, relationships, and so much more. The longer anger builds within you, the more intense the negative impact can become.
If anger or one of its faces (impatience, frustration, irritation, etc.) feels prevalent in your life, commit to change. This proactive action by you, has benefits on many levels.
Others and outside events can trigger YOUR anger.
When someone triggers your anger, they aren’t the cause of it. Your anger is lying in wait, for a person or event to trigger it.
What can you do when anger surfaces? Take a quiet moment and ask yourself these key questions:
• Are you not receiving something that you want or need? What is it?
• Is it because the focus is not on you?
• Is the other person saying or doing something that you wouldn’t allow yourself to do or say?
• Is this a mirror for you of something you are holding inside - something that you do not want to acknowledge?
• Why are you annoyed/angry? Is that emotion a camouflage for something else?
Use your anger as a wakeup call. Spend time with these questions, and let the answers guide you towards what you need to shift/change within yourself. Meditate with your anger and find out where it began and what you can do to remove those core habit responses.
Old Habits Linger
Any important change takes practice to fully embody within our lives. It’s okay to stumble, especially as it can feel like there are many self-improvement areas which require a consistent focus. It does take a daily commitment to incorporate self-improvement naturally into our lives and who we are.
The habit of anger often has deep roots in our childhood or even earlier experiences. It’s often a reaction and possibly even an act of protection that occurred when your aspect of anger originally formed. It can look like you are being annoyed when someone doesn’t agree with you – but this may have vulnerable roots in feelings of being unheard and unloved (example).
To untangle a habit of anger, it’s important to dive into the ‘why’s. Why do you get annoyed? Why do you get angry when something happens out of your control? Why can’t you let go?
Everyone’s answer will be unique to them and their experiences, but these answers are your focus for change. These are the old beliefs, patterns, experiences, and maybe even grief that cause anger to bubble up from inside of you.
Embrace the process of discovering what drives your anger. It may reveal slowly as new anger responses appear and demand your attention to address. You may even continue this process throughout your lifetime. But with each step forward, your transformation away from anger will take shape. It will allow for your body to be healthier, your immune system stronger, and for further expansions of your personal and spiritual self. Living without anger naturally leads to the ability of living with higher consciousness and peace.
Reach for peace over anger. And above all, how to accomplish this lies within you.
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I hope you will return for next month’s part two which is all about practical tools to address the initial rush of anger. After all, in order to properly address anger, it must first be manageable.
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