Becoming Friends With Anger

Anger is the unannounced visitor that keeps dropping by, again and again.

Some of us hide, hoping this troublesome guest will go away. Others of us let it take over, which just leaves us even angrier, without friends, where we feel isolated, alone and misunderstood.

However, there is another way. We can make friends with our anger and try to understand what makes it tick; where it comes from and why it erupts. By so doing, we create an opportunity to learn a lot more about ourselves and make real, lasting changes in our relationships.

We get angry at our partners, our children, the man at the dry cleaner's, the woman cutting us off on the freeway, our boss who just doesn't understand, our dogs for barking too much. We get angry, but we rarely understand why.

Anger a powerful emotion:

Anger is one of the most powerful emotions, and deemed to be one of the most difficult to deal with. It's also probably the least understood. But for me anger is highlighting a deeper issue of hurt or pain or even trauma that is still unresolved. I have come to understand in the work that I do in healing relationships that it is the underlying issue that is difficult for many of us to deal with.

Rather than working with the anger we push it down even deeper. We have got so used to burying the pain and unconsciously making excuses as to why we feel the way that we do, which not only intensifies the hidden pain but also forms behaviours that are not a true reflection of who we are. But one day it will surface and cause us further hurt and damage, even destroy our relationships, especially the one that we have with our self, as well as our health and our job.

Buried emotions will show themselves eventually in some form or another and that is because of who we are. We are souls expressing our self through the human journey and as such we will find avenues in which to release inner pain and suffering. As souls we have a wonderful gift to express the love of Creation through each one of us. Our souls are continually growing and expanding our awareness and in that growth, negative thoughts, beliefs and behaviours will come to our attention as our inner (soul) light throws a bright light upon our inner dysfunction.

When you next get anger or feel it surfacing embrace it; make friends with it and let it show you what the real issue is. Find out what beliefs are fuelling the emotion and holding its roots firmly in place in your subconscious. Maybe you also grew up in a household with angry parents, where anger as he norm of expression?

When we venture inward and investigate the story, the anger can just dissolve, or we may need some help. By enquiring within we can find new ways to transform and heal our anger: -

• By going into the emotion, allowing ourselves to feel the feeling we can help it to dissolve. A part of us wants to be heard, so it is up to us to listen and become more aware. Listening to the emotion and focusing our mind only on the emotion, we can sense the thoughts coming from the emotion, so we uncover more of the issue. By writing down those thoughts, assists us in building inner trust whereby we get to know our self a whole lot more. Having more clarity diminishes any fear of the anger so it loses its grip over our behaviours and lessens unfounded future angry reactions. It also gives us choice to heal.

• Beliefs that triggers the anger. By looking at our beliefs around our anger can be both surprising and very enlightening. Seeing what thought patterns are holding the anger in place presents us with even more choice. We get to clean up negative thinking and any beliefs built on judgement.

As a brief example where a mother is constantly yelling at her child to pick their clothes up and finding herself getting very angry in the process. By going into the feeling of the anger and connecting with it, the mother may well find below the anger is a real sense of feeling isolated, alone, not being listened to or she may hear the distant echo of her mother's voice yelling at her when very young. She may also uncover beliefs around the anger such as, " children must be controlled, kept in check", "children must be punished", "my life would be happier if the people I lived with weren't so messy", "if I don't keep the house tidy my husband will be angry with me". Maybe her relationship isn't how she had hoped it to be and is afraid express her true feelings". Until we go within we won't know and we deny our self the opportunity for healthy change.

Anger definitely separates us from ourselves. The soul has shown me that many gaps exist within us that come from fear and painful emotions and there is always a root cause, a reason attached to the thread of the emotion. Those weeds can be rooted out very gently; it does not have to be a traumatic experience when you venture in. Just take your time. Be kind to yourself and know that you are uncovering the absolute wonder of who you are. You are in there!

Know too that you are a real gift to our world.