Dealing with Anger
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Question: Despite my meditation practice and positive affirmations, I keep finding myself angry about a situation in my life. Friends and family members tell me I should just get over it and have a better attitude. Trust me, I would if I could! Any ideas on how I can address this?
Answer: Anger is a natural emotion that everyone has. . .whether they like to admit it or not. When genuinely addressed and processed, your anger can give great insight into your core truths. It can informs you of your needs, wishes and desires to help you better care for yourself and get greater satisfactions with life.
When we have anger, it is trying to tell us one of two things:
1. That something is happening (or has happened) that we don’t like.
and/or
2. That something is not happening (or hasn’t happened) that we want.
“Just get over it,” meditating, or “positively affirming” your way out of anger is a top-down approach that will not lead to genuine resolve or inner peace. This mental approach is like taking an idea and shoving it down your own throat, expecting the body and emotional body to be beat into submission. . .creating yet another good reason to be angry perhaps? You will need to keep meditating, affirming and/or talking yourself out of your anger to keep the true feeling (anger) from resurfacing again.
Top-down approaches simply suppress the underlying emotions, which creates emotional backlog, or as I call it in my practice, Emotional Pain Memory (EPM). Anger-related EPM can be a culprit for a lot of nasty health condition, including hyper tension, heart conditions, weight gain, toxicity of the organ systems, digestive trouble, and many more.
The mental/emotional impact of repressing anger can range from rigidity, aggressive and/or passive aggressive behaviors, depression, to an overall lessened sense of happiness and satisfaction with life.
A healthier approach to addressing your anger is to fully express it in a way that does not do harm to yourself or others. This involves fully feeling the feelings and letting them move through and out of your body.
If done effectively, this will allow the anger to actually be released from your system and allow room for other more positive emotions — such as happiness, ease and inner peace — to surface from your inherent state of well-being.
Note to those new to emotional release:
If you are new to acknowledging and releasing your anger, as you attempt to release your current issue, you will probably find yourself face-to-face with an up-swelling of other past unaddressed angers.
This is because your body wants to unload this toxic emotional backload to restore a state of unrepressed homeostasis. It is also because most strong emotional reactions in the present have at their root other core unresolved emotional issues, or EPMs.
While it is ultimately for your greatest benefit to let ALL of the anger backlog leave your system, it can be scary and overwhelming at first. The fear is generally some version of “ Once I start, I won’t be able to stop!”.
This fear of “being out of control” and harming yourself or others is the mind’s (ego’s) fear of change. Succumbing to this fear of releasing anger is an effective way to shut down the emotional release which keeps the ego safe by maintaining the status quo — keeping you stuck in your state of anger.
When anger presents itself in life, rather than looking at it as something to make go away ASAP, consider viewing it as an opportunity to “clear the closets.” By addressing anger and related EPMs, you can become a more self-aware, self-caring and empowered individual. The freedom, strength and rejuvenation you get from clearing out the anger pain body can be truly amazing. . .no affirmation or meditation needed!