angry and that we have a lot to be angry about! Okay. That’s a fact. Where our wise person enters is in how we deal with that fact.
“Anger stirs and wakes in her, it opens its mouth, and like a hot-mouthed puppy, laps up the dredges of her shame. Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth.”
—Toni Morrison
One of my clients is able to express anger with true kindness in her voice. It’s amazing how easy it is to listen to her anger. Her words are clear. She holds no threat of retaliation or violence in her words or tone. She speaks to express herself and not to defend herself. She tells her boyfriend she doesn’t want to go camping because it’s too much work. Yes, the sky was heavenly and the sound of the crickets comforting, but, for her, it was too much nature and not enough soap and water. And she didn’t like all the setting and packing up. She doesn’t say she is right or that she is justified in her feelings. She doesn’t demand he change. The request to go camping again is not an affront to her ego nor does it need be to him. She has an opinion and she feels strongly enough about it to express it. She feels good about herself in doing so and accepts that some things make her mad, even in memory.
When you feel righteous anger you can ask yourself: How can I feel my anger, and what can I do and how can I change the situation? Do I have to accept that this is out of my hands and feel the anger and go on? Am I mature enough to know that in some situations I lose and some I can affect? Do I choose my battles well?
Say your girlfriend read your journal without permission. You might well get mad. You might tell her the journal is private and you feel violated. You can tell her how much it would mean to you if you could have a private place for feelings you are working through. What’s important is that you take care of your resentment and your spirit. Streaming (see appendix, pg. 181) is a great technique for exploring the feelings that are triggered by someone reading your private thoughts. You can then share these explored thoughts with your friend so she knows your feelings. This is using anger for intimacy, not to hurt someone.
I have one friend who has learned to speak up when she’s angry with me. Because she cares about me, she says, she wants me to know how she is feeling. Sometimes I wish she wouldn’t! Once she told me she was upset because I was in a new relationship and spending less time with her. She asked me to reexamine my priorities. My response, of course, was up to me.
She taught me that anger is appropriate when it is expressed in a compassionate way. She reminded me that anger is the place in us that says no. It is a warning sign that something is going too far. She confided in me that she writes out what she will tell me so she doesn’t blame me. I think to myself that it must not be so easy for her to express anger compassionately without practice either.
Compassionate anger is an expression of feelings. It informs and communicates. It desires a response but does not insist on one. It never includes violence. Once we express compassionate anger, we let the outcome go and feel satisfied in the expression of the feeling.
In accepting your anger you need to understand that anger is not a waste of time; it is carrying a message for you. “Anger is a signal worth listening to,” says Harriet Lerner, in The Dance of Anger. There’ll be no flooded world left behind compassionate anger. You’ll be a person others can trust because you’ll be telling the truth. A feeling, anger, was triggered in you and that’s fine.
When we repress anger, we sometimes experience anxiety, jealousy, self-pity, resentment, stress, physical discomfort, and depression. Needless to say, these feelings don’t allow us to rest as the moon circles the night sky. The restful place inside of us is painted with conflict. Unreleased anger can take up too large a place in our feelings and body. Think of people who seem crusty. We know enough to be careful of them because we sense the hidden whip of their anger. If we stop and consider their lives, we know that they would be better served if they would acknowledge that their rain barrel of anger is overflowing.
“Through anger, the truth looks simple.”
—Jane McCabe
Accepting the fact that others may get mad at you is a sound step to intimacy. We have every reason to believe, just as the sun sets in the west, that the time will come when we will trigger anger in our dearest friends. A student in a community college class on anger once said that she trusted her friends only after their first fight. It wasn’t until then that she knew whether she would be treated well or mistreated. Her wise voice wanted to see a whole person and then determine who could be trusted.
Through our writing/spiritual practice, we are learning to accept ourselves as human beings even when there are times when our anger feels like seawalls bursting in the pounding tide.
It’s hard to get to a place of compassionate anger, but writing can be an enormous help. You can lift yourself from a situation of despair by reminding yourself that anger will pass and you will dance again. Let the midnight garden glow under the moon’s light and appreciate darkness for what it offers. Enjoy the morning; welcome the noon. We promise ourselves to be angry in a way that we can accept and practice, practice, practice.
Exercises
1. Write down the times in your life when you felt and expressed anger. Was it compassionate or closer to rage? Explore how knowing the difference might have helped you accept the voicing of anger. Would the anger have been easier to accept if you had expressed it differently?
Use streaming to explore how your anger is “the shape of your family’s eye.” Another way of saying this is: How did your original family express anger? Now compare this to the way you express anger. How are you the same? Different? Are you reacting to someone’s anger or choosing how to deal with your anger for yourself?
2. Name three things you are currently angry about. Can you change the situation? Yourself? Or is this a matter of acceptance? Can you think of some ways to release your anger without hurting yourself or others? Write about that.
Day 3: Ourselves as We Are
Acceptance is like saying yes to something to which we usually say no. Today we’ll begin practicing saying yes to ourselves as a person with behaviors we both like and dislike, and no to the patterns that take us away from our natural self. We’ll begin to recognize an important distinction: We can love ourselves and not our patterns. If we want the spirit to become more alive in our lives, we must do the hard work of accepting ourselves.
“The fabled musk deer searches the world over for the source of the scent which comes from itself.”
—Ramakrishna
Many of my clients come to me feeling as if they have problems, but their families are pretty healthy. Their problems, they say, are “just them.” Others feel anxious but think they’re the only one who has managed to break free from their family’s dysfunction. Neither is true. We are a part of the family we were raised in. We can’t help but be affected by them. Accepting that truth is part of our growth path.
Writing your life story can bring you to better acceptance of your history and yourself. This can be done in fragments or as autobiography. Autobiographical vignettes can help you better understand yourself and how you were affected by your family.
A student of mine moved around a lot as a child, so now she likes to stay in one place. She wants her family around and tells me she only really relaxes when they are all home together. She brings to her marriage a sense of anxiety and
