Are you someone who tries to be too nice?
Do you hold back from expressing your anger?
Do you blame yourself for what goes wrong in a relationship?
Do you constantly feel others’ problems are yours, too?
Feeling anger is a natural and useful response. But eating it up can wreak havoc on your emotional state and relationships?
There can be a lot of pressure to be nice, caring, compassionate, and agreeable.
However, applying judgment to our raw emotions can hold us back from experiencing them, and taking in important cues that they communicate.
As Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung reminds us, “What we resist, persists.”
It comes down to this. Anger is an emotion that needs to find its pointed release.
The way I see it, you have two options:
You can either use it to grow some teeth and become a stronger monster-dragon-warrior version of yourself.
Or you can avoid it, ignore it, and not take advantage of the lesson it has to teach, and become a weak monster-dragon-warrior version of yourself.
That doesn’t mean that you have to become a raging monster-dragon-warrior version of yourself. But you can use it to feel out your sense of worth, action, assertiveness, and confidence.
What role does anger play?
Anger tends to make itself known when you are under some form of threat or risk.
It fuels you for action and direct response when you are being invaded when you don’t agree with something, or when you need to take action to change your circumstances.
Keep in mind that feeling anger and expressing it violently are two completely different things.
Emotions are simply cues. The signal information to your body, subconscious framework, and prevailing mindset.
Emotions can come and go. But if one keeps resurfacing, and you don’t pay attention, it will find a way to come out, whether you intend to or not.
According to Jung, if we ignore emotions from the unconscious realm because our overriding conscious mind is not ready to deal with these contents, their energy flows off into the instinctual sphere. What is the result of repressed anger? Irritation. Frustration. Outbursts. Tears. Bad moods. Inner disharmony.
So, if it feels like someone is bullying you or walking all over you, and taking metaphorical bites out of your side, anger can help you to see that more clearly and set up stronger boundaries.
If someone isn’t hearing or recognizing your experience, it can signal to you that you need to be assertive, clear, speak up or make a change.
And interestingly, if you are trying to be too perfect or virtuous, too sweet and nice, anger and irritation can make themselves known as a means to pull you back into balance and honest expression.
Anger will come back to bite you.
Carl Jung discusses the importance of seeing our shadow side, or all the dark places and qualities we don’t like to recognize and experience.
Jealousy, Anger, Rage, Fear. Discomfort. Confrontation. Uncertainty.
We will go out of our way to avoid them.
So it’s important to try things differently now and then. Someone is mistreating you. Block their number and kick them to the curb.
Why not? Have you tried it?
We don’t always have to be nice. He told you he was cheating on you? Throw a glass of water in his face.
Your boss didn’t pay you your last month’s salary. Call him on it at the next meeting.
It’s ok to be vocal. It’s ok to be dramatic. We don’t have to be tame. It’s far worse to be voiceless.
Getting in touch with your anger, and expressing it in ways like movement, martial arts, and running, can do wonders for your assertiveness and confidence.
When you feel it, it can open up a larger spectrum of your emotions.
You’ll be able to identify when you’re being treated unfairly, or deceived, and take action to change the situation.
But expressing anger healthily is separate from exhibiting excessive rage and violence.
Rage is a strong state that can be very dangerous. It can completely devour your being and make you act in ways that you aren’t expecting.
Rage is an instinctive reaction to a threat. So it feels good and right to express it. But rage can lead to violence if you don’t know what you’re doing. And you always want to be in control of your state and emotions.
Awareness is the most important thing to do when dealing with any emotion, especially anger.
Awareness will help you to know what’s going on in your life and how to respond in the most poignant way possible.
Expressing your anger is a useful way to grow and gain strength.
So how do you go about feeling it? expressing it?
Do you need to be positive all the time?
Even well-meaning gurus, coaches, and experts can get it wrong.
But not facing your inner state honestly, you might end up achieving the opposite of what you’re searching for.
You might do more to harm yourself than to heal.
In this eye-opening video, the shaman Rudá Iandé explains how so many of us fall into the toxic self-development trap. He went through a similar experience.
As he mentions in the video, growing should be about empowering yourself. Not suppressing emotions, not judging others, but forming a pure connection with who you are at your core.
If this is what you’d like to achieve, click here to watch the free video.
Even if you’re well into your development journey, it’s never too late to face some aspects of yourself that you tend to hide from. That’s the very point of all this work. And that darkest place can be the space where you garner the most insight.
Did you like my article? Like me on Facebook to see more articles like this in your feed.
