Honouring Our Anger To Heal

I've had a strange relationship with anger. You could class me as having been an angry child. I threw tantrums, I had rages that would last for hours. I was bitter, disappointed in life and in the people around me. And I continued that conversation with anger into my adulthood.

When I stepped onto the path of personal development and spirituality, I thought I had found the answer to quell my anger. Through compassion and forgiveness! And it worked...for a while.

When I started experiencing that deep deep anger again, that one that makes you want to break shit and scream your lungs out, I thought something was wrong with me.

I felt like all these years of work I had done on myself, was for nothing. It hadn't fixed me. Something must be wrong with me!

Turns out, it was nothing as dramatic. I was just being a human.

Anger is a healthy, beautiful and fuckin' powerful emotion. But we don't often allow ourselves to feel it.

I realised that some of these ideas of me being inherently flawed were because of some of the stigma around anger in the spiritual community.

And I want to clear those up right now for you:

• Experiencing anger is an indication that you are off your spiritual path. Not true: In fact it is a very very necessary emotion to help you grow!
• Expressing your anger will attract more angry situations into your life and make you be a more angry person. Again (in my experience) not true: What is going to make you an angry person or attract more angry situations in your life is holding on to this anger.
• Expressing anger is not spiritual. WTF? Are we not humans here? Anger is part of our humanness and unless you're a saint, you are going to feel anger at some time!

I'm tired of seeing a white-washing over of emotions. That emotions are our ego-self exhibited and therefore hold no real value in our spiritual growth.

I'm tired of being forced to shelve my emotions or "get over it" quickly so as to satisfy my spiritual "truth" or at the very least, make others more comfortable.

I'm tired of hearing about compassion and forgiveness as being the key to healing as if it is the ONLY way to heal.

I'm not perfect that's for sure. I've been there and done ALL of the above. In my early days of exploration, I heard myself saying things like "we just need to have compassion and forgive and let go of our emotions" like it was the easiest thing to do.

Compassion and forgiveness are integral to the healing process, but they are the final step to healing. They are not the only step.

And this is where I feel some spiritual teachings do not honour our human experience.

What I found, after years of doing this practice of compassion-forgiveness-compassion-forgiveness, was that there was often unresolved conflict still abiding in my body and my mind.

These things, done too quickly were like putting a plaster over the wound and pretending it had healed.

So what is the solution then? The solution is to FEEL our emotions.

Sounds ridiculous right, because that's what they are - feelings. But how many times do you allow yourself to truly feel emotions to their depths?

Do you squash them down or half "go there" or plaster them over with meditation, yoga or other distractions?

To be honest, feeling is a hard road to take. It's the path of the brave and the courageous, because we're not supported to feel by our society. In fact our communities, even spiritual ones who supposedly are the most "open", often find it hard to digest deep dark emotions. Like anger. Like hatred.

This makes it difficult to freely feel our emotions without feeling guilty or ashamed. In a very real sense, this all adds to our emotional baggage.

Emotions are meant to be moved. They are Energy-In-Motion. If we think of them as that, as just energy, then they are neither good or bad.

And all emotions serve a purpose!

In the case of anger, it can teach us about our boundaries, our unhealed trauma, our biases and tendencies or habits. It guides us to our next step on the path of spiritual growth.

As huge reservoirs of energy, emotions can be used in creating good or creating bad. Anger is a great way to kick start those unrealised dreams or to realise what we will and will not tolerate, for example. It can also cause us to lash out and hurt others and create conflict.

Bottom line is, we do have a choice how we use this energy.

But if we cannot appreciate and accept our anger and feel safe to feel it, our choices are severely hindered. It's from the denial of feeling that we will direct them into unhelpful or harmful ways.

Acknowledging and fully honouring our emotions allows us to choose a positive way to direct that energy. And in case you're wondering what I mean by honouring, I mean releasing it through your body. Like quite literally throwing your toys!!

This process of acknowledging/releasing allows us to integrate our experience which is needed to alleviate and prevent trauma in our body and our mind.

And it's through all of that, that we finally come to the place where we can choose to have compassion or start forgiving.

Doesn't that way of handling anger, feel more empowering and positive?

So how do you release anger in a way that doesn't harm others?

Good question. Here are a few ways to try:

• Use a creative outlet. Dancing is my favourite because it gets my body involved too. But journalling, art, singing work too.
• Move your body - punch a punching bag/pillow, go for a hard run or workout. It works. It feels good. It allows things to move.
• Scream. Vocals are great ways to express. Just make sure it's not directed at anyone!

And remember, the focus is always to let your anger be released. Not held on to. So keep the intention to move through it, not magnify or relive it.

It's time to normalise expressing our anger and understand that it is a necessary step in our healing process.

To ignore feeling anger and to jump straight into forgiveness and compassion, will only let it remain as unfinished business, ready bite you in the arse later (and yes, I am talking from direct experience).

Time to go punch some pillows!