Anger Management

I know how to sit with fear. And I know how to sit with sadness, longing, and loneliness too.

But I’m still working on learning how to sit with anger.

Allowing anger’s presence, opening myself up to really feeling it in my body, is a newer thing for me.

For pretty much the entirety of my twenties and the first half of my thirties, I mostly experienced what I like to call "anger adjacent" feelings — disappointment, on-edge-ness, upset, frustration, irritation — but I can recall very few instances when I actually felt ANGRY. Eventually, I realized that remaining an emphatic and unyielding "NO" to feeling anger wasn’t serving me.

And if all of this sounds a bit familiar, my guess is that your relationship with anger isn't serving you either.

When I started to wake up to anger in my mid thirties, the encounters I had with it were initially few and far between and they all "made sense" from a logical perspective. That felt okay, safe. I could allow anger to arise in those situations because I could rationalize my anger — it was understandable, justifiable, "appropriate."

But then I started feeling the hot flush of anger in my face and chest in response to the most seemingly innocuous things. Want an example?

The song “Love Yourself” by Justin Bieber.

Clearly, it's a big "fuck you" of a break up song. But it’s definitely NOT a rager. It’s melodic, buoyant, almost… cheerful. Definitely sing-along-able.

the first time I heard it while i was driving home from my office, something cracked open inside me.

It was like someone was shining a spotlight into the deep, dark little nook where I'd been hiding all of the anger I felt toward my ex-husband Drew* during the last year or so of our marriage and during our separation and divorce.

That first time the Biebs made me feel all angry and punchy, I remember reacting with a befuddled "huh?" and then shrugging it off (i.e. stuffing it back in its dark little nook). But every single time I heard that dang song over the next couple of months, I felt that same hot, scratchy FURY threading up into my neck and jaw and face, causing my teeth to clench together and my muscles to squeeze so hard that it felt like they were trying to choke me from the inside.

It felt so primal — I wanted to bite someone (um, I’m sorry, WHAT?).

Immediately, my sweet gremlin and emotional hall monitor piped up — "Now, now. There's no reason to be angry. You and Drew just had different values and priorities and, besides, the divorce was finalized years ago. What's your problem?"

Gremlin's reaction to my feeling even the tiniest little flicker of anger was all about communicating exactly one message…

These feelings are disproportionate and unseemly. YOU should be aSHAMEd. Get yourself under control.

For loads of different reasons, I had very much internalized the idea that KATE IS NOT ALLOWED TO FEEL ANGRY. I believed that bullshit for decades. My default response to anything that my body or my mind interpreted as "being angry" was to squash it immediately. I felt like if I didn’t (or couldn’t), I was being "bad" in some way.

Early in my healing + personal growth journey, I learned that when I’m presented with the next right thing for me to look at and integrate, my nervous system often recoils (sometimes powerfully) at first. The thought of allowing, holding, and even welcoming anger into my life felt so unsafe and so impossible.

But being open with my therapist and the other practitioners I was working with gave me the strength and support to get really intimate with anger. With their help, I eventually taught myself how to feel and express anger — despite a very opinionated, very chatty gremlin.

It was awful and terrifying and literally the worst (and it still feels that way some of the time).

Unfortunately, the ways that feeling and expressing anger are viewed by the holistic wellness + yoga communities can be seriously flawed and deeply unhealthy. Way too frequently, it’s all "love and light" and positivity (e.g. "Who wants to drink green smoothies and read The Secret and play with crystals!") at the expense of some of the grittier, less pleasant excavation and exploration that needs to happen too.

So here’s to validating the experience of anger. To making room for acknowledging and navigating the darkness as well as the light. It’s really, really hard. And scary. But it’s also incredibly important and sacred work. Let’s keep going, together.

* name has been changed.