Let’s talk about Anger!
As women, we are told anger is bad, ugly and un-lady-like. Anger in women is most often seen as her being bitchy, irrational or over emotional. Then we hear things like… she’s so bitter and angry, she is destined to become a lonely crazy cat lady. Of course, an angry woman will never get a man/partner.
Anger is one of those emotions that all of us are taught from a young age is bad, to be avoided or handled so it can disappear. This is how our society relates to most “negative” or uncomfortable emotions … gotta get rid of them, suppress them, or change our way of thinking so they don’t happen at all.
Isn’t this what the whole quest for enlightenment has often been? Code for… reaching a state where we are so serene, negativity and uncomfortable emotions don’t affect us. The myth is, we could (more like should) be above it all so we can be more rational, aka more productive.
The more dangerous side of this ideal, for women, shows up in religious and other communities that condition women to be obedient, surrender to the authority of man (and God) and “be sweet”.
This conditioning is essential for maintaining the current patriarchal or dominator social structure we live with today.
Much is being said about the coming of a new era, a time when us humans (all of them) are living and working in partnership for our mutual survival and benefit. An open question I invite us all to hang out with is … How do we get from here to there?
Allowing some space for ourselves to experience anger (and other negative emotions) might be a place to start.
The human emotional system (often referred to as the emotional body) is VITAL to our evolution and survival. Our emotions, especially strongly felt ones like anger, are an internal alarm system. Like the alarms in our homes, cars and communities, these emotions are there to grab our attention and warn us of danger.
Perhaps our emotional body is not something we should avoid, change or condition ourselves away from. Rather, we need to train ourselves to understand and decode those emotions. What is that “feeling”? What is the warning or message signaling?
This got very clear for me recently when I started the call with one of my teachers with “this situation is making me crazy level angry and I need to not be so crazy about it, it’s interfering with my sense of contentment …”
I was surprised when my teacher said… that SHOULD be making you angry, you don’t need to get - not angry, you need to listen to what the anger is trying to tell you … when you get the message, your anger will dissipate, just like it’s designed to do.
WHOA … I was clear at that moment that I had been focused on the wrong thing. I had been focusing on what was wrong with me that I felt so “irrational and angry” about this situation. What I needed to do was honor the alarm and really look at the situation and get to work on resolving it. Not shut the alarm off ignoring the smoke that set it off.
There is a bunch more to share on this subject, and there will be more in the coming weeks. For this first installment, the lessons I am sharing here are…
- It is ok to be angry.
- Anger is a GREAT alarm … Look for what's setting it off.
- NO, every negative emotion does not require you to try and NOT be that emotion.
We are gonna to stop right here… AND, the next installment will look at... How to live, act and not be consumed by engaging in negative emotions and anger.
So stay tuned and watch your inbox!
