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In the past I was always scared of my own anger, because I'd only ever seen anger in immature adults, who used it carelessly and hurtfully as a tool to push their own pain onto other people. There is an impulse in anger to force empathy out of others. This never works.
Whenever I felt anger, I would be so afraid of having it guide my actions that instead I suppressed it, which gave me a deep nauseous feeling in my stomach. But I was recently given a new perspective on anger, thanks to an anger workshop I took part in: https://t.co/UaMypg12wZ
@yashkaf 14/ -- I still carried a *ton* of pain and repressed anger with me. Only recently, through an anger workshop, was I allowed -- and this, given modern society, was the scariest thing I've ever done! -- to finally express all of this anger directly at women.
It discovered a clear determination on a hard choice, allowing me to consider an option that will likely be the right one, but which I wouldn't have considered originally. My anger was there to serve me, to guard me from pain. But I could still veto this; I was still in control.
Before my friend and I talked, I did not feel anxious or fearful, the way I used to feel when faced with an imminent confrontation. I had no fear that I might be unable to control my anger, no fear that I might explode; but also no fear that I would dishonor my own boundaries.
My anger is here for *me*! It is the part of me that supports my boundaries and that enables me to honor them in turn. I'd been carrying a protector inside of me all along, and I never knew. When I trust in it, it is here for me. Guiding, clarifying, protecting.
I could have been hurt very much for a very long time by what my friend did. But my anger guarded me when the pain got too much. In the past there was never an upper bound on how much I'd let other people hurt me; but now that I know to trust my anger, it has installed a limit.
What surprised me even more was that once I trusted my anger and could talk to it, I could *make it leave.* It didn't linger, burning. I told my anger that it had served its purpose & there was no danger anymore; and it actually *understood this* and bowed out, fully satisfied.
Oh, and that part about anger driving people to force empathy out of others? After my anger left me, I no longer felt like I needed my friend's empathy or understanding; I had my own. I asked it, "What good would her empathy do me now?", and it conceded I was satisfied and safe.
(On that note: forcing empathy out of people almost never works, so it's weird that that's what anger sometimes feels like. Maybe anger was optimized for small-tribe life, where it was a useful signal to other people where your boundaries were, --
-- but the next day you'd hunt and eat with them again, so you were bound to re-bond. In modern society, when two people get angry at each other, they often just stop talking & meeting. It takes a good, conscious effort from both parties to keep things functioning through that.)