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Anger: Rossing Racks Rohibited
Feb. 27th, 2014 11:54 amI find my relationship to anger has changed pretty radically, thanks to an insight that you might not think is all that remarkable.
Perhaps it seems consequential to me because of the way I used to relate to anger. After surviving the usual angst-filled years of adolescence, as a young adult I pretty much exiled anger from my emotional repertoire. I’d often say that “I never get angry,” and meant it. I always equated anger with loss of self-control, and it was paramount that others see me as mature, self-sufficient, and safe to be around.
It’s only recently that I realized the reason why anger has so much energy: we only get angry when something has touched and threatened something we really care about. Any time that we invest that much of our emotional well-being in something external, we make ourselves vulnerable. And when something important is threatened or hurt, a common response is to become angry.
So the big revelation is just this: anger is a symptom of vulnerability.
For me, this explains the vast well of anger that I (and most of my friends) felt during puberty. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were desperately looking to be accepted and valued by our peers and the people we admired or were attracted to. At that point, we were looking to others to provide us with a level of self-worth that we could rely on as a base for constructing an independent ego. In a word, we felt intensely vulnerable.
When looked at from the perspective that it is a symptom of vulnerability, anger becomes a really useful thing (dare I say a “good thing”?) to see, because anger tells us (and others) what is important to us. But perhaps even more rudimentary than that, anger shows the world that (despite appearances) there’s something there that we deeply care about.
One of my biggest projects this year is to cultivate a deeper feeling of caring, especially toward people. As a result, I have to acknowledge that caring about something or someone puts me in a position of vulnerability. I’ve arrived at a point in my life where the rewards of caring relationships outweigh the risks to my ego. And ironically, seeing my own anger (and vulnerability) being manifested is one way I can actually measure how successful I’ve been at cultivating a sense of caring about others.
Hold me, hold me, hold me down
I love your anger; I love its sound
Burn me, burn me, on your way
I'll reach out to you this day
Older, wiser, sadder, blinder
Color, blisters, imagine the splendor!
So I’m starting to accept that it’s actually okay to feel angry, to admit feeling it, and to show anger publicly. It’s also okay to stay angry—even after receiving an apology, if I still feel hurt or that something I care about is threatened.
As an added bonus, I’m also seeing other people’s anger from a new perspective, and have learned some new and effective ways of relating to people when they are angry…
When we are interacting with someone who becomes visibly angry, we often either step away and distance ourselves, resist it by taking up an opposing stance, or invalidate their feelings. Whichever of these actions we take, it only reinforces and strengthens their anger.
We don’t often pause to ask about and discover what that person actually cares about and how it is threatened. During a tense situation, asking these simple questions shows respect and openness toward hearing what the angry person has to say. And it’s hard to stay angry when someone sincerely wants to understand the reason behind your pain.
All that is why I think it’s an insight worth sharing.
