Anger

We’ve arrived at another Mind Shift Monday! And while I look forward to starting out each week with a happiness hack that sets a positive tone for the rest of your week…. 

 

Today, I want to make you angry.

 

Well, not make you angry as much as give you permission to be angry.

 

You see, anger often gets a bad rap. We’re taught to suppress it, to always be positive, and to avoid “negative” emotions at all costs. But here’s the truth…

 

Anger isn’t your enemy. It can even be a powerful tool for personal growth when it’s understood and channeled correctly.

 

People often confuse being spiritually enlightened and living in a positive and high vibrational state as feeling nothing but love, acceptance, and compassion.

 

But spiritual growth includes embracing the full spectrum of human emotions, including the challenging ones, like anger, sadness, and frustration.

 

To live authentically and find your inner peace, you shouldn’t be denying or resisting your emotions.

 

Anger is just as beneficial to your spiritual and emotional health as any other emotion.

It’s kind of like your emotional bodyguard, protecting you from feeling deeper, more vulnerable emotions like desire, fear, grief, guilt, and shame. 

 

But when you suppress anger, you don’t allow it to do its job, instead creating a breeding ground for stuck energy. This stuck energy can lead to unease in the mind, body, and spirit.

 

To be the healthiest and happiest version of yourself, you have to allow yourself to be angry. Sounds counterintuitive, right?

 

Now, with all this said, I’m not suggesting you go raging on that co-worker who keeps cooking fish in the office microwave. There’s a difference between healthy anger and unhealthy anger and a mindful way to process that emotion. 

 

Healthy Anger vs. Unhealthy Anger

• Healthy Anger Sets Boundaries: When you feel anger, it may be because one of your boundaries has been crossed. Acknowledging your anger and expressing it can help you establish and maintain your boundaries.
     
• Anger as a Motivator: Anger can motivate you to take action. If you’re angry about an injustice, either towards yourself or others, it can push you to make positive changes in your life and the world around you. 
• Suppressed Anger Causes Harm: Countless medical and psychology studies show that people who suppress anger experience health issues, including heart disease, high blood pressure, anxiety, and depression. The anger itself is not the problem, but how you deal with it. 
• Flowing Emotions Lead to Healing: Emotions are meant to flow through you, not get stuck. When you allow yourself to feel anger without resistance, you allow the anger to dissipate, opening you up to higher vibrational emotions like peace, acceptance, and love. Resistance will create persistence. Feel it and then let it go. 
• Anger, Shame, and the Ego: Anger protects you from feeling lower vibrational emotions, like shame. It’s the ego’s way of keeping you from facing feelings that are too painful to deal with. Recognize that when you feel anger, you’re having a normal human reaction to a situation that challenges your vulnerabilities. You are not a bad person, or less spiritually evolved for having those feelings.

Hopefully, now you can see that anger does serve a purpose and isn’t something you need to suppress to consider yourself a positive person. 

 

I’ll be honest with you, unless we’re talking about a monk who’s been training for a lifetime, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say anyone who tells you they never feel anger isn’t being honest with you, or themselves.

 

So the next time you feel anger, don’t judge yourself. Just acknowledge it for what it is and deal with it in a healthy way.

 

5 Ways to Deal with Anger

 

1. Deep Breathe: Pausing before reacting gives you time to process the situation more rationally. Taking deep breaths also calms your nervous system by activating the parasympathetic response, which helps to lower your heart rate, reduce stress, and bring you back to a state of balance. 
2. Identify the Source: Think about what actually triggered your anger. Your anger may have come from something that happened previous to the current situation that made you react. Did someone cut you off in traffic, and now you’re taking out your frustration on the copy machine because it’s out of toner again? Understanding the root cause can help you address the real issue.  
3. Express Yourself Calmly: Communicate your feelings calmly and assertively. Use “I” statements to express how you feel without placing blame on others. This also reduces the chance the situation will escalate when dealing with others. Just like anger is natural, so is getting defensive if someone feels like they’re carrying the burden of blame. Stick to how you feel and let others feel their own feelings. 
4. Practice Mindfulness: Focus on the present moment through mindfulness techniques, which can help you observe your emotions without being overwhelmed. Sometimes when we get angry it’s the only thing we can think about. It’s tunnel vision where we disconnect from life outside of the maelstrom of thoughts inside our head. Remove yourself from the flurry of emotion by using mindfulness techniques to reconnect with the present moment. 
5. Preemptive Action: One of the best ways to deal with anger is by being ready for it before it happens. Activities like journaling your thoughts every day will make sense of emotions before they boil over, or physical activity can reduce stress so anger feels less overwhelming. Understanding your triggers and staying ahead of your emotions lets you respond with calm instead of reacting in anger. 

Here’s what I’d like you to focus on this week…

Action Step:

As we discussed, anger can be a positive driver for change in your life. It just depends on how you react to that feeling. You can either let the emotion affect your vibrational state longer than it has to, or you can use it in your favor to improve your life. 

1. Identify a Boundary: Think about a boundary that has been crossed in your life recently that has given you feelings of anger. Write down three ways you can address this situation. This could be having a conversation with the person who crossed your boundary, completely walking away from a situation, or simply acknowledging it within yourself so you’re aware not to let it be crossed in the future. 
2. Pros and Cons: Next to each one of the three ways you just wrote down, write down the pros and cons of taking action. Consider the potential outcomes and the impact it will have on your well-being. Will addressing the situation enrich your life, or is it more beneficial to acknowledge the trigger and prepare yourself for future instances where this boundary might be breached? Either way, there’s personal growth to be had here. 
3. Act or Reflect: After weighing the pros and cons, decide whether to take action or just keep it as an internal lesson that will help you grow in the future. There is no wrong answer. At the end of the day, you need to do what makes you happy and if someone has crossed a boundary that caused you anger, that was your emotional bodyguard telling you something wasn’t in alignment. Just knowing your boundaries is a solid win for you!

I hope this week is a smooth ride for you and you get everything you hope for. Just remember that when times are rough or the universe doesn’t seem to be in your favor (it is!), give yourself permission to feel angry. Feel it, release it, grow from it.

Your worth is not diminished by your emotions. Instead, let them guide you to a deeper understanding of yourself so you can create the most blissful life you can imagine.