Taexalia

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Thoughts about anger

SoulCollage Card ~ Rage

I am the one who sees red
I am the red that erupts from the black
I am the bringer of momentum
I am the one who can bring freedom
I am the one who can trap
I am the one who is misunderstood
I am the one who can be harnessed

I was thinking about anger last night after posting here that I was livid, and I was thinking about what an unhealthy relationship humans have with this emotion, how uncomfortable we are with anger. On the one hand it is considered a negative thing to *be angry*, it's just not the done thing to say "I'm livid". As children we are taught to suppress our emotions, especially the "negative" ones, rather than deal with them.

As a child I was exposed to some very negative examples of anger manifesting, and I still sometimes have to deal with the legacy of that. Of course I enhanced that legacy by walking eye-wide-shut into several situations in my adult life where anger was a theme. These weren't just "romantic" relationships ~ I recall my first jaunt living away from Aberdeen at the tender age of 17. I lived and worked on a farm/horse yard 100 miles from home ~ I did not drive so I was pretty much stuck there, relying on lifts from the owner to the nearest railway station if I wanted to visit home on my days off. I was pretty isolated (this was before mobile phones or the Internet!).

The owner was a fruit loop. Of course at 17 I didn't really know this, I thought it was perfectly normal for a person to scream and spit saliva and threaten me. The yard was a constant stress zone where everyone basically functioned in fear of the owner arriving and unleashing her abuse. All these years later I'd have the knowledge and confidence to stand up and speak out, but back then I was under the impression that I just had to endure it. It was a form of torture.

I've thought about that person occasionally over the years, and how it must be to live in a constant state of anger. I don't even think it was really us she was angry with, or a singular one inch long piece of straw that was missed in the yard sweep (an example of the type of thing that triggered her rage) ~ it seemed that she was repressing anger about other things in life but that anger needed to come out somewhere.

That's the thing with emotions, you can't really repress them and they will find a way to manifest. I see repressed emotions manifesting in the world in the form of depression epidemics, domestic violence and war. We give people pills that don't work to deal with depression - it's cheaper than providing person to person therapy and certainly easier than looking, as a society, at the root causes.

I was saddened to read that reports of domestic abuse rose by 7% in Scotland last year, even more saddened by the report that there was a rise in reports on a specific weekend - the Euro qualifiers. Inability to deal with emotions (disappointment and anger at losing the game?!) and alcohol seems to equal taking a pop (physical or verbal) at the spouse or partner. It's not new, but why isn't it old yet? Why are we still talking about it and campaigning about it?

Anger is just an emotion, it indicates you are feeling something. I think anger is a lot to do with feeling threatened or feeling a loss of control over something. Yesterday I was angry because of the arms testing about to take place in an area I visit regularly. The initial anger-response quickly became a focused choice to put my voice out there (and not just this blog) to say *I object*. I think it's so important to do that instead of sitting simmering and feeling voiceless, impotent, powerlessness. I wonder if we all wrote to the politicians we pay to serve us how different things might be....

I'm better at dealing with my anger than I used to be, now I let it's momentum carry me to a place of action. I try to use it constructively, rather than unleash it in a random shrapnel outpouring that gets me nowhere, hurts me or has the potential to hurt someone else. I acknowledge my anger, make a conscious choice about how I am going to act from it and then let it go.

I don't want to live in a society that bubbles with anger, that can't deal with its emotions. I don't want to read about people attacking each other in the streets, or in their homes. I don't want the society I live in to subscribe to unhealthy control tactics on a larger scale - weapons and war.

There must be a different way and I think that if we want peace then we must practise peace and that is why I object to my taxes being used for weapons and destructive behaviour.

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Posted on March 11, 2008 in Ponderings.

One Response to “Thoughts about anger”

  1. tammy vitale says:
    March 12, 2008 at 3:55 pm

    I’m with you on getting my voice “out there” when I’m angry. I, too, am better at focusing anger than I used to be – and I pick my fights more carefully – and I have decided not to be such a conduit for all that free-floating rage energy out and about. Took me a long time to learn. You are ahead of the curve, I think – great post!

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