The Emotion That Finally Says NO
(based on a couple previous Coffee with Christie videos and blogs)
I used to think anger was something I needed to get rid of…Something ugly, dangerous, something beneath me or any so called “spiritual” person……..Something terribly immature, that “enlightened” people supposedly transcended while smiling serenely underneath a waterfall somewhere.
Then, years ago, someone asked me during my Coffee with Christie series, “How do I stop being so angry?”
And for some reason that question stayed with me…Because eventually I started wondering, Why are we assuming the goal should be to stop being angry?
What if anger itself isn’t automatically the problem? What if sometimes anger is trying to tell us something? And what if constantly silencing it prevents us from hearing the message???
That question completely changed my relationship with anger.
Not Every Uncomfortable Emotion Is a “Bad” Emotion
We have developed a strange habit of sorting emotions into categories…
Happy? GOOD.
Love? VERY GOOD.
Gratitude? EXCELLENT. Please post inspirational meme immediately! 😂
Sadness? Hmm.
Fear? Work on that.
Anger? OH GOD. GET RID OF IT…..NOW!!!
Especially in certain “spiritual” circles. There are people who will happily shame someone for being angry while explaining that they themselves have transcended the “lower vibrations.” HAHAHAHHA
Congratulations, Karen.
But I no longer believe emotions work like a spiritual report card. Some emotions are pleasant, some not so much… Some feel expansive while some feel like somebody set fire to our nervous system. But unpleasant does not automatically mean useless…of that it should be ignored, suppressed and thrown away!
Pain isn’t pleasant either…yet if you put your hand on a hot stove, pain is doing you a tremendous favor by telling you to MOVE YOUR DAMN HAND! 😀
Maybe anger sometimes does something similar.
Anger Is a Check-Engine Light
This is probably the simplest way I know to explain how I see it now…Anger can be a check-engine light warning you that something needs attention, a boundary was crossed, something feels unfair or contradicts our values… Maybe someone is mistreating us…or perhaps we are mistreating ourselves…
We keep saying yes when every cell in us wants to say no! Maybe we’re participating in something we no longer believe in, or we could be tolerating something that needs to change…
Then the warning light comes on. That does not mean your next move is to DRIVE THE CAR THROUGH SOMEBODY’S LIVING ROOM!!! LOL
It simply means TAKE A LOOK UNDER THE HOOD!
That distinction matters enormously. Anger is information. It is NOT an instruction to become violent, cruel, reckless, or destructive. Feeling anger and acting destructively are two completely different things!
Anger Doesn’t Give You a Free Pass to Hurt Somebody
I want to make this part crystal clear…Feeling angry does NOT excuse abuse. It doesn’t justify hitting or threatening somebody. It is NOT a free pass to destroy someones property…also not a free pass to humiliate or punish someone, kick the dog or manipulate others. It also is not a green light to unload 10 years of unresolved pain onto the nearest convenient human being.
That is ABSOLUTELY NOT what I mean by making friends with anger. Quite the opposite, in fact.
If I can recognize anger early enough to ask myself, “What is this trying to show me?” Then I have considerably more choices over what happens next. I can walk write, cry, talk, sing, paint, box, exercise, set a boundary, make a decision I’ve been putting off, create something or CHANGE something…mostly by saying NO!
Healthy expression doesn’t necessarily mean screaming. Sometimes the healthiest expression of anger is one calm sentence.
“This is no longer acceptable to me”…which I might only be able to say after I feel the spark of the anger ignite.
I Was Taught to Avoid Anger
For much of my life, I did….or I tried…lol I swallowed things that hurt me. I ignored things meant to hurt me…while still trying to play nice… I tried to be societies version of acceptable, tried not to upset people and keep the peace……with the same people and situations killing my soul… AND like many people, I often mistook not expressing conflict for actually being at peace.
Those are not the same thing. You can be smiling while absolutely boiling inside. You can be agreeable while abandoning yourself. You can say. “It’s fine” when we all know it is magnificently, spectacularly, unquestionably NOT “fine.”
Eventually something has to happen with all that information.
Research on emotional regulation has found that simply suppressing outward emotional expression doesn’t actually make the underlying negative emotion disappear, and in some situations suppression has been associated with greater physiological stress responses and unregulated reactions. Which makes sense to me.
A check-engine light doesn’t become less important because you put duct tape over it! 🙂
Almost Everything I’ve Built Had a Little Anger Underneath It
This was the revelation that really surprised me. I started looking backward at my life. The projects and businesses I built…the radio shows, healing work, education and products I created…all the things I taught myself, the battles I survived, the times I started over…
And it was there that I realized, anger had fueled just about ALL of it!!! In fact, almost everything good I have created in my life was birthed from a spark of anger, which was the moment I finally said NO to the status quo and started building something more aligned with the world I wanted to live in.
Someone told me I couldn’t do something? Ummmmmkay….lol WATCH ME!!! 😂
Something I bought or tried didn’t work for me? Whatever……….I’ll learn how to make something different! If I became frustrated with what options were available? I studied, experiemented, created and built! When I became angry about people struggling? Simple solution, I started projects intended to help, or fill in that gap. When I became angry about community disappearing? I tried building community. When I was mad at how coaches or teachers treated me…? No problem, I’ll just work so hard you’ll have to put me in a sports museum! 🙂
Sometimes anger wasn’t destroying my life. It was actually giving me enough energy to change it.
“Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired” Is Anger Too
We use that phrase all the time. And the truth is we only finally change our life when we become sick and tired of being sick and tired. It’s when we finally admit we’ve had enough, that we don’t want this anymore. Maybe we finally realize that we deserve something different, or better. That we cannot continue this pattern or tolerate this treatment. It’s when we finally choose to change what we CAN control…And that’s the moment we find the power within ourselves to make whatever change needs to be made to restore our peace and happiness.
Sadness reminds us that “This hurts.” While fear warns us “Something may not be safe.” Then anger tells us it’s time to “DO SOMETHING!!!”
Each emotion holds different messengers and information…AND should ALWAYS be listened to, rather than suppressed.
Anger Helped Me Learn the Word NO
This may be the greatest gift anger ever gave me. The power of NO! No more, “maybe, I’ll think about it cause I don’t want to upset anyone else…” No more explaining myself for 30 minutes hoping that if I abandon myself, you will still like me…NO. Just a good old fashioned simple NO!!!
I often ponder all the years I spent years tolerating things long past the point where I should have established a clear boundary. Mostly because I wanted to help or understand, to be compassionate and give another chance… I’m not saying these are bad qualities, but compassion without boundaries can become self-destruction. Ask me how I know? LOL
Eventually anger presents itself louder and SCREAMS….uh…Excuse me Miss Doormat…Have we considered NOT doing this anymore yet?
Thank you, Anger…Great suggestion! 😀
The Problem Is Not Feeling It
The bigger problem here is what we do instead of feeling it. Like drinking, smoking, drugs, overwork, doom scrolling, compulsive shopping, gambling or eating…some of us isolate and pretend we can be an island of 1…lol Some of us explode at people who had nothing to do with the original wound…or become so fake positive that we gaslight ourselves…or try to spiritualize it before we bury it and claim, “I am choosing not to engage with that “lower vibration.” Meanwhile their eye is twitching, butt clenching and teeth are grinding behind the mask.
Avoidance can wear a lot of costumes, including dis-ease. And medication has an important place for many people, so I am certainly not telling someone to stop prescribed treatment because a woman on the internet told them to “feel harder.” But isn’t it time to admit that things like medication, alcohol, spirituality, entertainment, food, work, or any other replacement can become problematic if we’re using it only to avoid ever asking ourselves, “What am I actually feeling, and why?”
That question matters. And it also happens to be the question MOST of us refuse to ever ask, as we try to keep our chin up under our masks…
Spiritual Bypassing Is Still Bypassing
Yup…it’s time to break out of denial. One of the most ridiculous things I encountered in so called spiritual communities was the idea that anger was evidence of spiritual failure. They tell that if you are angry;
– You’re in your ego.
– You’re in your pain body.
– You’re low vibration.
– You’re unhealed.
– You’re attracting negativity.
– You’re not enlightened enough.
– You brought it on yourself…
Okay……maybe sometimes perhaps…..but ALL the time? Why are we shaming and blaming people trying to express??? Sometimes you’re angry because somebody is behaving like an asshole…and that’s a perfectly accepable response! 😂 Do we really have to turn every perfectly understandable human response into evidence of spiritual deficiency…? Give me a break!
The question isn’t, “Am I allowed to be angry?” Of course you are!!! “Is this evidence of a deficiency?” Absolutely not! Usually, ayways…lol Is it time to start asking ourselves…”WHY am I angry?”
How about assessing what happened, what boundary exists underneath this situation… Is the story I’m telling myself accurate or am I reacting to today or to something much older?
Then truly defining what IS mine to change, what isn’t and what can I do to actually improve this situation..? I know…self responsibility hurts at times….I know it’s hard, but it is ESSENTIAL.
THAT is the spiritual work most choose to avoid. Not pretending you don’t feel something you’ve deemed “wrong” or “beneath you!”
Anger Can Create – or Destroy
Fire cooks food, warms homes and even sterilizes water. Those things are great and necessary! However, fire also burns forests and houses down. We don’t go around claiming fire is “evil.” We learn how to work with it safely.
Anger is similar for me. Unexamined anger can become cruelty. Constantly rehearsed anger can become bitterness. Anger deliberately fed for entertainment can consume years. Suppressed anger aimed indiscriminately at innocent people can cause permanent damage.
But anger CONSCIOUSLY directed, felt and diffused can become a boundary, a protest, a painting, a song, a business, a garden, a new invention, a changed habit…..refusal to participate any longer in something that violates or opposes your values……it could even be a difficult, but healing and necessary conversation…………….and/or a whole new life!
Same fire…Different use.
Sometimes Anger Makes Me Build Something
This may be my favorite use for it. Something pisses me off? I ask, “Okay, what can we make or do instead?”
If don’t like something available to me…can I make a better version? If I’m angry at “the system,” can I opt out or create another option?
If I don’t like what’s happening in my community…Can I build something that demonstrates what I’d rather see instead?
If I don’t like giant corporations swallowing every little independent business? Can I support more small businesses and become one of the alternatives myself?
That is where anger becomes creative and useful! Harping about how much you “hate” something or someone has never changed a thing…but if you truly abhor the situation at hand, do you hate it enough to build something different…yet? Now, that’s useful anger. That’s transformation and transmutation.
You Don’t Have to Fix the Entire World
This was another lesson I had to learn. You can become angry about all the problems of the world the news wants us to “pay attention” to…exploitation, war, destruction, poverty, abuse, corruption, trafficking….and a million other things happening thousands of miles away that we can’t do anything about anyways…
Eventually it can become paralyzing…and an excuse to not move forward with yourown purpose.
So I had to start asking, “What is actually within my reach?” Maybe I cannot personally fix an entire international industry…but I can decide where my money and energy goes. I can choose another product, I can make something myself and support a small business doing it better. I can teach. I can build. AND I can change my little corner of the world!
Anger becomes much less poisonous when it moves from “LOOK HOW TERRIBLE EVERYTHING IS!” to “What can I actually do about my piece of it?”
That’s the conversion. That’s the solution. Turning anger into agency.
Sometimes You Have to Go Deeper
There is something else I’ve learned. If I think I processed something and I am still being intensely triggered by it again and again…maybe I’m not done with that subject. There could be sadness underneath the anger…grief, fear, rejection, humiliation, abandonment, powerlessness, being unseen, unheard or betrayed. Anger can sometimes be the bodyguard standing outside a much more vulnerable room we haven’t even looked at yet. So I don’t just scream until I feel better and call that healing…although is certainly DOES make things feel better sometimes. lol But that’s when I have to ask myself, “What’s underneath this?” Believe it or not, sometimes I need to get angrier…or need to cry…sometimes I need to admit that beneath all my righteous fire…I was simply hurt and was afraid to address that…or maybe even missed it while I was in anger.
It’s not weakness to cry, cuss and scream, it’s also not weak to go deep and take time figuring it all out. That’s information too. And tears can be incredibly healing and necessary at times.
Anger Is a Signal, Not an Identity
I don’t think most of us want to be angry. I think we want to be able to feel it, without threat of being hogtied and force medicated. LOL
Big difference! When anger makes itself known…it speaking to us in the language it knows. Maybe rather than poopooing it, just like we felt happened to us, maybe it’s time to LISTEN……and decide what deserves action. Then ideally…it moves….through……..and poof, gone! 🙂
That is the relationship I want with every emotion. Not possession, ownership or suppression. It NEEDS movement. Our emotions are basically temporary visitors, messengers…
Some emotions bring flowers, while others kick the door open yelling at us that WE NEED TO TALK! We should invite and allow them to come in for a moment, then ask, “What am I ignoring and what do you need me to see?”
Then thank your mostly suppressed emotions for being brave enough to appear, guiding us to a better tomorrow.
Making Anger My Friend Changed Everything
I spent years believing healing meant removing ALL anger…Now I feel that real healing has made me considerably better at discerning the message of anger. I notice, respect it, question it, then thank it for being there. I don’t just automatically obey it or suppress it. I also don’t try to throw it at anyone else…I ask where it came from and what I can build with it AFTER I feel it.
Because anger has carried me through homelessness, through illness, through being told I couldn’t, through starting over…through things that made me want to completely give up…Sometimes it was anger that finally lit the fire underneath me and forced me to GET BACK UP!
Not because everything was okay…it certainly wasn’t. But I had finally become angry enough to change what I could.
Maybe You Don’t Need to Get Rid of Your Anger
Maybe you need to meet it. Sit down with it. Ask what it knows or what we aren’t paying attention to. Maybe we need to ask what boundary it is defending, or what’s behind the wound. What value has been violated? What needs to change? Then make a conscious decision about what you want to do with the energy it gave you.
We can write, run, cry, talk, create, build or leave. Or we can stay and establish a boundary! We could so ask for help…or just say NO! Have we actually had enough? Do we really want something better than this??? THEN GO MAKE IT HAPPEN where you can! 🙂
Anger doesn’t equal violence or cruelty…suppressed anger might. And you don’t need to live permanently furious at the world. Maybe we can stop trying to amputate an entire human emotion because somebody told you “enlightened” people aren’t supposed to feel it!
Maybe anger was never your enemy. Maybe anger has been standing beside you all this time saying, “Hey. Something here matters to you and I care, I am here for you.”
Listen to what it has to say…then decide.
And if necessary…use the fire inside begging to be heard. Who knows, you might even have to burn a bridge or two here and there. 🙂