Anger: A Torch That Lights Our Way

By Crystal King

At first, his anger was a wildfire. There was no controlling it. The scorching heat of his actions impacted the terrain of his relationships: both those who experienced being scorched by him, as well as those who saw the blackened earth he left behind. But he did what he thought the anger wanted, and it was relieved. It wanted space, freedom from the immediate threat. Running wild and untamed, his anger became a wildfire where the flames were loud enough to be heard, big enough to be seen…. Sometimes, his utter lack of control over the flames of his consuming anger scared him. He screamed and raged at anyone in his path.

It was powerful. It was raging. The relief came immediately. His anger spent, the calm returned. And so did the regret and destruction. The cost was greater than he realized.

From that time on, his anger became a volcano. He would hold it in since the cost was too great. Each time anger came, he would convince himself he wasn’t angry at all. He ignored it. He suppressed it. He didn’t realize it was still there, growing inside him, becoming massive. He wanted to avoid the cost of it, so he tried to siphon it away; consequently, it started a war within. When it did finally come out, it was an oversized volcano, largely out of proportion to the event that ignited it. He punched walls and threw objects.

It was shocking. It was explosive. The relief came immediately. His anger spent, his body relaxed. But the regret and destruction followed. The cost was greater than he realized.

So next, he decided to swallow the anger, and it became cyanide in his body. Burning his insides, choking out his oxygen, his breathing became altered. He struggled to concentrate. The headaches, the seizures, the nausea became overwhelming. But he did what he thought would quiet the anger, without scorching anyone, and he was satisfied; except now, it was scorching his insides. But then it started leaking out of his body and came out as bitterness, resentment, and shame-laced criticisms to others, and more often, to himself.

It was malignant. It was corrosive. Some relief came after caustic remarks and a cruel tone of voice. Regret and destruction trailed behind. The cost was greater than he realized.

Finally, when anger came again, he paused and asked the anger what it needed, and that is when his anger became a torch. It was like a lantern that he could use to guide him through the shadows. His anger lit the way through an abyss of dark emotions he had no idea existed. Emotions that had been sitting under his anger this whole time. But he couldn’t see them through the uncontrolled flame, and he couldn’t feel them when he was ignoring them, and he couldn’t hear them through his bitter thoughts. But using his anger as a torch, informed him about his path and revealed what he could not see before. He took what he needed from this anger. When he needed warmth, he lit a fire with it. He contained the fire, and it kept him alive.  When he needed protection, it revealed where to set a boundary, and as he stood behind its boundary, it kept him safe. When he needed to see his path, he held it up before him, and it lit the way. When others needed safety, he allowed his anger to illuminate a path they could set together.

It was courageous. It was his guide. And it was restorative. Because he had faced it and asked it what it needed, the cost was less than he realized. In fact, it gave him something. It gave him direction, protection, strength, empowerment, and restoration.

ANGER: AKA THE “DARK EMOTION”

Anger can feel mighty and powerful. Anger can be empowering in a beautiful way; however, in many homes anger is shunned as the “bad” emotion. It is either not safe to feel, or it is not used productively, so it becomes harmful, frightening, and highly destructive.  Many homes send the message that the feeling of anger is not welcome. We may develop a confusing relationship with anger because of that, causing us to internalize it as cyanide or completely ignore it to keep the peace. In other homes, the more vulnerable emotions such as loss, grief, and sadness are not safe to feel, so anger becomes the “stand in” for all of those emotions. When we learn to suppress an entire range of emotions (sadness, loss, hurt, even love, etc.), then we are set up to funnel all those emotions into anger to protect us. So when anger becomes the messenger of all the emotions we had to bury, we can end up externalizing it into a wildfire.

Conversely, when anger is a torch, we are listening to its message, acting for it -not from it, and in this place, we can digest it rather than letting it poison us. In homes where anger is simply one of many normal human emotions we may feel, and it is met with understanding, open curiosity, and appropriate engagement, then anger has the space it needs to fulfill its purpose. It can be aimed accurately.

THE PURPOSE OF ANGER

Anger is magnificent, but if we ignore its message, it can be one of the most damaging forces on the planet. It contains energy. We can use that energy in a number of different ways. In the body, anger may feel like the blood boiling, fists clenching, or the heart rate increasing. When we feel this, we are being readied for mobility, movement, change. Anger has many purposes, mostly to take action of some kind; this is why our bodies get amped up with an energetic zing when we are angry. Productive action defuses anger. Productive action purposes anger to restore rather cause harm. When we truly examine our anger and its underlying intent, we are often surprised at what we find:

-Anger may need us to pursue a dream. Anger can be a clue to our deepest passion in life. Whatever violates our sense of justice or moral propriety the most, whatever makes us angry, can also tell us what we are passionate about, what dreams we may want to pursue, what cause we want to be a part of.

-Anger gives us the energy to go solve a problem or defeat a threat. When a very real threat is present, we need the mobilizing force of anger to stand against it. But when the threat is passed, and our body did not get to dispel the anger against it, that anger can remain in the body and get signaled by false alarms. It starts to come out sideways because the nervous system hasn’t yet got the message that action has brought the body to safety.

-Anger can expose injustice. People have used anger to stop injustices for ages. Many of the non-profits or programs created to aid those in need have been started through someone’s desire to end injustice and fight for the innocent.

-Anger helps us set up boundaries that can preserve a relationship. The anger tells us where the boundary needs to be set. Boundaries can be set in an unproductive way OR in a productive way. —Screaming and yelling from our anger do indeed set a boundary; unfortunately, this will inevitably break down a relationship. However, productive anger can set boundaries in ways that will actually preserve a relationship. We can act for our anger and not from it.

-Anger can act as the antidote to terror. It mobilizes us from a state of inaction and fear, to a state of courage and movement. The type of movement we choose in our anger can bring us to a safer state and calm the nervous system. While harmful movement CAN bring us to an immediate safe state, it is corrosive over time. Choosing movement that has long term healing results rather than short term relief is vital.

-Anger can show us what we value and hold as dear. Sometimes the causes we are angry about tell us what we love, who we treasure, and how we assign meaning to our lives.

-Anger can clue us in to losses that have not been grieved.  Grieving our losses is one of the most vulnerable things we can do as humans because it requires us to feel the original pain. When we are not in a safe space to feel our own vulnerability, anger steps in and acts as a sentry to guard us from feeling helpless. It will not step aside until it knows that we are safe enough to feel what is underneath of it.

How to act FOR our anger not FROM our anger

Jenna Riemersma, an Internal Family Systems therapist talks a lot about “acting FOR our anger rather than FROM it.” Cognitively we may agree with this statement, but emotionally maybe it makes us ANGRY!! How are we supposed to act FOR and not FROM our anger when anger hits us with the FORCE OF AN AVALANCHE!!!  There is no time to pause and reflect when our autonomic nervous system has taken over and pulled us into fight mode without asking us whether or not we wanted to be there. This is a major dilemma. We are hardwired to respond certain ways for safety and survival. Depending on our upbringing, our ability to regulate our affect, and even current background circumstances, these anger responses can be wired in and mobilize us with imperceptible reaction time. A stressor one day may tip us outside our window of tolerance just enough to explode whereas the same stressor on another day may not impact us at all.

Chronic anger is often from deep seated trauma or wired in patterns of coping with life stressors. It does not just resolve without an intentional program. Seeing a trained trauma-informed therapist is one of the wisest ways to work through this kind of anger. It is necessary for our well-being as well as those we interact with. While we all need community and substantial support to work through anger, below is a baseline of where we can start the work of turning our anger into a guiding torch.

AWARE OF AFFECT, ASK, AND ACT

1-AWARE of AFFECT

AWARENESS means noticing, and AFFECT is the way our emotions express themselves through the body. According to Adam Young, “Affect is the felt sense of what is happening in your body. It refers to your inner, emotional, and bodily experience. It’s your moment to moment experience of your internal bodily sensations” (The Place We Find Ourselves Podcast- Affect Regulation: Why It’s Critical For Everyday Life).

Being aware of our affect starts with body work. Because all our emotions are housed in our bodies, and that can feel intense, many of us have understandably learned to shut down our own body’s cues. We all have tells, but when we are not in touch with our own body, these tells are hard to see and be aware of. Tells can be any body sensation, no matter how subtle: a slightly increased heart rate, the tightening of neck muscles, an eye twitch, sweaty palms, an ache in our shoulders, a pit in our stomach, etc. We are embodied people and many of us have had to mentally move away from and dissociate from our body to function well in a dysfunctional environment. Coming back to our body is a deliberate, intentional process requiring mindfulness, metacognition, and sensory intelligence.  All of this can be learned and practiced. The brain’s wiring can and does create new neural networks when we intentionally do the work of retraining. After getting familiar with our own body’s cues, we will see that we are better able to regulate our affect whether it is numb and shut down or panicked and enraged. Regulating affect allows us to pause and calm ourselves when overstimulated. This pause opens the door for the reasoning part of our brain to come online. That pause gives us enough time to decide how we want to use the energy of anger. Victor Frankl (Holocaust survivor and founder of logotherapy) discovered that "between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." Learning our body cues and affect regulation is the beginning of giving us the space we need between stimulus and response. Awareness of our own body actually gives us the power to choose.

Naturally it is going to be harder to regulate our affect for highly intense emotions that happen quickly. This is why, as with anything, we start training ourselves to recognize our body cues with less intense emotions. Over time, our ability progresses to be able to regulate after more intense emotions. We must understand though that dysregulation does NOT mean we have something wrong with us. Heightened emotions are a natural response to events in life; however, our bodies do not like to remain long in dysregulated states because it impairs our aliveness and ability to function with clarity and at full capacity.  Because regulating our affect is a crucial need, our body will inevitably find ways to do so, whether that be through raging, addictions, alcohol, porn, avoidance, etc. If we do not start training ourselves to regulate our affect in healthy, constructive ways, then the less than healthy ways offered to us will naturally come online in heightened emotional states. Thais Gibson offers that, aside from an array of addictions, anger can be a subconscious strategy to try to get our needs met and soothe ourselves:

“What needs does yelling get met and thus soothe for? You get seen and heard because you get big and loud. You often finally say things you’ve been holding in, so it’s an attempt to get understood, and we use anger as a subconscious strategy to set a boundary. So someone yells and all at once, in one fell swoop, they get these four needs met, and I never saw or worked with a single person with anger issues that first didn’t feel deeply unseen, unheard, misunderstood, and have boundary issues.” (Typology Podcast-From Codependency to Self-Discovery: Thais Gibson).

If we experience chronic internal anger from our inability to communicate our needs and set boundaries, we may need learn to change some major patterns in how we show up for relationships. This takes intentional work- often with a trained professional, but in the end, we alone are responsible for our anger and how we use it. 

Below are some beginning strategies to help regulate our affect when in the heat of anger:

• Change in temperature, ie., cold shower, hot bath, ice pack on the neck, walk in the rain, sauna, etc.

• Weighted blanket, massage, paired muscle relaxation

• Intense workout of some kind

• Walk in nature

• Talking to a trusted friend

• Playing or listening to music

• Dancing

• Reading

• Meditating

Depending on where our anger is expressing itself on the affect continuum (numb, depressed, shut down vs. panicked, anxious, enraged), the regulating tool we choose will vary, and so will its efficacy. If anger has turned inward, it could be causing somatic symptoms of depression. A great deal of our depressive states come from anger that was lobotomized before it was noticed, acted upon, and metabolized. The anger underneath a depressive state might take a lot of work that requires an intense support system and/or a somatically informed therapist. It likely took years to develop and will take time to sort through while we learn to listen to the signs and signals the body gives us.

2-ASK

The ASK means gently interrogating our anger. Cultivating a compassionate curiosity when we have intense emotion is one of the most powerful strategies we can take. If the energy of our anger has many layers behind it, there could be a journey of exploration it is asking us to go on. It may lead us to the following: unprocessed losses, ignored injustices, violated boundaries, stories of harm, mountains of shame, and any number of hidden emotions. Sometimes our anger will come from the presenting issue directly, but often it will come from past harm. There are layers of evidence that our brain has captured, and being a pattern-detecting machine, anything that resembles past harm can re-ignite the anger and signal threat even when none is present.

We often find that when we get really curious with ourselves and dip into our internal landscape, our anger can be a message about our shame. We feel small, blamed, worthless, defenseless, not enough, too much, rejected, hopeless, and helpless. Nothing ignites anger like a shame spiral. Asking anger where it comes from, what its core message is, and why it’s there, is a crucial step in targeting the source. What we think is fueling our anger is likely layers below what is actually fueling our anger. When we can target the source of our anger, we can take the productive action needed to dispel it. (If the anger is from toxic, systemic shame, we will likely need to seek help to process the shame first.)

3-ACTING FOR NOT FROM

Last, we must take ACTION. The clarity that will come from the above two habits will guide us to the appropriate action that the anger needs. The action to take will require creativity, compassion, and wisdom. Yes, anger and compassion can co-exist at the same time. It is compassion for something or someone that often causes the anger in the first place. Ignoring this last step, this call to action, this need to animate our bodies, can be highly detrimental and keep the anger stuck, turning it into chronic anger. The action required will need to match the root of the anger that is discovered after the ASK step.

• Sometimes, we need to write an unfiltered angry letter that we will never send.

• Maybe we need to write a letter we do send, naming the harm that was done to us and being honest about its impact.

• If we cannot be in relationship with someone in a life-giving way, then the action needed may be to either set limits around our current interactions, making sure to follow through, and if that does not help, we may need to remove ourselves from the situation or person.

• Maybe we need to start an organization or business that directly impacts the area of injustice we see in the world. 

• Maybe the action is grieving a loss.

• Maybe the action is approaching a conversation that may feel conflictual.

• If we have denied ourselves our needs for a long time in order to keep the peace or people please, the action may be to change our pattern of relating to others in the world. When we avoid all conflict, we start a war within.

• Maybe we need to imagine the scene again and change the action that we originally took. Through imagery, we can move our anger out of a stuck state.  

• Maybe we practice the action, words, or boundaries with someone safe until we can take action with the larger trigger.

Different anger will call for different actions. The key is that acting FOR our anger is an act of love for ourselves and others. It is meant to preserve and protect either oneself, a relationship, or a community. It is not an act of violence, hate, or cruelty. It does not mudsling nor is it shame inducing. Acting FROM our anger is often destructive, hateful, promotes chaos, and it can sever us from ourselves or others. Acting FOR our anger takes the steps needed to invoke justice, restore order, dispel chaos, and bring peace. When we act FOR our anger, we fulfill its purpose and we are grateful for the role it takes in our lives.

Instead of amputating our anger, we can become AWARE of our AFFECT, ASK the anger what it needs, and take ACTION. Becoming aware of body cues, asking anger what it needs, and acting by assigning the anger a productive role, will allow it to fulfill its function. Instead of dismissing it, we can discern it. Instead of letting it devour us, we can design a path for it to lead us to the truth of its origin. Our anger can be a torch that lights our way.

RESOURCES

Psychology of a Hero: HULK and Anger Management

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXmcjA-yFEM

Therapist uses THE HULK | explains EMOTIONAL FLOODING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJimHt8uhHg