Anger. What is it?
Pure and simple anger is an emotion.
It’s an essential, high-energy emotion that’s been getting a bad rap for way too long.
When I speak and teach around this topic, the first thought people have is:
“Well, we can’t go around being savages and slay everyone or everything that pisses us off, can we?”
The answer is a resounding NO.
It’s common for people to get anger and violence/crime/hate confused.
Anger is an essential, primal, mammalian emotion, whereas violence (when there’s no actual need to protect oneself or others), crime, and hate are the byproducts of internalized, repressed and misdirected anger.
Anger is a biological response to feeling some form of threat or injustice directed at us.
It can also be a result of not getting what we need, not being listened to, not being understood, or not having proper emotional connection and attunement when we’re young.
This latter reason seems to be all too common in our culture, as many kids are poorly attuned by their caregivers, and many parents don’t have the skills needed to know how to encourage and foster healthy emotional development in all shapes, sizes and colours.
{This occurs because the parents didn’t get it either; it’s a nasty cycle that can only stop when we put in the work and learn what to do.}
All too often there’s a negation of a kid’s mistakes, and toxic forms of shame and abandonment are used liberally to “teach” them good behaviour.
I go deeper about anger as medicine in this article.
Today, I want to share with you WHY anger is essential in a 14 minute video that I think you’ll find useful. Watch it here:
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Resources / Vlogs / Articles I mention in this episode:
1 – Lessons learned from a mama monkey (our silent epidemic that’s not being talked about)
2 – Chronic Illness IS Stored Up Stress
3 – How To Un-frustrate Frustration (my husband, Seth Lyon’s article and site)
4 – Gabor Maté’s books, especially “When The Body Says No – The Cost of Hidden Stress”
