How do you direct your fire?
Anger contains body reactions and human emotions. We can’t escape anger in this lifetime. It is an expression of one of our truest forms of being human. So how can we contend with the feeling without being overcome by this emotion in times of high trouble?
Quelling our fires and biting our tongues leads to tension and anxiety. Being taught to look the other way and not rock the boat leads to passive aggression and exhaustion, and can lead to depression. And yet it is more and more difficult when our streaming devices and portals of information are flashing reasons to be angry. Current events leave us indignant. The repercussions of those events leave us furious and afraid.
So how do we separate our feelings of overwhelm when life situations drive us toward challenges? How do we work with our anger as a process that is vital to being alive, righteously?
Anger can be fuel for transformation.
We have evolved with a brilliantly intelligent nervous system. Over thousands of generations, it has adapted to help us navigate difficulty and danger. By the time we realize that we are angry, our nervous system is already on board. It is already responding. The integrity of this responsiveness depends on our nervous system’s overall tone.
Anger is a powerful emotion. It has tremendous transformative energy. The energy of being upset can drive us to make changes or lock us in a pattern of anger motivated by fear. Instead of suppressing the feeling, we can ask, where does this feeling sense go? We can follow it. We can talk to our anger and learn what it has to say.
Anger can be fuel for transformation and making things happen. Instead of quelling the fire, we can direct the fire. Instead of denying our anger until it takes us over and we are overcome, we can focus on what we want to change. We can channel our anger into transformation, galvanizing us toward motivated change.
