If you were to feel the full amount of anger you’ve avoided feeling in your life, what do you think would happen?

How do you think it would feel? What might it inspire you to do?

A few years ago, I got the chance to find out.

And what ended up happening was a complete surprise to me.

As a teenager (and to a degree in my early twenties), there was constant brooding anger, buzzing in the background of my being.

A sort of undercurrent of bitterness that would color many moments of the day. 

Oddly enough, I was largely unaware of it. I’d only notice its presence whenever some external event could justify it:
 

• A person mistreating me
• An authority figure misusing their power
• A thought about the many people I condescendingly considered NPC’s

With time, as I became a happier person, a lot of this anger dissipated.

Still, some of it continued to fester inside me. 

Certain situations would predictably trigger a response in me where my feelings towards another person became harsh, judgmental or resentful.

Somewhere around 2020, I started explorimenting with feeling more of my anger.

This was  a slow process. But occasionally, a trigger came up that gave me the opportunity to feel into it more deeply.

One such trigger happened when I caught someone intending to emotionally and financially abusing another person.

The bizarre thing about the situation was that they had nothing to gain from it in any material sense.

The only thing they could potentially gain was the self-gratification of having suckered someone.

I stopped the abuse from happening. But when I talked to the person, I was unable to make them see why the behavior was no bueno.

I walked away from that situation, thinking “Well, it’s just a difference of opinions. What matters is that their behavior is aligned for them, not me.”

But my body didn’t agree with that thought.

It didn’t care that other people are allowed to have different values. It was full of rage. It was preparing every fiber of itself to give them an ass-kicking so memorable they’d never want to mistreat another person for fun again.

Luckily, instead of doing so, I went upstairs to lay in bed and do nothing besides feel all that anger circulate in my body.

What would happen if I fully felt this rage?

The kind of rage that could lead me to do things I’d never condone?

The more I felt the rage, the more it grew in intensity.

Until at some point I lost awareness of my surroundings.

Instead, flashing before my eyes was every single moment I felt anger and didn’t listen to it.

From the first abuse I witnessed in pre-school, to seeing family members fight as a kid, seeing my peers cheat on their partners as a teenager, to witnessing all the war in the world I felt powerless to change.

Every experience of anger I’ve had during this lifetime seemed to converge into one big ball of timeless rage. Including abstract or projected experiences like the hatred I had felt towards the darker aspects of society or humanity as a concept.

My whole body trembled and a voice appeared in my mind, yelling:

“EVERYONE BE KIND TO EACH OTHER NOW.

OR I’LL FUCKING MAKE YOU.”

Once I acknowledged the voice, all the energy disappeared and I felt a deep sense of love, forgiveness and acceptance.

It felt like the most obvious truth to me that my anger had always been love.

Even when its thoughts were at its most destructive, wanting to punish, dominate or avenge, underneath it was a love that wasn’t being listened to.

 

Constructive Anger

That day was a huge shift for me.

This anger was an expression of love, intended to move me into action.

It moved me to hosting more workshops, taking my the career I wanted to build more seriously, and holding myself to a higher standard of behavior.

Instead of attacking people for acting unkindly, it made me commit to embodying more kindness myself.

And to offering people the tools that can help them find the courage to embody kindness without being trampled over.

Inside the core of your most intense anger, there is love. Something you deeply care about.

What would happen to your life if you managed to distill that essence and express it in its true form?

What would happen if you listened to the messages your anger has been screaming with increasing intensity because it’s being ignored?


 

Why Anger Is Misunderstood

The current societal narrative about anger is that it’s a harmful emotion. That it’s a bad advisor and we shouldn’t listen to it.

The issue with this narrative is that it fails to separate people’s behavior from people’s feelings.

For example, we see someone throw a plate at the wall during an argument and say: “That’s because they’re angry.”

But is that true?

Is it really the emotion that is leading them to smash the plate?

The answer is no.

The anger is a feeling they feel. The plate-smashing is a behavioral response to the feeling.

It’s also possible to feel the same amount of anger and not smash the plate.

Yes, there are instances when a person feels such an intense amount of anger that they lose control of themselves.

They go “blind with rage” and commit violent acts.

What’s happening there is that the person was feeling more anger than they had developed the capacity to handle.

But the irony of the whole situation is that when we see anger as harmful and avoid it, we never learn to handle it at all.

(This is similar to how denying our own sexual energy can turn into perverse or unethical behavior. Because we feel an intense charge we haven’t developed the capacity to handle responsibly.)

So we’re in a bit of a chicken vs. egg situation, in which anger gets vilified because of its destructive potential. Yet in doing so, we make it more likely to express itself in destructive ways.

Suddenly you find yourself riding a huge, powerful beast without ever having practiced riding small, manageable ones. Of course it’s not going to go well.

But I digress, let’s have a look at what it means to separate the feeling from the behavior when it comes to anger.



 

What Anger Is and What Anger Is Not

As an emotion, anger does 2 things for you:

1) Sound the alarm.

2) Arm you (”All arme!” means “everyone grab your weapons and get ready”).

A common cause of anger is the threat of a boundary being crossed.

(This doesn’t need to be a boundary involving physical harm. It can also be an abstract boundary, such as your worldview, ego or tribal identity being perceived as under attack. Or a loved one.)

But anger has many more functions than protecting our boundaries.

A way to look at it is it rushes in to aid when we feel we lack power or agency.

In this sense, anger is a very relevant response to the WiFi not working.

It’s just not the kind of situation the God(s) might have thought of during its initial design phase.

That’s as far as anger’s role goes:

It alarms you of something you care about potentially being in need of protection, and it arms you so that you are ready to protect it.

The more severe or urgent the perceived threat, the greater the anger.

But the specific behavior you use to ensure protection is separate from it and depends on the person.

An impulsive and counterproductive response is not caused by the degree of anger we feel, but by the degree to which we are able to feel that anger and remain at choice for how to channel it, rather than feeling overwhelmed by it. In other words: Our feeling capacity.

So the anger is not the behavior.

A second distinction is that the anger is not about the person who seemingly caused it.

If someone attacks you and you feel angry at them, the anger’s purpose is not to harm that person. The angers purpose is to protect YOU.

It’s essence is love. It protects what it loves.

However, it turns into hate when we misplace it. When instead of feeling the anger’s intense fire inside us and accepting that this anger is caused within ourselves, we blame the other person.

For example, going back to my story at the start:

Once I fully felt the intensity of my anger, I learned that it was about wanting to spread kindness.

But before that, I always experienced it as a hate towards people who aren’t kind.

I held them responsible for causing the “hate” inside me. Because I didn’t realize the anger was caused by my own loving care.

Yes, relational accountability matters. If someone blatantly disrespects you, it stands to reason that the impact on you will be that you feel anger.

Our actions can invoke these feelings in each other. And yet, the origin is still inside ourselves.

Because what exactly constitutes a boundary or disrespect, and what exactly we care about, differs from person to person.

If I jokingly call 100 people a “dickwad” or something, there will be a percentage of them who are not offended.

This doesn’t change the fact that my behavior would be inappropriate, and likely conducive to a valid anger response in many people.

It’s just to illustrate the nuance of the anger being information about us and not the other:

It tells us what we care about and gives us more energy to care with.

This energy doesn’t necessarily need to be directed at a person.

But it does need to be able to find release through the body somehow, or it will remain inside as a chronic charge.

There are many ways to enjoy this extra energy.

If you were procrastinating on cleaning the house and started reading some social media comments that pissed you off, feel what that experience does to your body.

What if instead of frantically typing a response, you moved the energy by cleaning the house? (Or went for a run, etc.)


 

The Impact of Avoiding Anger

Because we fail to separate anger as a feeling from the inappropriate actions people often take when it’s felt, we generally learn to avoid anger at a young age.

This can be done with various processes (repression, dissociation, addiction, etc.) which are beyond the scope of this article.

But there’s one point that is true about all of them:

Keeping anger bottled up, or avoiding it, doesn’t help you control it at in any way.

It makes it more volatile. It’s like having a nuclear power plant inside you which you never inspect for leaks or other issues.

And believe me, there will be leaks.

When anger gets ignored in the long-term, it can:
 

• Lead to depression or low energy (after all, you’re committed to leaving your nuclear power source unused)
• Come out explosively as overreaction (sometimes violent or verbally abusive)
• Leak out through sarcasm, passive aggression or constant judgment
• Voice itself inwardly as self-hatred

Learning to Alchemize Anger

What if instead of waiting for your nuclear power plant to cause some kind of personal chernobyl disaster in your life, you learn how to operate it?

Can you allow its energy to move you, to inform you, to bring you to deeper wisdom, care and understanding of yourself, without making it destructive?

Any time you’re angry is an opportunity to deepen self-awareness.

What’s this anger trying to help you with?

• Creating safety
• Defending a belief
• Voicing a need or concern
• Wanting to improve the world
• Protecting what you care about

…and what makes this so meaningful to you?

Remember: Anger is love.

You can’t get angry unless you truly care about something (the something can be you).

Anger gives us the power to set boundaries and protect what we love.

Including in ways we normally wouldn’t (and hopefully won’t unless it’s unavoidable).

Sometimes, we may project our anger on different people (or things) than it really cares about.

It can come up in ways that don’t look pretty.

But that doesn’t make the original anger “wrong” or “unhealthy”.

It just means the original anger hasn’t fully been allowed to pass.

So “not feeling your anger”, actually means feeling your anger all the time.

Like that background buzz of bitterness I used to feel as a teenager.

By allowing yourself the space to gradually build capacity to feel your anger, you can access the love inside.

What would it look like to feel 10% of your anger today?

Maybe even express it in a healthy way?

(They key is: whatever anger inspires you to do, do not act on it until you’ve found the core of love inside it. Does the love in its purest form agree?)

Once you’ve become comfortable with feeling and releasing 10% of your anger… could you try 20% next time?

Can you express it in a way that keeps the ownership with you and doesn’t blame or target another person?

How about 30%?

Practice building your capacity over time in a non-harmful way (and do consult with a therapist on this if you have concerns about overwhelm or harmful behavior, don’t be reckless).

Each time you feel a bit more anger than you’re used to, ask yourself:

What does this anger love and want to protect?

What does my heart care so much about it would even fight for it?

What’s the essence of this love?

You can then channel this energy in a productive way of addressing that love.

Find an outlet that serves you.

Whether it’s going for a run, leaving an abusive dynamic or starting a new project.

Anger is love. But it’s dressed in all kinds of genius disguises.

So it’s hard to recognize unless you truly listen to it.