Angry, with a dollop of Guilt.
In my early twenties I went through a period, that lasted quite some years and then spilled over to a couple more, where I felt incredible bursts of extreme anger. This anger could be triggered by seemingly simple events, such as bumping into a wall or hitting my hand, and thus set off this difficult to control beast that lived inside.
And so, for a while, our walls may have suffered a hole or two, as did my scarcely hardened knuckles, feeling the punches as they flew.
As I begin to write this, thoughts and memories flooding in, keeping me up, I realise I am again not entirely sure where I want to go with all this. I used to get angry. So what?
I guess as I reflect on those times, I also feel the contrast of where I am at now. I feel so much more at peace. I am so much less prone to anger. What changed?
To be honest, as always, there were so many complex reasons back then for what I was feeling. But what made it even worse was the guilt that came constantly to top it off. Instead of honouring what I felt, I shamed myself further for feeling how I did. Feeling angry, I believed, made me a bad person, a dangerous person, volatile, wrong. The guilt of being so far from what is ‘good’ smothered me.
Guilt consumed me in everything. I was never doing enough, I was always behind, there was always more of myself I could have sacrificed, more I ‘should’ have done, more of others I could have served better, more things I could have cleaned, more study I ‘should’ have done. It was endless.
Years later, during grief therapy, I learned that guilt can also mask anger. And in general if I summed things up in a neat little package (not that emotions or life are ever neat), if I wasn’t feeling the intense bursts of anger, I was usually in a state of guilt. Fun. No, actually, not really.
My more recent readings have shed further light on the anger we can feel from unexpressed creativity and suppressed self expression. This would have played into things too, and something that is already coming out in my writings.
For all the things I have changed that have led me to a better place (there’s like, lots!), one of the biggies I am learning is to stop judging the emotions that I feel. Amongst them, this anger I speak of, is not wrong. In fact it’s a bloody valid emotion that needs the shit honoured out of it at times! Sure, how we express anger needs to be in a way that does not cause ourselves or others harm. But hell, it needs to be expressed!
Like any emotion we suppress, it festers inside of us, until one day it finds an out, whether that be physical, emotional or otherwise. But then top that off with some soul-sucking guilt for what we are feeling, and we have a cocktail made to self-destruct. And oh I was destroyed.
Like severe emotional pain, that eases with a desperate sob. Validating and expressing anger in a healthy way is vital. Scream and thrash about if you need to, it makes you a normal human, not crazy. In fact, honest movement of your body, coupled with breath work, is a powerful, healing outlet, something I look forward to exploring and sharing more and more through incredible programs like “Heal Yourself and Move.’
So, stop feeling guilty for what you feel. Honour it. Then find a way to start shifting it by approaching life in a way you haven’t yet tried. Because, “You cannot heal in the same environment you got sick.” (Sited from ‘@stopchasingpain.’)
