How To Work Through Anger
We all have these moments: those times when someone else says something or does something that causes a volcano to erupt within us. We feel like our body goes into a white hot rage. Do we erupt? As children we certainly did. We would shout, and scream and possibly even use our fists. We would allow the bubbling lava to explode up and out and we did not care what burned in our path. Eventually we grow up and we realize our personal eruptions never really give us what we want. They may satisfy us in the short run, but in the long run we end up cleaning up the path of our destruction for much longer than the length of our anger. Now we have remorse and we have not even begun to deal with the original source of our anger.
As a Life Coach and an Energy Healer, I do not think of anger as a static emotion. Anger can be a motivator. It can be used as a catalyst for change. Often, the worst possible response to anger is a knee-jerk reaction. Especially in the workplace with a client or boss. This type of reaction could result in the loss of a job. However, anger is never supposed to be swept under the rug. In our Energy Body, no emotion simply disintegrates. Every emotion transforms into something energetically, because energy is always moving forward. So, if you are angry and you push the anger back, it usually becomes darker and denser. Several things can happen. We could become depressed, we could act out in negative ways, we could even get physically ill.
When dealing with white-hot anger, the best thing you could possibly do is take a step back and own your part. Energetically, we are the source of everything we experience. We call everything to us through our “energy broadcast.” Our energy broadcast is like an inner magnet, attracting all “like” thoughts and beliefs to us. Our energy broadcast is like an inner amplifier, showing us our beliefs by making them louder. It does this by bringing us things that match our inner voice. For example, many of us have had an experience where our boss or co-worker takes credit for our work in some way. Perhaps we have not had such an aggressive experience, but most of us have had a situation when our own hard work is overlooked. Both of these experiences match a part of us where we doubt our own inner worth. Our doubts are amplified by the experience. Sure, we get angry. But, if we blow up and go into a rage, we miss an opportunity. The opportunity is to look at the erroneous beliefs that attracted the experience in the first place. I will admit, it is very hard to take this step when you are in a rage. So, before owning your part, you need to move from anger into something more constructive.
So, instead of sweeping anger under the rug or lashing out, I suggest you allow your anger to be heard - even if it is just heard by articulating to yourself. One of my own teachers, Shannon Knight, taught me a fabulous tool to use when you are angry that allows you to amplify your anger so that you can move into a more peaceful place in order to heal. She calls this tool “the volcano.” All you need to do is imagine that you have a volcano in the center of your chest. In the volcano your anger is represented by a bubbling pool of lava. Allow yourself to think about why you are angry and allow yourself to feel it. Then, imagine the lava in the volcano starts to bubble up, and allow yourself to enumerate the reasons for your anger. You can even say it out loud. Allow yourself to feel it to the point where the lava explodes. Imagine that the lava goes up to the top of your head and flows down through your body to your feet. You can picture that your entire body is glowing in red lava. Allow the energy to intensify- saying out loud or in your head the reasons for your anger. Keep that energy flowing for a few minutes, literally forcing yourself to amplify your anger. Then, eventually, imagine the lava lightens in color and starts to slow down. Allow the lava to turn pink, then white. Then, say to yourself, “I am running white energy. All of my thoughts are purified by white light.” Just spend a moment imagining that the lava turns into white light. Take a few deep breaths allowing your body to relax. Keep breathing deeply until you are ready to shut down the volcano. Once you are done, you should feel better. Now you are ready to actually do the work of dealing with what happened.
The second step in dealing with your anger is to ask yourself this question, “What do I ultimately want to create right now?” You may still want to yell at the person or rail at the situation, but it is better to look at the big picture for a moment. For example, say a trusted friend betrayed you in some way. In the moment you might want to hurt him or her, but ultimately you really do not want to do that. You want your friendships to be sacred. You want to feel that your sacred space will be respected and not violated by those you love.
The third thing to explore in dealing with anger is looking at how you attracted the situation. The questions you want to ask are, “What is my role in this? What do I need to change?” This is your work. In what way do you not feel deserving of what you want? How do you feel “violatable?” What actions did you take that allowed for this violation? You want to explore your role. What are the thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that led you to attract such a situation? What thoughts and beliefs would a person have to be aligned with in order to have created and attracted a better situation? Your job is to now take on those new thoughts and beliefs. This is your work because it is highly likely it is going to take a bit of effort for you to do this.
Once you own your role, you are poised on the brink of forgiveness. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean that you let it all go and everything is going to be fine. It means that you have explored what happened, owned your role and now you are willing to look at the person or situation through a new perspective. You are going to make the changes that you need to create what you want. You are going to set into motion the new thinking that you need to embrace and the new boundaries that you need to set. There are a thousand tiny action steps that you can take in this step of dealing with anger. You may need to have a conversation with the person, or you may find after taking the above steps that the conversation you thought you needed to have is no longer necessary. Regardless, you know you have worked through your anger and have reached the forgiveness stage when you no longer feel attached to the negative feeling.
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The HOW TO with Kim Mazzella is a weekly column featuring Kim's expert life coaching tips for the modern woman navigating entrepreneurship, motherhood, work-life balance, and more!
ABOUT KIM MAZZELLA:
Kim Mazzella, founder of the Life Guidance Center, is a Healer, Teacher, Spiritual Coach and Writer. Her work is based in the belief that our natural state is health and wholeness. Her job is to help those she works with remove the blocks that they have placed in the way of the free flow of energy and healing. She integrates the knowledge from her study of A Course in Miracles and universal laws with her study of massage and understanding of the body’s energy system to create a holistic approach to healing and change.