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Most of my life it has been very easy for me to express anger. After years of working on myself through studying and testing different self-improvement techniques I realized I use anger as a way of controlling others.
I’ve taken a deeper look at what triggers my anger and began to learn from it rather than be at the mercy of it.
I’ve learned that my anger comes from a fearful adolescent place within….. from the part of me that fears being wrong, rejected, abandoned, or controlled by others. I never really learned a healthy way to process my feelings until a few years ago, and often I have been left feeling frustrated. Part of me fears failure, embarrassment, disrespect, and helplessness. When these fearful feelings are triggered, I turn into a big adolescent, and my actions usually reflect it. Because I don’t want to feel helpless, I often project my anger towards other people in my attempt to control a situation. It’s as if I am blaming the other people or the environment for my feelings of inadequacy. Any time I feel this, I’ve learned that in some way I am not taking care of myself. I am not taking responsibility for our my feelings and needs, and I am not taking time out of my day to connect with my inner source of joy and happiness. When I don’t take care of myself, I tend to blame other people for my feelings in an attempt to intimidate another to change their behavior so that Iwill feel safe, and secure.
I’m usually not triggered into acting from a place of anger except when I am tending bar, it’s 1am and people are drunk, screaming at me, and snapping their fingers. I’ve been working very hard to let go of the need for control.
Anger has created many problems in relationships past and present. I’ve been taking responsibility for my own feelings for quite a few years now. I learned from one of my past romantic relationships that I had been blaming everyone for my feelings. I had been essentially giving away my power by doing so.
Nobody likes being blamed for another’s feelings. No one wants to be intimidated into taking responsibility for another’s needs. Blaming anger may generate blaming anger or resistance in the other person, which results in a power struggle. I’ve been experiencing this one lately at work.
I have discovered that my anger at another person or situation has much to teach me. I can use the frustration that is triggered in me to learn what it is I am really feeling and that gives me an idea of what I need to give to myself. Sometimes life moves forward and I get distracted; I forget to use the techniques I wrote about in It’s All About Me! A Sou Surfer’s Guide to Happiness Through the Mastery of Self. But, I never forget for too long. I’ve made the commitment to be Love always, and it’s my highest of priorities.
As part of the Soul Surfing Lesson I teach, I offer wide variety of tools many of which I touch on in the book. Below is a three-part anger process that I use to move me out of feeling like a frustrated victim and into a sense of personal power. I’ll be testing this out over the weekend.
This is great way to release anger, as well as to discover the real source of the anger. Remember, you’re talking to the It’s All About Me! guy, so please understand that YOU are the source of all of your feelings and anger is usually a bi-product of deeper feelings of a scared little boy or girl.
To really let go of anger you have to want to understand and heal the real source of it. If you just want to use your anger to blame, control and justify your position, you will stay stuck in your anger. This process will get you to stop being such a victim and help you live with an open heart.
Obviously you’ll be doing the following exercises alone and in a safe place.
1. Hold an image of the person or situations that trigger your anger. Allow the little kid inside you to let out everything you want to say in detail. Unleash your rage, pain and resentment until you have nothing more to say. Scream, punch a pillow, roll up a towel and beat the bed. (The reason you don’t tell the person directly is because this kind of cathartic, no-holds-barred “anger dump” would be abusive to them.)
2. Now scour the timeline of your past (for more info on the timeline check out my book by clicking here). Often times when I am angry at someone today they have similar qualities to someone from my past. When that is the case, the person in the present gets a double dose of anger from me.
Once you connect the present to the past, let your wounded self yell at the person from the past as thoroughly and energetically as in part one. Let it all out.
3. After I’m done yelling, screaming and punching someone from 15-20 years ago, I come back into the present and let my angry wounded self do the same thing with me (It’s All About Me!). You see, I’ve never really experienced anything happening to me that I in fact don’t actually do to myself. I never treat anyone more harshly than I treat myself, and no one ever acts towards me in a manner that I don’t in fact act towards myself. When I find myself realizing my own part in a situation, I can be pretty hard on myself. I know the result of abuse, and I can’t stand it when I realize that I am in fact being abusive towards another person. I have to let out that anger as well, and then work towards forgiving myself, the past and the people in the present situation.
The above is one way I have learned to take personal responsibility. Doing so opens the door to exploring my behaviors more fully, and thus modifying them in a way that is more reflective of who it is I want to be in this lifetime.
Whenever anger or any other negative emotion comes up, you always have the choice to control or to learn. If you would like to know more about my process of personal development (Soul Surfing) click on the picture below.
