Anger in Disguise
Anger keeps us safe.
It’s an important emotion. We need it at times to protect us from getting hurt, to remove us from situations that are no longer healthy. To stand up against what we know is wrong.
Anger can pop up in a lot of different ways.
But the key questions anger is asking is…
What is it that I am trying to protect myself from? Where are my boundaries being violated? How can I set them firmly in place?
Because in truth, the root cause of anger is related to something much deeper. There’s an underlying feeling of sadness, guilt, or powerlessness.
Since my divorce 2 years ago, anger has been something I’ve been struggling with. It’s been hard to try to coparent with someone who you feel you need to protect yourself from. Especially when there is a child involved, because there’s not going to be a time where I don’t HAVE to talk to him anymore. There is no so called end to our relationship and when that realization hit me I was livid! I want to be rid of this man so badly. I just want it to be over.
As I witness it, I’m angry and on guard most times when I speak with him. Because I cannot allow the relationship we had before to ever be that way again. I have to protect myself, or I feel he’ll convince me to do something I don’t want to do. There’s a powerlessness there, a feeling that I’ll never be “free.” Feeling as if I’ll always have to be on guard.
Last week in the middle of the night, I woke up, I had come down with a sore throat, something that has been quite frequent since we parted. I’ve lost my voice more than 5 times since I left. Louise Hays says that sore throats deal with anger unspoken. Pretty fitting if you ask me.
I woke up and wanted to see if I could release any trapped emotions related to the sore throat. I had 3. Then I moved on to ask if I could release anything that was related to the feelings of anger and powerlessness I had been feeling toward my ex.
Here's what popped up…
- Despair
- Unworthy (1 of my own and 1 inherited from my mom’s side)
- Conflict
- Unsupported
- Wishy Washy
- Effort Unreceived
It wasn’t until I hit Unsupported that I got chills and had to take a moment. That one hit hard. I felt so unsupported in that relationship. I tried everything I could to make it work. I didn’t want to be a single mom. I didn’t want my family to break up, but I couldn’t get through to him. In the end I felt defeated and drained and physically ill and the only thing I had energy for was ending it. And I needed my anger to give me the strength to leave.
Anger is there to protect us from emotional harm, but it really is a mask. A mask that our hearts put on to protect us from getting hurt. Anger keeps us safe, it helps us move forward, to stand up for ourselves, but it also keeps us disconnected. Disconnected from what really lies beneath the surface of that anger and it distances you from others. Those boundaries that I couldn’t put in place because I didn’t know how and because they continued to be violated, was what caused my anger in the first place and it’s what caused me to withdrawal.
There’s something so powerful in identifying the trapped emotions that lie beneath the surface. True transformation happens when you identify things inside yourself that you just didn’t think were there, that you thought were anger.
The transformation that happened during this session was that I realized that I no longer had to carry those feelings of unworthiness and conflict in to my next relationship. I realized that I can trust myself from now on, because moving forward, I will only say yes to the people who make me feel supported in all the ways that are meaningful to me.
Anger may not look the same for you as it does for me, because each emotion has a story that goes with it. Identifying these underlying emotions and releasing them from your body, allows you to see the parts of yourself that formed the layer of protection in the first place. It allows for the parts of you that need to be seen to show up and this is what gives you the realizations you need to reach a different truth, and to find acceptance and compassion for yourself. This is how true transformation happens. You can’t move forward if you don’t address what lies beneath.
Clearing trapped emotions has been such an important part of my journey and it is such an important part of how we move through this time of transformation. Our world is changing and it’s asking us to release our trapped emotions from the past so that we can create a solid foundation of trust within ourselves and in turn a more beautiful future for all of us.