Thank you for taking the time to read this post.
Here is a piece of my heart and a piece of my past.
Anger. I felt it. More than that, it lived in me. Anger was interwoven in my psyche and though I often fought with it in the hope for it to depart, it was like an overwhelming magnetic force, it affixed itself right back to me.
It would occasionally hide, and I would momentarily assume I was finally free from its grasp and then suddenly; bang, it would rear its destructive head at the most unexpected moments and at times be displayed in the most outrageous of ways.
Anger. An emotion none of us are privy to. We all experience it, to varying degrees of course and some of us have found healthy ways to express our feelings better than others.
The world is full of anger; many are consumed by it and yet few have become master over it.
Anger is an emotion that I don’t think we were ever taught to manage or understand in its entirety; well I know I was not. When I was in school, I learned an array of subjects but ‘how to manage emotions’ was not one of them. It is not innate to know how to navigate pain or how to process trauma for example and therefore with a scarcity of help and teaching provided, anger can wreak havoc.
Anger can be likened to start like a small flame. If you catch this flame early, the damage is minimal and you can out it easily but the longer you leave the flame, the more the fire spreads, everything the fire touches becomes destroyed and the harder it is to contain or put it out. It also can have calamitous effects to all that it encounters.
Like a mouth wash, you swish it around in your mouth, you may even gargle it to the back of your throat, but you do not swallow it. Anger should work the same. Anger is supposed to be a temporary emotion that is dealt with rapidly, accordingly and then released. If you swallow anger, it can travel to places without your understanding and there is sometimes no way of telling when or if it will leave your system. It can seep out in your pores unnoticed, but someone will notice the odour.
Many people associate excessive anger with people that go around beating people up and spewing profanity frequently, but anger can have varying manifestations and there is often a long, troubling war going on in the inside before there is ever a noticeable war on the outside.
Suppressed anger is dangerous. Unresolved anger is catastrophic.
I grew up around angry characters. I grew up seeing violence. I grew up seeing that the resolve to pain, was lashing out. I grew up observing that the resolve to trauma was fighting people and saying detestable things. I grew up seeing reactions and retaliations which stemmed from pain. I grew up witnessing dysfunction. I saw some things no child should ever have to see and what I came to learn was that whether anger is evident in the former years, anger that is buried will be resurrected at some point in the future and usually not in the best of ways.
It started small, with me becoming very distrusting of people, I always assumed the worst and anticipated it. I was very fearful, and this manifested in wetting my bed to a late age. I had imaginary friends and I created this fantasy world in my room to be as far away from my reality. Over time I became very anxious and as I had little control over what was going on around me, I became very controlling in other ways. I progressively became the very thing I despised. I was at times aggressive, volatile, my mouth provocative and on occasions violent.
I am grateful for deliverance, healing and growth. I am glad that for the most part, I can’t identify with that woman anymore and I am thankful I have learnt to process my anger in a healthier way, but this took many years of making my own mistakes and learning lessons the hard way.
I was angry for countless reasons. I was so angry that my anger was misdirected, I was even angry at God for allowing things to happen the way it did. I was angry at myself. I was angry for being mistreated. I was angry because I didn’t know how to process my emotions. I was angry because I couldn’t rationale some of my experiences. I was angry because I just wanted peace and harmony around me but there was always drama and chaos. I was angry for the people that were too passive to do anything about things they had the power to change. I was angry that I had to forgive countless people that were never sorry.
Sometimes I still feel angry.
Except now, I gargle anger around in my mouth and then I spit it out. I may gargle it around longer than other times, but I have learnt from my experiences to ensure that I spit it out. I release the anger so that it does not consume me.
It takes discipline. It takes altering and adopting a new perspective. It takes grace and kindness, to me and others. It takes remembering I will still get things wrong and make mistakes. It takes reminding myself of a vision that’s bigger than me. It takes utilising different outlets and exercising strategies to adjust my mentality. It takes time out; from people and noise, to enable me to pause and reflect. It takes prayer and a lot of it.
One thing that used to make me even angrier were people that tried to minimise or micromanage my anger to make themselves feel more comfortable. Perhaps because it was easier and less burdening than taking the time to dissect my pain or taking the time to try and understand my reality. One of the worst things some Christians ever did was throw scriptures at me and neglect to throw love in the same direction.
As a result of these negative experiences, my anger partnered with guilt. I was directly and indirectly labelled as ‘the problem’, very few had the discernment to see things differently and fewer had the compassion to help me navigate my feelings.
From my experiences, I believe on the whole, angry people want solutions but first they want to feel like they have permission to feel the way they do without anyone trying to nullify their reality. Angry people want to heal but before healing can be achieved, a process must occur. Angry people want to be heard and understood. Angry people want empathy and compassion. Angry people generally do not want to stay angry; they just don’t know how to be free.
If you battle with anger, be it on a small scale or big, I want you to know you are not wrong for feeling angry and being angry is not a sin. I deeply empathise with the way you feel and I want you to express yourself without feeling guilty and then take the steps necessary to release the anger and heal from it so that you do not destroy yourself or those around you. It may seem impossible to heal from, but it is totally possible, there is just a process to embrace. I encourage you to connect with the right people that can help you. I encourage you to exhaust all options to start your recovery.
I will share a few ways in which I overcame anger, this is not a ‘one shoe fits all’ but perhaps there is something that worked for me which may work for you.
The first step and probably one of the biggest was acknowledgment. I had to acknowledge that I had anger issues without making excuses for it. I had to own it in order to face it.
Another key element was giving myself the permission to explore my anger and navigate the ‘why’. I had to dissect questions such as ‘why am I so angry?’, ‘what are the root causes of this anger?’, ‘what feelings did I feel when x y or z happened, what emotions existed before anger took over?’ etc.
At this stage the black cloud that was looming over my head started to disappear, it was no longer just mismanaged and misdirected rage, this was me uprooting fundamental causes and reasons. I then experienced a surge of other emotions that were hiding; sadness, grief, loneliness, depression, you name it, I felt it. It was uncomfortable to be in this ‘new place’ and yet there was a shift. Some aspects about the past is easier to shrug under the rug but facing it aided with my healing. (There are still some things on my road to healing that I am navigating through, I am still learning about myself. The process is not a ‘one hit wonder’.)
With fresh understanding I was able to introspect on a new level, I was able to feel remorse genuinely for the pain I caused others, and this paved the way for the next essential key to overcoming anger; forgiveness.
I sought to forgive myself and others. Forgiveness starts with a choice to forgive. Some forgiveness was instantaneous, others took a longer time, but I made a choice to constantly release people that hurt me.
I did this by speaking positive affirmations like ‘I release this person from my past’ and I prayed for people that I knew still needed my forgiveness like ‘Lord I ask you to bless this person with abundance’. This was me activating my faith.
I would then take it a few steps further by doing nice things for people that hurt me such as buy them a gift or contact people I no longer spoke to and send a nice message. I was resilient. I didn’t want to be bitter and broken, I was determined to ‘be better’, to not only heal but in time become ‘whole’ and at this point my healing was accelerated. I was in a healthier and more peaceful head space.
Additionally, and alongside these things, I asked a Pastor that I trusted to be my Mentor and over the years I have had numerous counselling.
I took prayer to another level and joined prayer groups with friends and other Christians. Both of which kept me accountable and always challenged me to continue going forward especially on days that were difficult. (I still invest in counselling when I feel I need it, not only for Anger but for other reasons.)
Alongside the above, I had to come to a place of acceptance. Acceptance for the answers I sought but never received and may never receive. Acceptance for the things that I had no power to change. Acceptance that I could not change people but I could change myself and I made a choice to turn my focus to all the things I had the power to change to aid with my peace of mind.
I put boundaries in place, I changed my environment, I deleted numbers, I adjusted my life and made choices that helped with my healing.
Peace of mind and a promising future needs acceptance, without acceptance I knew I would always contend with feelings of regret or live my life putting my hope into the wrong things and that would bring disappointment.
Another thing I discovered in the later years and it may sound strange to some, but it tremendously helped me were Colonics and Coffee Enemas. Both for slightly different reasons but they work hand in hand. I learnt that though I may of emotionally overcome a large majority of anger, my body was still impacted from an excessive build up over the years and practicing both of these methods, furthered my healing and brought a sense of freedom to my body that I was not aware to be possible. There are many health benefits, I would highly recommend you to research it (if this is alien to you) before completely dismissing the idea.
There are other things that helped me to overcome anger issues but what I have stated here were the most prominent and effective for me.
“For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again…” Proverbs 24:16
Love & blessings.
By T