Maybe It’s Not Anger.

You know the story: someone who has walked around their whole life unable to get in touch with their anger, and in the absence of permission to feel their real feelings, they are suffering. And then, one day, they realize, oh, I wasn’t allowing myself to feel my anger. And then, they do. And then somehow it all makes sense.

I’m so glad for those people to be able to find a way to feel what’s happening inside of them in a way that they aren’t covering up or denying what’s real for them. But (!!!) it’s not everyone’s story. I know how easy it is, once you’ve found a sacred trail to where you’re meant to be, to think, this is the answer! I must share with everyone!

But it’s not my story.

Eckhart Tolle has said that there’s always pain underneath anger. Marshall Rosenberg says that anger means we are blaming someone for some hurt that we’ve encountered. Lisa Feldman Barrett says there are no universal emotions (not just a lack of common words but not even any reliably occurring biological signature). Some of us are going to have different ways of encountering the world that create a different experience when hardships arise.

And now that I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of studying Focusing / Felt-Sensing, where the invitation is not to label what we feel with an emotion word, but freshly sense it in all its complexity (because whatever you might call sadness today is certainly different in character than the last time you experienced so-called sadness) and if you just call it sadness, maybe you will miss its complexity, and what meaning it holds or implies for your next movements. So I’m disinclined to even speak in terms as simplistic as "anger" or "sadness" anymore, because there’s just so much more going on than is captured in that kind of brevity. And my insides want to be witnessed and known, not summarized and rushed over so succinctly and carelessly! But I digress…

I’ve had more than one person tell me that they suspect that when I am experiencing deep grief, that somehow I am not in touch with my anger. I’ve had more than one experience with a therapist who concluded that when my face flushed red with shame and withdrawal that I must be repressing anger. Well, I’ll tell you what… being told what I was feeling, instead of being given the spaciousness to understand my own process on my own terms, it felt like a subtle form of violence, and my system did respond with a bit of anger and frustration. I can feel that anger right now even just speaking about it, especially recalling that my therapist seemed to feel satisfied her suspicions were confirmed when she saw, as she predicted, an emergence of anger in me, as I scowled and informed her, I am NOT angry. Oops, wasn’t. But I also notice that the thing I would call anger (versus some other form of activation) is just an aggressive response that wants to rush to my defense—as a layer on top of my fear. My fear is that I will continue to be misunderstood, instead of my therapist’s attention meeting my deep longing to be truly seen and felt and understood. And honestly, as soon as I recognize that fear, the anger dissipates.

But it’s hard to express that fear without being told I’m angry, or repressing anger. Deep inside my soul (like we all carry in our souls) is a longing to be truly met, and there’s a shriveling and whimpering that happens inside when it’s not happening. How does a person express fears and longings to people who think anger is somehow laced through everything?

I’ve heard people say that a baby is feeling "anger" when the baby’s cries are untended and escalate into a more dysregulated, hysterical cry. Why can’t we permit that the baby was deeply fearful, deeply longing? Is it just me, or is that a cynical world view, to think that longings are necessarily coupled with anger? I do think there are people out there who experience the world this way: something happens (or doesn’t happen) that produces pain inside, and they go to an anger response. But there are others who are (at least sometimes) perfectly able to feel their pain, and don’t need to layer anger on top of it.

I get what Gabor Maté is saying in his books about how some people never experience anger, they’re "too nice", and that eats away at them and causes disease. That’s a very real, documented thing. But my interpretation is that these folks have trouble saying no to things they don’t want, or trouble giving themselves permission to need, or just walk around in denial of the intensity of energetic movements that painful experiences cause, and that energy has to go somewhere, so it wreaks havoc inside.

I’m not one of those people. I do get angry! And sometimes, during various emotional states, I am pushing down the level of intensity to get through my day, or various other coping strategies that don’t keep me in mindful awareness of every single feeling. I even think it’s a healthy adult who has the capacity to do that when it’s needed. And I do it more than what ideally serves me at times. But what I don’t have is a uniquely anger-blind filter that has me going through life where I am able to notice and deeply feel (and I do, I always SO DEEPLY feel) some emotions but when anger comes I shuttle it away. I am pretty well convinced I don’t do it more often with anger than with any other emotions. Which is to say, I don’t have an unrealistic grasp of the landscape of anger in my life.

I will even admit there’s a twinge of anger that drives the writing of this entire post. I am using the word anger very liberally here in order to own up to it where it lurks even in small doses. But to be more specific, I find myself frustrated that everywhere I turn everyone’s seemingly on this same narrative, and I have a desire to express my feelings.

There is a little one inside, a very soft and tender little one, who always went about life thinking there is some imperative to be strong. Being strong and brave is honorable, respectable, and makes a person worthy. Every time I went through something terribly hard or devastating, people would tell me I was strong or brave, and these were meant to praise me. The subtle implication in that praise? They were evaluating me as worthy because I was not showing up weak or afraid. I was not a burden because I was able to take care of myself (or at least, hide the depth of my feeling so as not to inconvenience anyone or make anyone uncomfortable).

There’s a loving protector part in me that has long wanted to push back on these messages. Not a protector like the bear mauling whoever gets too close to her cubs, but protector, like, wrapping you up in a hug. There’s a part of me that’s saying to those tender little parts: it’s okay to be weak, afraid, incapable. And anyway, how can I value babies, children, the elderly, people with disabilities and illnesses, if I can’t affirm the complete unshakable worthiness of someone who has a lot of needs?

I have to turn to those parts in me and say, it’s okay little one. You are weak and frail and you don’t have to pretend to be strong here. You are loved.

I have to turn to those parts and say, it’s okay little one. You are trembling and immobilized in sheer terror, lacking all bravery today. That’s okay with me. I will walk with you, or I will carry you. You don’t have to layer shame on top of your fear as you try to muster courage you just don’t have it in you to muster today.

I have to turn to those parts and say, it’s okay little one. Whatever you can’t do today, however you can’t show up today, I will still be there with you, keeping you company, seeing you, loving you.

It is very hard to sustain this turning toward myself with tenderness, compassion, and permission. I didn’t grow up in a world (none of us did!) that would give me adequate practice treating myself this way. I falter all the time. I feel ashamed of (instead of loving and accepting toward) these qualities in myself all the time.

And so I have to turn to those shamed parts and say, it’s okay little one. The shame you feel is not because you are unworthy, but because the quality of welcome you were born expecting to find, it wasn’t there. Your village isn’t there. You’re trying to do too much alone. No wonder you feel shame. You deserve now as much as you ever did for someone to see you in all your tender, weepy states, and say, you are worthy, and nothing will ever compromise that worth, and we will hold you in loving compassion always. And the frayed social fabric of our times means you are not getting that nearly enough.

As I learn how to turn toward myself with tenderness, it’s a very tenuous thing. When, in the middle of that process, someone tries to tell me they’ve got me figured out and it’s suppressed ANGER, not only does it feel like I’ve been knocked over in the middle of a delicate operation, but I feel unseen and unsupported. And like I have, once again, been denied permission to be tired, weak, afraid, or mired in shame, and I better snap out of it and muster some aggressive life force energy that will sustain me.

I suppose that a defensive approach might be suitable when I’m busy trying to do it all alone, like, if I could never count on anyone to lift me up and remind me of my worth or infuse me with unconditional love, then perhaps the only strategy to infuse myself with enough energy to carry on would be to get a little feisty. Certainly I can ride on a wave of feisty energy sometimes in service of protection of self and loved ones. It’s not like that’s never a thing.

But, meanwhile, especially in the context of therapy and my "healing journey", where I am being intentional in showing up for myself with whatever tenderness and permission I can muster, I don’t believe my spiritual growth is served by trying these other strategies that are more aligned with anger. Certainly if that was my response, I would want to find a way to be in acceptance of self, and not jackal the jackal, as they say in NVC, but understand that angry and critical parts are there to protect me, and learn to be gentle with those parts. But I’m in a different place in my process.

What I authentically experience is that I often do get very much in touch with the frail aspects of my inner child, and I turn toward that little one with permission, and when I sometimes struggle to do so, I want those around me who intend to approach me in a healing and supportive way to let me know I have their permission as well. Saying I need to find my anger or that there’s anger silently lurking, well, it’s the opposite of the messages to my soft squishy innards that they are safe just as they are under the protective gaze of unconditional love.

Sometimes I am a roaring lion. Sometimes I am a squeaky little mouse. I’m looking for permission to fully inhabit mouse energy and not be told I’m more valuable as a lion (or told that I secretly wish I was a lion). I don’t. I have begun to feel deep affection for the little mouse. There’s a motherly energy that holds that mouse and keeps it safe. And sometimes, yes, the lion is the mouse’s protector. But when I am inhabiting mouse, I need love then, too, and I can’t feel loved as mouse if I keep hearing how great it would be if I was lion, or how sad for me that I secretly wish to be lion. Let me be mouse, see me, and love me. That’s all. Maybe it’s not anger.