Anger and Action

Anger has often been a challenging emotion for me to feel. For the longest time, I didn’t feel it. I would suppress and avoid it because I thought it was “good” never to be angry. I thought that it was somewhat of a virtue to always appear calm and level-headed. But then, as I began to see the value in feeling my emotions and I noticed the effects when I would avoid and suppress certain emotions, I started to allow more anger to be felt. And it was uncomfortable for quite a while. Anger felt consuming and as though if I leaned into it long enough I would have a hard time coming out of it. And the more I sat with it the more I felt a difference in sitting with anger than with other emotions I experience.

Brene Brown helped pinpoint this difference by describing anger as an emotion that begs action. She says anger is a catalyst. And we need to transform it into something life-giving: courage, love, change, compassion, and justice.

We can’t just sit with anger. If we do, it does start to feel consuming and overwhelming because it is begging us to do something with it. While it is helpful to understand our anger and why it is coming up, once we gain that understanding we need an action to focus and transform that anger. Perhaps we channel it into advocacy for a group or ourselves and our anger is met with change and justice. Or maybe we feel misunderstood and we lean into courage and stand up for ourselves through a vulnerable conversation. Or sometimes we realize our anger stems from external circumstances, like lack of sleep or eating, and we lean into compassion for ourselves and take care of ourselves.

The action taken will be unique to why the anger is there, but if you have found that feeling anger is overwhelming and consuming, it is likely because you need to meet that anger with an action. Anger is there to be a catalyst for something, and it’s up to us to progress our anger to that helpful action rather than just letting it sit there to grow and fester.

So, when you encounter anger next, sit with it and understand why it is there, but then ask yourself, “What do I need to do with this anger?”