The Bigger Picture: Few of us are comfortable with anger. It's a much misunderstood emotion that we really don't know what to do with. When we mishandle or suppress it, it has drastic effects on our physical, emotional and social health. Our confidence is eroded, feelings of depression amplified and our immune system is compromised.
Even worse, the dramatisation of anger causes social distress and violence. Yet, if understood and channelled effectively, anger can provide us with positive outcomes.
Anger is an insightful, creative emotion, generating focus, belief, excitement, new possibilities, heightened functioning, increased awareness and potential action. It is a response to injustice, an indication of hurt, spawning a will to do something. It is deeply energising.
In truth, anger is deeply connected with how empowered we feel. It is, in some way, a window to struggle - the struggle within us for self-belief and the struggle of society to treat its people well. It is like a pain receptor, a sense, directing us to see a struggle. It brings with it exactly what we need to take action: a rapid pulse, increased circulation, muscles ready to act, and a will. In this way, it is invaluable.
If we reject, suppress or ignore anger, we quiet the sirens and cloud the possibility of seeing the full situation unfold before us.
There is no use in ignoring our anger. Suppressing it causes self-destruction. We implode. Furthermore, our anger becomes distorted.
Any emotion suppressed or stalled takes on another dimension. It gains power to co-opt our thinking. It comes to masquerade as reality. Inevitably, we begin to act it out. Anger itself is just a feeling. However, violence comes from putting into play a distorted perspective.
Most of us are afraid of anger because the model of violence is so common. However, anger does not cause violence. Lack of self-belief and responsibility do. Being abusive means deciding to blame someone else for our struggles, and then trying to control them.
It is the response of someone so disempowered, they're struggling to believe that they, too, might be worth something. And so, they enact their powerlessness, enforcing it on others.
There is a critical connection between empowerment, anger and violence. When we are empowered, anger can soar as a wonderful energy, finding the will to learn, come up with solutions, make changes and challenge injustice. When we are disempowered, anger malfunctions. It turns inwards, becomes displaced, is thrown at others and becomes stilted.
When we lack hope and self-belief, we give up. In this place, we cannot summon our creative energies. We cannot find the will to carry on. Things spiral downward towards complete loss of perspective. No wonder any return to empowerment from disempowerment always awakens anger. In contrast, anger is an indication that we still have hope.
The mishandling of anger has widespread implications. It affects our sleep, eating, circulation and general functioning. And so, it becomes essential that we figure out how to embrace and completely move through our anger, growing in empowerment with every step we take.
The first step to facilitating anger is finding a situation safe enough to expose the wound. We can set this up - an environment where people believe in us.
When we get the ingredients right and take responsibility, it is likely we will rage - to feel anger completely without directing it at others means telling our story unequivocally from our perspective, and not stopping the cold sweat or shaking that follow. This is how we feel it. This is where we heal it. This is the process to gaining empowerment and rebuilding perspective.
We have a lot of misinformation about anger: "The rational person does not get angry," or "The enlightened person somehow has no anger." In fact, the rational person does get angry - it's a normal and natural emotion. In the face of injustice, the rational person who maintains hope that things can be better is likely to feel angry about the current situation.
The release that the enlightened person feels from anger occurs not because they have eliminated the emotion, but because they have become so empowered that little of what they experience in the world contests that.
Few people in our world are completely empowered. For us, anger will arise. We must see it as a valuable resource. We are human beings. We feel things completely.
This can be a wonderful source of energy and strength to becoming more empowered and effective in our lives. It needn't interfere with our intelligence or ability to behaving in loving ways.
Rather, even when we struggle, we can remember that anger is telling us something. We can have hope. We can face this without blaming anyone else. We can be stronger people.
Shalini Sinha has established Forward Movement, a clinic where she practises life coaching, the Bowen Technique and is studying nutritional medicine.