These last few days I have been feeling several negative feelings: anger, frustration impatience, and disappointment…I have felt the need to research the sources and face them because all of those feelings are negative. And as far as my experience has gone, negative feelings do not do good. There are in direct opposition to each other.
Before you get all up in arms…(watch that temper…) I am not trying to say that all anger is wrong. Anger can be a good warning that all is not well in our world. If anger clarifies an issue of importance to us and moves us to reconciliation with the source of our anger, it is positive. When it becomes all-consuming, it is called rage…which does not seek to reconcile. It seeks to destroy. Is that really what we want? If we want to destroy we are no better than the terrorists who maim, rape and torture.
So far, I have identified some of those feelings and they have arisen because I have wanted to control things that are just not under my control. Some of those areas have arisen from silly little things that have bothered me: Someone has disagreed with me. A clerk has made me wait in line at the grocery store because she doesn’t know how to run her new readout. An uncaring person pushes past me without so much as an “Excuse me” to get into a long line at the post office. Another person is being a jerk by her/his insensitivity to everyday politeness. I feel anger at the inhumanity I see everyday in the atrocities perpetrated in our world by our own greed, ignorance, blindness, pride, our lack of love.
I know from long experience that anger and negative feelings are toxic. I can feel it in my body, mind and soul. It is not good. Frustration lets me stew about things that I can’t control…otherwise I would. Then that leads to anger. I may think that my anger is okay, but some other people’s anger is not. No matter what we call our anger… being pissed, hurt, enraged, miffed, frustration…all of it has destructive consequences upon us and our world.
When we dump our anger on someone, it always has a backlash of further damage. If we have a conscience at all, we will begin to feel guilt and shame after we have blown up at someone inappropriately or even if we think we have a good reason. Even when I seethe quietly, my anger is only shoddily masked and the eventual eruption will not be pretty.
Why does anger come into my life? I think it comes when I feel threatened in some way. Any time I feel threatened even by something like the thought that I am being neglected, unappreciated, or used, my body begins to respond. I may choose to fight it or run away from it. In any case, the adrenaline starts pumping, my blood pressure increases as my body gears up for action. These are high-stress loads for my body.
How many things are there that threaten you? Are you threatened by change, rejection, abandonment, exclusion, alienation, inadequacy? How do you deal with them?