On anger:

Rage is a big, scary thing that resides within many of us.  I discovered my own rage, which had been completely unexpressed for my entire life, in the sauna once.  I was in my late twenties.  I litigated during the day and worked out with weights in the evenings, punctuated by pub crawls & dancing in clubs.  I went to a week-long yoga ashram in Massachusetts a couple of times – intense yoga workouts and saunas were interspersed with brainwashed strangeness (and, as I was to discover later on, lots of very naughty stuff between “master” and many of “his” live-in female  “students”).  Strange, yes, but at the same time something within me was loosening up.

By the way, I’ve never said that yoga isn’t good exercise.  And some of those positions feel powerful – take for example the “warrior” pose.  (see my “favourites” on twitter for a sublime illustration of the warrior pose).  Really dislike brainwashing though.  But I digress.

The first sign that something was getting ready to come up and be dealt with, was that I had symptoms of an increased temper.  My anger occasionally exploded in a completely inappropriate direction, triggered by the wrong things and the wrong people (i.e. people on whom I depended for important things).  This concerned me.  It wasn’t anything with drastic consequences, but I had the sense to recognize that something needed to be handled, something was wrong.

I began to have the odd dream once in a while of being a baby in a cradle, trying to get my mother’s attention – screaming and screaming as hard as I could, but no sound coming out.  I would just WAIL with all my might, but to see her, it looked like it was falling on deaf ears.  The intense helplessness of being an infant ignored was, as I see it now, the beginnings of rage and it started early.  It’s not that my mother did anything whatsoever wrong – she is a fantastic mother, raised five highly functioning daughters with only one black sheep among them (*ahem*).  She was only following doctor’s orders, letting me “cry it out”.

Interesting isn’t it, how medical advice can  cause the seeds of rage?  Are they drumming up some future business in doing so?  But again I digress from our topic of anger.

So one day, in the sauna after a great workout, I felt it – the rage.  I was by some fortuitous coincidence alone in the high-end fitness club’s sauna.  So I went for it!  I dipped in and felt it.  It was frightening!  It was furious and I knew somehow, deep down, that it was healthy for me to feel this.  I also knew that I’d only touched the tip of the iceberg in there …. or should I say, the tip of the volcano.

Of course I had to calm down, get out of the sauna, take a shower and make my way home.  The entire event was stunning for me and I explored my options.  I had years before this tried “therapy”, even hypnosis.  Nothing had worked.  And I couldn’t be hypnotized, my resistance to it was extremely powerful.  So this time, years later, I elected to just do my own research and then do my own therapy. (*note: not recommended, do not try at home – at least do it with a friend)

And so went my journey which has continued to date.  The next thing to happen was how I kept stumbling upon very beneficial resources.  I soon learned to go on an adventure to the bookstore, just following my instincts, laying my hand upon the exactly correct book every time.  Women Who Run With the Wolves had been very helpful to me in the mid-90s.  Addicted to Perfection by Marion Woodward was also very moving and of great assistance (my very first personal epiphany came from that book).  And then, I heard a First Nations elder expressing something to somebody one day, in a very casual way, as if she was saying nothing particularly important, just a small bit of advice … and then I had all the right tools to dive back in, feel my rage, and clear it out.

What this First Nations elder said was this:  “Don’t be afraid of your bad feelings.  Wrap them around you, like a blanket.  Don’t worry, you won’t get lost, you’ll find your way back out.  Remember:  you can’t get rid of something, unless you OWN it.  And you can’t own your bad feelings, until you actually FEEL them.”

That was it!  It wasn’t enough to intellectually acknowledge my anger, which had grown from decades of failing to express myself adequately or effectively to anybody that really mattered to me in some way.  It wouldn’t be enough to just KNOW that I had rage.  No, I would have to feel it – it was going to be necessary for me to experience what I had never before allowed myself to experience.  And yes, it felt scary.  The enormity of the feelings down there which I touched briefly, in that sauna, seemed daunting.

But then I reminded myself:  these feelings are mine.  I must wear them like a blanket, dive right in, embrace them, really experience the feelings of unfairness, the injustices that I had endured, the enraged helplessness, the frustration – all of it.  I needed to own these natural reactions, so that I could express them, and then once expressed, release them.

Many therapists make a living taking people through this process of clearing rage.  But for myself, it had to be my own personal journey.  I am big on “self-help” and that’s because of how I grew up.  It has worked for me.  I needed a few more “anger-clearing” solo sessions, with more research in between them.  But it worked.  My underlying “wriggly” feelings of unrest have quietened, to the point where contentedness is my normal underlying mental state now, no matter what the circumstances.  Remaining calm in the face of trouble always seems to help.  My abilities to cope with stress have improved dramatically. Of course I am still far from perfect, but I feel much more healthy than ever before.

Nobody can tell anybody what their personal path is.  We each get to choose our own path.  Clearing anger and rage are very important, but this must not be done at the expense of other people.  That isn’t fair, that is just random.  When you clear your anger/rage, if you direct it at other people, you are just perpetuating your problems onto somebody else.  You are making somebody else angry, so you are just passing the buck, sending the problem on down the line.  It’s much better to cope with your deep “bad” feeings in effective ways that won’t impact yourself or others in any detrimental way.

Simply put:  anger needs to be dealt with.  It should be dealt with.  It needs to be felt in order to be cleared out.  But please do not do this at the expense of other people, or else the overall, ultimate net effect of what you do will be negative.

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