Anger is energy. It is a feeling that is a part of our emotional life. Anger can become your greatest enemy debilitating your health and producing negativity. When anger is understood and transformed it can become your greatest ally toward healing and finding personal peace.
Anger is one of the most misunderstood and commonly repressed emotions. When you understand the true nature of anger, you can begin to harness a lost power of your will. Will power is the key to create permanent and positive changes in your life. It all hinges upon how you relate to your emotions. Before we explore transforming anger it is important to clarify "positive" and "negative" emotions.
Emotions are a feedback system offering guidance in our daily lives. They inform us of what we need to do in order to feel secure and peaceful. In childhood we learned to judge our emotions and placed them into two categories, positive (good) or negative (bad) emotions. We labeled any feelings that are constrictive such as fear, guilt, and loneliness as negative and bad. The expansive emotions like love, joy, and happiness were identified as positive (good). The challenge for you is to redefine your relationship with all your emotions and change the way you relate to them. Here is how to do that.
You’ll experience an empowered relationship with your emotions when you redefine them. Negative emotions are any emotion (love or fear) that you ignore, deny, and repress. Regardless of their names, all emotion becomes negative when you refuse to feel and express them.
Eventually, all repressed emotion explodes into a rage, either inward or outward rage. It is the repression of emotion that causes its destructiveness, not the emotion itself. Likewise, love that is repressed can be just as destructive as anger. Emotions are energy that needs to be felt and expressed respectfully.
Positive emotions are any emotion that you honor (own), feel, express and release, appropriately. When you respect your anger as much as your love, you will have matured your emotional intelligence and begin to take dominion over your life.
We’ve been brain-washed from childhood to judge anger as a bad emotion. Like all emotions, anger is meant to be felt, expressed and released... appropriately. Repressed anger always has negative impact in our lives. Addictions, worry, self-doubt, and powerlessness increase when anger is repressed. When anger is released these negative experiences will decrease rapidly. Also, within all anger there is a hidden resource of willpower. The energy needed to end procrastination and take charge of your life, can be found d when you tap into and release your anger.
How to Create a Healthy Relationship with Anger.
It is important to recognize the value of both your constricting and expanding emotions. The purpose of anger is to offer you feedback. Anger is a messenger communicating to you that change is needed. For instance, if you feel angry with a person then something about that relationship needs to change. Perhaps you are not being respected or understood. Pretending you are not angry only compounds the negativity.
Being honest with yourself is the key to harnessing the power of your emotional nature. When you let go of your judgment and honestly feel your constricting emotions you'll quickly express and release them. Then, the energy trapped inside can become a constructive force in your life.
Four Steps to Transform Repressed Anger into Willpower:
The 1st Step: Take responsibility for your anger (own it) and begin to feel it. This allows you to connect with it and begin transforming it into a positive experience. By realizing this simple truth you can begin to lift anger out of its destructive and repressed state.
The 2nd Step: Express your anger in writing. Take some paper and write at the top of the page, "Me and My Anger". Write the first thing that comes to your mind about anger. Write in a free association style. Don't worry about grammar, sentence structure or spelling. Express your anger by writing down your thoughts and feelings.
For example you might start to write: "This exercise is stupid. I don't believe I'm doing this! Trying to write down my anger is so frustrating... I feel stuck, like I'm back in fourth grade... blah, blah, blah."
Let the thoughts and feelings roll out of you! Don't assess or judge your words. This may feel awkward at first, but soon it will start to flow out of you in a stream of consciousness. Before you know it, you’ll tap into the anger trapped inside your subconscious mind and release it.
After 20-45 minutes the constricting feelings will shift and lift to a peaceful feeling inside of you. When that happens destroy the paper, tear it up, burn it or flush it down the toilet. Next take a break and go do something you enjoy. Relax in a hot bath, go for a walk, enjoy your favorite movie, do something fun. This will help you lift beyond these feeling into a more expansive space. Give yourself at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours to relax before you move on to the third step.
The 3rd Step: Express your anger imaginatively. This is an important step to free your mind. It involves using your imagination to unhook the negativity from your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind does not know the difference between something you imagine and something that really happens.
For example: Have you ever sat in a movie theatre and watched scary images on the screen that caused you to tighten up with fear and become anxious? Logically, you knew you were safe because you were surrounded by a hundred other people. However, your subconscious mind didn't distinguish the images on the screen from what was really happening to you. This is how the body-mind connection works. Your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between what you imagine and what physically happens to you. Your subconscious mind reacts the same in both situations.
Guided Imagery Technique to Release Repressed Anger
Close your eyes and imagine the person that you are angry at standing before you. This person may have died long ago it might be a boss, a parent, someone who pissed you off. Tell them in your mind how angry and upset you are. If you need to act it out, then act it out- imaginatively! If you were so angry you could have kicked and spit on them, then in your imagination, kick and spit on them! Play it out. Now is your chance to vent the pent up energy from your subconscious mind! Don't hold back. The more vivid you imagine this with honest feelings, the more effective it will be.
Tip: If it is difficult for you to express old anger from your childhood then let your inner child express their feelings. Let the angry part of you, your child, adolescent or teenager express the feelings they had never released.
You may be worried that if you vent your anger in meditation, you’re somehow sending negative energy to the person. Remember, your intention is where energy flows. Your intention is to transform anger into a positive energy. Once your subconscious mind has vented your anger, you can easily forgive and let go. Let the angry part of you act out the feelings don't hold yourself back. Honor the angry part of you and it will set you free.
The 4th Step: Forgive whoever angered you. Forgive them and let them go. Again, you can do this in your imagination, simply imagine them in your mind and tell them, “I forgive you.” I am letting you go. You don’t have to talk to them physically but you can effectively forgive them in your mind, where it really matters. Forgiveness will come easily once the anger has cleared from your mind.
If you have difficulty forgiving them, then go back and see if there is more anger you still need to release. Once you have forgiven them and yourself (for attracting this negative experience) decide what positive energy you'd like to experience more of in your life. Do you desire greater self-determination, discipline, and creativity? Visualize how you want to feel and be. Imagine yourself back in the flow, empowered and feeling great with a renewed ability to be focused, productive and creative.
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