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Writer's pictureJennifer Gross

Your Anger Is Not Your Enemy


When we grow up in abusive households, we often experience parents (or siblings) who express aggression, frustration and rage, and/or parents who condition angry responses out of us.  We create a negative association with anger, and we push it into the far corners of our mind, impossible to even imagine accessing.  But anger doesn’t deserve the blame.  Our family members were reactive, they were not actually feeling their emotions.  Their reactivity was an attempt to protect themselves from discomfort, to react against whatever was happening internally or externally to prevent discomfort.  And the same goes for those of us who were criticized for feeling anger.  Our parents could not handle us becoming our own person and acknowledging the truth of the abuse and our suffering, because then we would step out of the role they assigned us.  


Cutting off our anger is often detrimental to our wellbeing. Try on the perspective that all emotions serve a purpose and are conveying a message. Anger as energy helps us to create change in our life, whether that change be external or internal.  Anger as energy helps us find our own individuality, helps us make our own choices based on our own moral compass, values and beliefs and speak firmly in our own voice.  Anger can be a form of loving energy to get us to protect ourselves and others from harm, to stand up to internalized messages of abuse from our family and stand up to external or internal shame.  Anger is also often intertwined with drive and motivation, and without anger we can struggle with both, causing us to often feel deflated, insecure and hopeless when experiencing hardships and set-backs.  


When we utilize anger in a healthy way, we’re able to recognize its presence, say “hello” to it, feel it’s energy, ask what it wants us to know or do, and make a choice.  Sometimes we need to act the anger out - but not in a reactive & impulsive way unless our safety depended on it - and sometimes it’s enough to just feel it.  And once we overcome the shame of our anger, we can start to embrace all positive and negative parts of ourselves to become a more whole person.  


So take some minutes to think about what parts of yourself you may have trouble accessing because the bridge to that part of you - anger - is a bridge you’ve yet built. 

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