'THE [OLD] ANGER'

12.12.2024

Anger is a complicated thing. It's an intense emotion, which I myself did not express for many years. Of course I had been angry at times, but the result of it usually looked like sadness to others, and even I myself didn't realize where the borders between my anger and my sadness were. It just felt like I don't have it. Not in the way you're being thought what anger is, what anger looks like, and what anger does to others.

Instead, tears were my main outlet, my main form of expressing emotions.

"You're such a crybaby!"

"But you don't NEED to cry now"

"Come on, hold old it together for once"

People who said things like this, didn't know where these tears were coming from. They just saw a young, overwhelmed, unstable woman - and that was enough.

They had no idea, that others around me, expressed their anger so much more vividly, that my young brain tried to counteract, tried to be soft, and also tried to protect itself - from the anger of others. 

After taking some drastic changes and with a lot of therapy, I started to heal what's been broken, and the anger suddenly appeared in new ways. Not new in the sense of never seen before, but rather like never felt before. And while the newly gained confidence, respect and care for myself mainly resulted in me getting stronger and stronger - it also lead to me trying to protect myself better. And apparently, one of the protective actions of my brain, was to give me access to a new kind of anger.

The old anger was completely different, like night and day. Now, it's even hard for me to remember and describe what it really felt like deep inside. It was more comparable to a combination of anxiety, extreme stress and sadness. Quiet, hurtful to myself, and in a way also isolating.

But since a few years, my anger is burning hot and building up inside me like an erupting volcano. All of a sudden, I had to take control over this emotion which started overwhelming me (and my surroundings) in a new way. And I basically haven't had this training for YEARS. Which of course, first lead to quite a few problems, because also the people close to me started experiencing my new anger, and I oftentimes struggled with unfairly directing my anger to the wrong people. 

So I started, not at zero of course, but at a very basic level of anger-control. And part of this journey, is also me getting to know my anger better. Trying my best to understand how it functions, and how I can express it in a healthy way.

Because if there's one big takeaway I got from all of this, it is: 

ANGER IS IMPORTANT 

Compared to other emotions, the anger is viewed as something negative, something evil, and something every person should avoid and not let out!

But, I can say from experience, that if you don't have access to your anger at all - you are missing something of extreme importance. 

So instead, I am learning, training, sometimes failing, and learning again. My anger is growing with me, maturing with me, and developing into a more healthy anger - slowly, but steadily. That's what I needed, but also what I would recommend to anyone and everyone who hasn't explored their anger in an honest way yet.

We all need the anger, but it's about how we express it, not how we hide it.