The space that anger needs
My father was a rageaholic. He was furious about things that seemed unimportant to the rest of us. He would yell, throw things, and get so angry his eyes looked like they had flames dancing in them and his neck and face would turn purple like a bruise. I saw this rage in someone I was seeing whose eyes would flicker with flames when they were angry and who one time pinched me so hard because I didn’t agree with them.
I had a boyfriend when I was coming out of high school who was violently jealous and who put me in the hospital one time, the last time, because my brother who was living in another state flew his Cessna plane to come pick me up and away from him.
I learned about my own anger after understanding my son’s. He would rage, and I would stand nearly paralyzed and scared. I had never learned to feel safe around anger because its expression was always threatening and violent. Since I didn’t want to express myself that way, I pushed my anger down until the only recourse I had was to walk away from whatever provoked it.
But my son’s anger, and how I learned to not only deal with it, but to feel safe while he threw things, raged, and his own eyes flickered, opened up space for me to be angry. Even in holding myself in a calm state I could say this is making me angry. I am angry because you did this.
While everyone gets angry, most people who I have met in my life, have no idea how to express and manage their anger. They either rage, they accuse, they cut a person off, they will not take any responsibility for their feelings or their anger whatsoever, so that someone else, something else, becomes the end all and be all reason for the rage.
Are you scared to ask for what you need? Try practicing affirmations such as “I am good enough” and then identify your need by asking “What do I need from you right now?” And then move right into how you are feeling, angry. “I am angry that you are dismissing my years of experience and thinking your way is the only way to do this and you are speaking to me as if you are the boss of me. I need you to know I will not respond to disrespect.”
