Learn to Befriend Your Anger and Use it To Restore Peace, Love, and Joy into Your Life
By being assertive we can find justice, yet assertiveness requires a certain amount of anger to get us to move into action
Society doesn’t like anger, even righteous anger.
But not all anger is bad.
I find it interesting how uncomfortable people get when I express my anger or even write from a place of anger.
I can sense them trying to calm me or help me.. as though I needed their help.
If I express my anger, I’m okay with it. I am not afraid of my anger.
The problem may be with you because you have painful memories attached to anger.
The reason so many people have been abused in life is because they were told by their parents and society to be nice and quiet and not to express their anger.
What does a child do then if their parent crosses their boundary?
They say nothing and so the parent continues to cross the child’s boundary until the child doesn’t think they have any right to say no.
Then that child goes out into the world not knowing their boundaries and anyone can take advantage of them.
They don’t know when to say, “That’s far enough.”
When I was a child, I used to feel angry that my mother would speak for me when someone we would meet on the street would say hello to me.
They might have said, “Hello, Orla.. are you enjoying school?”
And before I had a chance to respond, my mother would answer for me.
I was angry inside but said nothing. I was afraid to stand up to my mother.
That anger went inside of me.
It was not safe for me to express my anger.
When I got older, my sister was the same.. she would talk over me, never listen and when she was done blabbing, she’d say, “So how are you?”
I was so drained from her negative emotional dump that I had no positive energy left to say anything.
She made me angry.
It took me years to learn how to express my anger.
Finally, I learned to be assertive.
And now that I am assertive, people still think I should say nothing.
Why?
Because they don’t like my anger.
Why don’t they like my anger?
Because I will call them out on their selfish behavior.
Recently, I confronted an ex of mine from years ago. It was a great feeling to finally address the issues that were not discussed because he didn’t want to hear them.
When I confronted him, his response was that I could get counselling.
This made me laugh. Because he could not hear the truth of the shameful things he did, he wanted me to take my righteous anger to some hidden counseling room far from him so he would never have to take responsibility for his abusive actions.
I did not go for counselling. In fact, after having time to reflect and pray, I gained more courage and boldness to say every little last thing I needed to say in an email that I knew he read.
I got that hurt and pain right out of me by directing my anger to the right person, at the right time, in the right way.
“Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power, that is not easy.”
— Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric
It’s not easy to get it exactly right, but we learn through practice. If what I need to say does not come out perfectly, that’s okay. I can get better over time.
The point is I am doing my best to live with integrity.
To live a life of integrity, we have to know who we are, what we believe, and what’s important to us.
We also need to know what is not acceptable.
Then we have to communicate this to the people in our lives. If they are not willing to respect us, then we are going to have to muster up the courage to confront the issue and make the necessary changes.
This may involve conversations with the people involved. You may have to bring in a third party to mediate — whatever is needed to restore peace and harmony into your life.
If you were wronged, you have a right to seek justice. That is God’s will for you.
“Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it fully.”
— Proverbs 28:5
Get your anger out and do not be ashamed about it.
I was reading a good article today about how we can learn to control our anger before it controls us. It was written by Lu Skerdoo.
In it, she quoted Joyce Meyer ..
“To feel anger is not the sin… it’s what you do with the feeling that becomes a sin.”
So, keep this in mind when someone crosses your boundary or sins against you, you have every right to be angry and you have every right to confront the person involved.
Just because they don’t like you getting angry with them for violating your boundary, that is no reason for you not to express how you feel.
Learn to befriend your anger. Respect it and listen to it.
We were shamed as children for even feeling angry, let alone expressing it.
It was worse for girls but some boys were told not to express anger too.
Your anger is just an emotion. It is not bad, but as Joyce Meyer said, it’s what you do with the anger that makes it good or bad.
Being assertive and telling someone that what they did was wrong and hurtful is not bad.
Out-of-control anger is not good or holding your anger in and building up resentment and bitterness in your heart is not good.
So, let’s get educated about our emotions and how they can help us to stay safe and live happy, peaceful lives.
If you are not in touch with your anger, people will cross your boundaries all the time, and believe me, there is no fun in that. That happened to me in my past and I will never go back to that way of living again.
I thank God for showing me how to listen to and embrace my anger.
