What if anger can be a force for good?

But what does it mean to use anger with care?

Disclosure and disclaimer: My lessons from anger have been shaped by Kristin Neff’s book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive. It’s important to note that her book was written with a focus on women. Additionally, I am a cisgender woman, which means that my hormone profile and lived experiences growing up are female. For these reasons, my experiences and suggestions do not necessarily equally apply to all. This post, and my teachings on anger, may be more helpful and relevant to those who have been socialized as female. Additionally, I’m not a therapist, so please use your own wisdom and consult with professional resources as needed to find skillful ways to relate to your anger.

I was originally going to write, “Learn to be with your anger” as step 1, but I don’t think that’s actually the first step. For people like me who have been taught that anger is bad (have you ever heard how people treat and talk about angry women?!), the first step in transforming our relationship with anger is to befriend it.

There is an exercise from pp. 77-78 of Kristin’s Fierce Self-Compassion book entitled, “Understanding Your Anger” that unlocked something for me. She instructs you to think about a time when you got angry at someone else, and then she invites you to reflect on a series of questions about your anger, including…

• How did your anger express itself?
• Did it have any constructive or destructive results?
• How did you feel after getting angry?

This first set of questions cultivate mindfulness of your experience of anger, which is helpful and needed, but was not transformative for me. The next questions take it deeper:

Can you be curious about what your anger may have been trying to do for you? Was it trying to point out a danger or protect you in some way, even if the end result of your anger wasn’t beneficial? (For example, was it trying to prevent you from being hurt, or help you to stand up for the truth or draw clear boundaries?)

Note: I bolded the words that jumped out at me from the exercise, which played into the next instruction:

• “Try writing some words of thanks to your anger for its efforts to help you. Even if the methods your anger used to express itself were not ideal or the consequences of your anger were not actually helpful, can you honor this energy inside of you that was trying to protect you?”

OMG, I had never thought of this. I had never thought about honoring the positive intention behind my anger, even when my execution was unskillful. I proceeded to write a letter of thanks to my anger, and my relationship to my anger was forever changed.

Anger was my ally! I just had to learn how to listen to it, be with it, and channel it effectively.

I will share more on these latter parts in the weeks and months to come, but I’d like to stop here with an invitation to begin to befriend your own anger. It is here to protect and empower you…for good! We just need to learn how to be with it, understand it, and harness its potentially caring force.

Note: There is an early bird discount on my Fierce Self-Compassion (FSC) course this month. FSC teaches us to harness our own caring force! Learn more about Fierce Self-Compassion HERE.

Thank you for being on this self-compassion journey with me. I welcome all parts of you on this journey (including your angry parts!).

With love and caring force,

Jamie Lynn