Can we talk about anger? When I was at my yoga teacher training, we were there over a full moon . On the night of the full moon we went out in the field by where we were and did this meditation. It had very little in way of what you would think of meditation. At one point you were to "release your anger"which meant we were supposed to scream and yell about all the things we hurt about, name the people you were mad at literally let them have it.
It was horrible.
I'm going to back track a bit here. I was happy to read Brené Brown write about anger. I had always believed and been taught in university that anger is a secondary emotion. You feel anger because of some other emotion. You are afraid, ashamed, embarrassed, betrayed, unheard... the list goes on and on. This made total sense to me. So in her new book "Atlas of the Heart" Brené also addresses this. She said she too had understood anger as a secondary emotion, but there is a fairly large group of experts (91%) who disagree and say that it is a stand alone emotion. I rarely feel angry, I will always identify with the other emotion that I (and apparently only 9% of experts) call the primary emotions. But I realize that I am an oddity in this world. I don't remember the last time I got angry with someone. Like and actually had an argument. I've been upset and hurt but I wouldn't say I was angry.
So back to the horrible full moon meditation. Everyone else is swearing and screaming at exes and throwing punches in the air, and all I could do was stand there in amazement. The woman leading our teacher training got right up in my face and yelled at me. Telling to get mad. To yell. I started to cry. She yelled at me "why are you crying?!" I cried more. The meditation ended with doing like 5 minutes of deep squats and I was so happy to be back in my physical body and out of that emotional one it felt like a relief. The next day or maybe even two days later, it occurred to me that that is EXACTLY how I experience "anger". I can't speak or get my words out, I cry, I want to run and hide. I feel misunderstood and not listened to. I feel disrespected. So maybe the meditation worked? I don't want to do it again to find out.
It seems to me to that there are a couple different types of people when it comes to anger. This is entirely not scientific, and all me making up stuff to support my own argument. There are ranters who need to say every thing they are thinking about out loud, and then maybe say it again, just in case you missed it, and one more time because three times is a charm. They NEED to say all the things inside their head so you definitely understand where they are coming from. Until they feel that they are completely heard it is difficult for them to understand where the other party is coming from. Then there are the ruminators. You can't put these people on the spot. They spend days playing out every conversation that could possibly occur. They run scenario after scenario over in the heads so nothing catches them off guard. They approach any confrontation with a planned script in their heads and need to say it lest they get thrown off track. Guess which one I am. The complication with this is that the ranters can understand how or why the ruminators are sitting there quietly and not responding, and the ruminators can't understand how someone would be so willing to just say things that they might not be able to take back.
Interesting Erin, you are thinking, but what does this have to do with yoga? Understanding and studying yourself is one part of yoga philosophy (svadyaya). So understanding how emotions appear in our bodies is important. And understanding how they show up for other people makes us more compassionate. As we start to recognize and understand ourselves we can learn to respond in the moment rather than react. So for example when something happens that makes us angry (in my case I would feel that as ignored, disrespected, misunderstood) we can say "Oh! That really did something right there, and I wonder what it is?" Sometimes this means questioning the story your are telling yourself about someone else's actions, sometimes it is noticing patterns in yourself for reacting to things, whatever that moment is for you is personal. For me it is my engrained responses and trying to release them.
This is where the work in progress is. The first part of the work and noticing the thought patterns came fairly easily to me. This letting go of the feeling is an ongoing practice. So I can understand why someone else maybe said something to me that hurt, but letting go of the hurt feeling is taking longer than I want. Sometimes that means I need to set a boundary or ask questions in case there was a misunderstanding but sometimes I just need to sit in the yucky feeling and accept it. Sometimes journaling about it helps, sometimes I need to talk to someone else, and sometimes I just need to be okay with the suck. I admit that I get frustrated with others, that I feel like I spend so much care with others when I am talking to them, constantly watching their faces and getting feedback on how they are receiving what I am saying. I watch their body language and pick up the the signs they are giving so I can best understand and relate. I think that this is one of the reasons that I was good at my job with kids with special needs, I could read them quickly and choose how I responded. Adults are harder, they are less in touch with how the feel.
And the irony to me is that they are WAY more comfortable with anger than they are with the primary emotions. They won't address the hurt and heal that, they respond instead with anger. Embarrassed? Nope, angry. Afraid? Nope, angry. So you it makes it hard to heal anything with people. At the beginning of the pandemic I had an elderly gentleman yell at me at the grocery store because I wasn't wearing a mask. There was no mask mandate yet, and with my vision impairment it is was easier to see when my glasses aren't fogging up. But if he had read my body language when he first approached me he might have understood that I really meant no harm. I just was trying to let him go ahead of me in line (clearly this incident shook me as I am STILL thinking about it, guess who ruminates...). When people respond with anger first rather than exploring that primary emotion that started it, I feel like it shuts down conversation. If you and I are in a conversation and I have shut down and it feels like I am angry, I will guarantee that I am in shame and guilt, or I am hurt and wounded. I need time, and I need to feel heard when I am ready to speak or it reinforces that reaction.
I am hoping as I keep practicing, leaning into vulnerability and asking for what I need, sharing, that the time between noticing the emotion, choosing my response and then for the emotions to pass will decrease. Because it sucks something fierce. And it brings me back to the question I seem to ask myself lately; can you sit in the suck and be okay? It is still a work in progress.
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