6 Steps Using Anger To Love Yourself More

Understanding Anger As A Healing Practice

I was so angry I thought my temper would burn the world to the ground.

Every bit of ash and ember was payment when they pushed me aside.

Convincing me there was nothing good inside of me worth saving.

I was just the cog in the machine of what they were building. They were satisfying their own desires.

But I never knew this rage was there, I just thought it was a bad temper. Each time I was angry, I swallowed it and pretended it didn’t exist.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

An angry way of life

I used to be known for my temper by the people closest to me.

I honed it like a weapon. I was sarcastic, and I went for the jugular.

I couldn’t vent my anger on the person or situation that started it. My rage would boil and be vented on innocent people.

It is like watching a volcano waiting to erupt. Side vents of heat are created to relieve some of the pressure. You can't put off the eruption forever.

I realized this rage has been present in my whole life.

I was just a cardboard cutout for people to use.

I was the scapegoat when things went wrong or someone had a bad day. I didn’t have feelings. I was perceived as stupid because I am deaf and have a hard time communicating with people.

Not to mention that any mistake I made would have ended the world instead of being a learning experience.

I also grew up in an angry household.

The only way we expressed anything was through anger.

I learned about anger from an early age. It seemed the anger went back to my ancestors. It is built into my DNA like the color of my eyes.

I even heard stories about grandparents and even great-grandparents’ temper and harsh words that were spoken.

The turning point in my learning about my anger was when I realized how much I took out on the people closest to me.

Anger covered my pain, and I was passing it along to anyone I came into contact with. This is known in healing circles as the abusee becomes the abuser.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

Alexander Pope

I needed to see what anger really was.

Properties of anger

To truly understand anger, you need to look beyond it.

The depth of our anger reveals how much and how deeply our pain truly runs from a light disgruntlement to a deep-seated rage. Find the source of the anger, and you find the source of your pain.

Anger is protection and control.

We use it like armor in situations we feel vulnerable and powerless.

Vulnerabilities can be numerous things. It can be situations or people we are afraid of. Or it is our vulnerabilities on display for the world to see.

Anger gives a hard edge that we need to establish boundaries. We strike first, then people back off, and we get the distance that we need.

Anger can mask emotional overwhelm.

We are bombarded every day with things that cause huge emotions.

In addition to daily emotions, we experience life events that carry significant emotional burdens.

Now we are buried. It is easy to see why we would be overwhelmed. Anger starts here.

Now a cycle begins.

Already feeling vulnerable and overwhelmed, more things happen.

It grows, and we become angrier and angrier. All these things beneath the anger remain suppressed, causing a range of unhealthy consequences for us.

Anger tangles all the issues into a mess

We become walking raw nerves.

We become reactive and snippy, taking offense over the smallest thing. Your fight-or-flight response keeps you amped up. Usually on the fight side of things.

Or we go the other way. We deny our anger. This means we suppress it and just about every other emotion we feel.

Anger is the top layer, and if we suppress it, then nothing gets out.

All these emotions are rolling around. Story upon story stacks in your head. These stories intertwine, becoming complicated and convoluted.

We can’t figure out where one starts or ends.

This sets up a cycle that continues and spirals out of control. The angrier you become, the more suppressed emotions get out of hand.

There is no internal peace.

Calming the anger is a mixed practice

The usual antidote to anger is meditation or some other calming practice.

In theory, if you calm the anger, then all the other things beneath it can come out. You can then unravel all the stories and find peace. This works for some.

The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy.

Mehmet Oz

I have never found this to be true.

I fall into the category that the harder I push something away, the stronger it becomes. Just watching it and not interacting with it doesn’t work.

It raises the flames even higher.

It’s like trying to put out a forest fire with high winds using a garden hose.

We might be able to contain the big flames, but the embers are waiting to catch fire again in the next situation.

The spark will be something simple. Someone cut you off in traffic. Someone looked at you in a way you didn’t like.

Then the fire burns again.

As the cycle continues, you feel worse because you blame yourself for a lack of control. Maybe even some guilt as words flow in anger, you don’t mean.

I needed to find something to release the anger.

When anger is confronted

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

Carl Jung

I decided that I needed to do a controlled burn.

A control burn is letting anger flow but keeping it contained so there is no collateral damage. Anger that is contained can do great harm.

To conduct the controlled burn, I needed to find a safe place to release my anger so it wouldn’t cause any damage. I used journaling.

Image by Leonardo AI

Journaling helped me get it out of my head and contain it on paper, so I could see it and not let it circle in my mind.

I used leaving my last job as the first place to start.

I was enraged at how I was treated. I felt my back was to the wall, and the only place left to go was to quit.

I began expressing what was on my mind. I didn’t censor myself. I let it all out. I wrote until I had nothing else to say.

I felt better. A little lighter.

I started doing this at the first opportunity after I became angry. I started noticing patterns after I had written enough.

Patterns emerged, I wasn’t having my boundaries respected, and I was a piece of machinery to be tossed when I was no longer helpful.

Themes started to form. It all revolved around my self-worth. Or lack of it.

Fire is transformative

I was seeing the situation for what it was and understanding why I was angry. I acknowledged it.

I honored it.

I gave my feelings worth. I didn’t blame myself for my anger or reject it in any way. I embraced it.

I used the fire of anger symbolically. I burned away the worthlessness. In the ashes, I started to see my value.

I burned other people’s opinions.

I started to see the good in me.

From my job perspective, anger was the very thing that motivated me to walk out the door. I was going to find my worth on my terms.

From the ashes, this good grew quickly. After some time, I noticed my anger receded. The better I treated myself, the better I felt.

Using anger to transform who you think you are

Anger can hide so much.

It is worth finding out what is beneath it.

Don’t suppress it. Manage it.

Many practices help do this.

Here are the steps I used to see beneath my anger:

1. Acknowledge the anger. Don’t push it away or pretend it isn’t there. It only makes it stronger.

2. Express the anger constructively. Get the stories you tell yourself out of your head and onto something real. Journal. Record it. Whatever you find for yourself. Just remember, there has to be some record of what made you angry and what you told yourself about being angry. You will need to be able to access it later.

3. Re-read what you have expressed after you are in a better headspace. If it makes you angry again, add to what you did in the previous story. Continue until you can read it with minimal emotion.

4. Start to notice patterns. What situations make you angry? What are the common denominators? Are there certain people that piss you off? Are there boundary violations? Are you being marginalized?

5. Let the patterns turn into themes. Use the themes and look for the polarizing potential. For example, did a situation make you feel less than you are worth? What is your worthlessness? Then look at the opposite value. Look for evidence that you have this value. Remember situations you displayed this value. When you see the value you have, then the stories you told yourself to support the original theme are a lie. Now you can believe your truth.

6. Repeat this as often as needed. You will find that most of the stories are not true. You will feel better about yourself.

As stories disappear, you get your truth about yourself. You will love yourself more when all the lies are removed from your perception of yourself.

Understanding how anger works makes it easier to face. You find peace, and people enjoy being around you.

It doesn’t in the end how you manage your anger. Getting the anger out of the way is what is important. Then the real healing can begin.

Once you begin this healing process, you will love yourself more. You will see the truth about yourself.