Making peace with your anger

No more guilt,
and no more shame,
when peace is built,
anger can be tamed.

Anger is present as the resolute and foreboding opportunity for peace.  It stands as an invitation beyond guilt and shame; it presses us into the valley of decision; anger invites us to accept it as a means of conquering its fury.

Here’s peace: everyone has some kind of issue with anger.  There, that ought to deal with the shame that comes from the guilt of losing control of your emotions yet again.  We all do it.  The one who thinks they don’t simply haven’t been pushed beyond their personal limit.

Here’s another thing.

Anger’s either expressed or it’s repressed.  Neither of these helps.  Only one way helps.  A third way: making peace with our anger.

It either comes out as an attack against others or it’s introjected into the self, absorbed, to harm the self.

Few people manage anger so well that they practice making peace with others and themselves as the default.  Watch out if you read this and think this is you.  If there’s one thing we’re usually in denial about, it’s our anger.  The person who thinks they’ve got something mastered when they haven’t is most dangerous of all.

Anger is a cover for sadness and fear, which is a real problem for most of us, especially for us men.

It takes strength to own our weakness; the paradox, weakness owned is strength.

Face your anger and become curious for the sadness and fear beneath it and immediately the agitated edge dissipates.  In this place you just sit.  In the place of acceptance.  Not gleeful acceptance, but a more mature acceptance that can sit through the tough circumstance and not insist things be different.

Paradox upon paradox in this space.  At just the time you surrender control, you gain control.

In the very moment you sit, even as you fume, you recognise you’re not being torn apart, that in fact you can do it, when you simply accept what you cannot change.  It’s a decision.  It’s an action.  It’s continued action.  And you prove to yourself you can do it.

It’s tough.  Nobody’s hiding the fact.  But you can do it.

We can’t do anything about anger until we face it, and we don’t face it until we face our shame.  The good news is anger affects us all, so there’s nothing to be ashamed about.  Better, let’s be done with the shame and the guilt and short-circuit the anger in preference for peace.

Photo by Khamkéo Vilaysing on Unsplash