Honoring Our Anger
I have been thinking about anger a lot lately, or perhaps more accurately also feeling and experiencing it 😊. There are certainly plenty of valid reasons to be angry as a human being these days, outside of the normal anger triggers like conflict with our partners, managing customer service woes, and Atlanta traffic. We face big existential threats: growing inequality, the rise of AI, climate change, systemic racism….this list starts to make my anxiety rise and my blood boil just writing it.
What is anger anyway? Why do we have it and what are we supposed to do with it? Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp founded the field of affective neuroscience and he describes a few basic emotions which are hardwired in the brains of all mammals as circuits. Here’s how anger/rage is described by Panksepp: “Rage is aroused by frustration and attempts to curtail an animal’s freedom of action. This system not only helps animals defend themselves by arousing fear in their opponents but also energizes behavior when an animal is irritated or restrained.”
From a neuroscience perspective, at its core anger is about protection, boundary setting, and challenges to agency. The anger circuit gives us information in the form of neurochemicals and electricity that increases our energy and gets us ready to take action. What action we take is up to us. And like most things we explore in the therapy room, it seems balance is a necessary condition. If we allow that very mammalian rage to take over, we have the capacity to hurt others and wind up on the 5 o’clock news much like a recent Kennesaw road rage story. And if we fully ignore our anger, it turns inward and simmers, building resentment and toxicity that ultimately harms ourselves.
Mostly what shows up in my therapy office is that second imbalance, the hiding and dismissing of anger. I think perhaps in service of not perpetuating violence and aggression, or maybe really wanting to be nice and liked by others, a lot of us have learned to lean in a bit too much to people pleasing and accommodation. Where is the middle ground? How can we take the innate wisdom from our anger circuit without being consumed by it? I believe to heal, we must speak and we must move. “No” is absolutely a full sentence and sometimes it must be stated loudly and emphatically. If our body needs us to stand our ground, we can give ourselves permission to do just that. And moving our bodies doesn’t need to look like a fist fight or a show-down, maybe we need to shake it off or let the adrenaline course through our veins while we run or jump or lift.
When we start to tune in and find balance with anger, we allow the wisdom and power anger communicates to us to help us make needed changes, set firmer boundaries, and live more freely. May it be so.
Peace to you on your journey,
Cassie