I grew up learning to be afraid of anger.
I would often disconnect from it — my own and that of others. A healthy man can own his anger in a clean way. Think of the power of the human rights movements throughout history to channel anger, bring clarity around injustice and mobilize the public to take action.
On the other extreme, I’ve noticed that a high proportion of nice church folk — along with others who depend on tightly controlled, nonthreatening personas — seem to have mastered the art of living without anger. Even when an angry response is in order.
How do they do that? I can tell you how.
At one men’s retreat, our small group sat around a campfire. Our facilitator noticed that I had not responded to another person’s highly disrespectful remark about me. When he asked me how I felt, I said I wasn’t angry. He wasn’t convinced.
He asked me to pick up a large rock nearby. It felt like it weighed 25 pounds, but … no problem. Then he invited me to stand outside the circle while he continued the main discussion. Fifteen minutes passed and that rock gained a lot of weight. By now, I wanted to sit down, so I asked if I could rejoin the group.
“No, that’s all right,” he said. “Please stay where you are.” Ten more minutes went by and every muscle in my body was screaming bloody murder. I gasped, “I’m ready to rejoin the group now!”
Still, the facilitator ignored me — until I said, “OK, now I’m really pissed. I’m not holding this damn rock anymore!” And that was the moment I got in touch with the original violation. I was angry at the friend who was way out of line. My actual experience and my true feelings were finally aligned.
That’s what it took for me to connect with my appropriate anger.
My disconnection from anger is an example of what’s called dissociative behavior. That’s when we disconnect from our authentic, true self. Any psychologist will tell you that disconnections between an experience and an appropriate feeling about that experience is frequently associated with trauma or other formative childhood wounds.
That was me. When I was growing up, it wasn’t safe for me to express anger, so I learned to deny and repress it. But it lived on in my shadow, limiting the range of emotions I could feel and, later, busting loose in an outburst.
Anger is often an expression of our fear. More on that next time.