How to Be Angry: A Personal Essay

Earlier this year I wrote a guest post for the incredible writer and best- selling author, Karen Salmansohn. I was inspired to write this piece from my personal experience and hope it helps you move through your anger and use it as an ally.

Anger gets a bad rap.

It’s the icky, tumultuous emotion few of us know what the heck to do with.

Some of us avoid getting angry and play nice.
Others get stuck in silent resentment.
Then there those who know how to treat anger like an ally. They understand that anger can be a helpful guide– there to protect them.

A New Lens on Anger Management

I want you to think of anger as a built-in mama bear.

She fights only to protect herself and her cubs.

Anger is designed to protect our physical boundaries, loved ones, values, and beliefs.

And just as a protective mama bear is not bad – neither is anger.

In fact, I even believe that anger is one of the most important emotions to pay attention to.

Why is anger important to our well-being?

Because anger alerts us to wake up and protect what we value most.

How I learned to value my anger

A few years ago, I lost touch with my anger.

I thought I was somehow above it.

Eventually, I became like a mama bear who forgot to protect myself. I began people-pleasing and found myself being taken advantage of – left and right!

As a female, I grew up believing that nice girls don’t have anger, rage or fury. Unfortunately, my angry feelings didn’t go away simply because I chose to ignore them.

My angry feelings went under cover and turned into a swamp of silent, seething resentment.

The Philosophy Behind My Anger Management Tool

I find it interesting that the word “resent” found in “resentment” comes from the French word “RE-SENT” – which translated means to re-feel.

When we resent someone – we are stuck re-feeling this negative emotion – over and over and over!

Thankfully we have a choice to stop this loop of negative emotion.

So let’s take a moment to look at how anger can play out.

Anger begins as crankiness, and feeling pissed off.
If we repeatedly ignore these feelings (and signals from our internal guidance system), these negative emotions will only repeat themselves – then grow stronger, louder and more volatile!
However, when we instead begin to acknowledge the earlier warning signals of anger, we can use this emotion as a built-in emotional thermometer. We can welcome anger – and honor it even – recognizing that it’s there to alert us – to protect our interests – teach us lessons – and change our course of actions.

While many ignore, resist and judge anger as a hotheaded, lowly emotion, I’ve come to use my anger as one of my greatest advocates, and allies.