Why Anger is a Sign of Healing
Yes indeed, you read that right!
There’s nothing I love to see and hear more than a woman IN her anger. Especially if she’s been anxious or depressed.
It might sound something like:
“I’m so pissed I
didn’t speak up!
let them treat me this way!
wasted so much time!
missed out because I was too scared!”
Or even just: “F**ck! What the actual f*ck!”
It could be: “What in the hell am I thinking?! What were they thinking?! Ohmygosh — aaarrrrgggghhh!!”
Anyhow, you get the idea.
The reason I love to hear it is because anger is a step toward meaningful, effective action.
There are many theories of depression, ranging from hormone imbalance to neurotransmitter imbalance to nutritional deficiency to toxic exposure to history of trauma. A key reason I think many women are depressed is because they’ve not given their anger a voice. Anger can be an incredibly big and scary emotion if you don’t know what to do with it, or if the people around you are unable to hold it. And so that anger turns inward on itself and rather than being able to expend energy on simply living she must spend her energy on suppressing, holding, pretending everything’s okay. Nothing to see here! *awkward laugh*
Meanwhile, without the voice of her anger, she’s left defenseless. Anger is a guardian emotion, one that lets you know there’s big danger here — warning! And so without that anger, the only defense left is to go still and get small. Enter: depression. Fibromyalgia. Chronic fatigue syndrome. etc, etc, etc.
In homeopathic medicine, there’s something called Hering’s Law of Cure, which stipulates that if a remedy is correct for the person, healing will occur from the deepest levels to the most superficial. For example, if someone has a history of chronic stomach ache accompanied by headache, nausea, vomiting, and a rash on their left foot and they are given the correct cure the nausea and vomiting should resolve first, followed by the headache, then the stomach ache, and finally, the rash on their left foot. Inside out, top down.
Not being a homeopath myself, I’ve not seen this occur in such a way. What I have seen is the principle play itself out emotionally. As the big heavy stuff is moved out of the way, what had been suppressed is then available for healing, and so on and so forth. You might think about it like a storage room packed to bursting — it’s not until you get the king-sized mattress away from the door and the boxes off the couch and the big-screen TV moved out that you can finally get to the knick-nacks bubble-wrapped in the corner.
Emotional healing is just the same. The depression is the mattress that blocks the door. As it heals, you can get to everything behind it. Usually the first thing behind it is a heaping pile of rage.
What then?
Then the anger must be felt. It doesn’t need to spill out onto anyone else, but it behooves you to spend some quality time with whatever rage is present. Note: if you don’t give your anger the time it requires and explore what it’s there to protect, you risk getting stuck in it.
Why is it there?
What safety has been compromised?
What parts of yourself haven’t been acknowledged?
From there, you can move into the work of setting artful boundaries. Anger is always, always letting you know that danger is present in one form or another. Boundaries are the creation of safety.
Are your time and space threatened? Who and/or what do you need to say ‘no’ to?
Is your psyche under fire? What invasive questions need to be redirected? What invitations do you need to turn down? Is there a job change that needs to happen? What self-assessments need to be re-worked?
You get the idea.
The better able you are to recognize Anger for the gift it is and move through it with mindful attention, the better you’ll feel all around. If you’re not sure where to get started, this book will guide you through your first steps.