I use to correlate anger with being a bad emotion because when I was younger it was taken to the extreme. An angry dad wasn’t just angry; he was violent. I witnessed the way anger as an emotion was correlated with abuse. It didn’t have a healthy outlet. It didn’t necessarily fall safely on the right person in the right way. It escalated to where it didn’t act as a source of truth to then find a meaningful middle ground of love between two people. Anger was weaponised to cause additional hurt and pain and to overpower.
Now as an adult I still sit with anger like it is something a little foreign to me sometimes; like sometimes healthy anger is something I am still getting comfortable with. It is an emotion that is not ‘bad’ but after witnessing unhealthy levels of it I can get triggered by it.
Sometimes I can express my healthy valid anger. Other times it is in it’s own cage and is suppressed attributing at times to possibly a depression or a sadness or something else.
Anger and being a female isn’t always welcome either. We are expected to be a certain way sometimes and angry isn’t always the way. A counsellor reminded me that at the heart of healthy anger i.e. righteous anger is injustice. This kind of anger can fuel a way forward for change and truth to come to the forefront where anger is used to bring more love into life not more pain. The right kind of anger not driven by dysfunction and destruction but by a desire for truth, connection, resolution and eventually love and harmony between people.