I’d like to explore the experience of anger.

I don’t get angry very much. There have been times when I have exploded in blackout rage (okay, that only happened once), but for the most part I find anger very difficult to navigate. I can identify a variety of situations where anger probably would have been the appropriate response, but I didn’t experience it. Instead my tendency has been to get small, find fault in myself, and make excuses for the other person.

Anyone else do this?

I even tried to get angry in my journal this morning, but instead the word ‘but’ kept coming up. They did this, but I can understand where they’re coming from, and I know that there have been situations in my life where I have responded similarly… so maybe I can’t blame them. Yeah, as I’m reading this I can see the benefit of this reasoning, but I think in another way I’m letting my rational mind get in the way of my self worth. As I stand up for them, I stand up against myself, my worth, and my integrity. Is any of this making sense?

So where do I go from here?

How do you get angry? Healthy angry? Because I think there’s a healthy anger that needs to be expressed sometimes. My experience with blackout rage proves this to me. Unexpressed feelings of being walked on will eventually explode like a (excuse the bad simile) shaken up pop bottle.

What is anger?

Wikipedia defines anger as “an intense emotional response. Often it indicates when ones basic boundaries are violated.”

And what are basic boundaries?

Again, wikipedia defines them as “guidelines, rules or limits that a person creates to identify for themselves what are reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave around him or her and how they will respond when someone steps outside those limits.They are built out of a mix of beliefs, opinions, attitudes, past experiences and social learning.”

So anger is an intense emotional experience (which to me means that there is some impulsivity in it) that is prompted by a transgression related to how you expect to be treated.

So that means that if you expect to be treated poorly, maybe anger is a less frequently experienced response in your life?

What are my personal boundaries?

What are the behaviours that I won’t entertain as being even remotely okay? Lying, disrespect, that mean sort of sarcasm that makes you feel like a complete idiot, being put down in order that the other person might feel better about themselves.

You teach other people how to treat you. We decide our personal boundaries. I guess I have a fear that if I make my boundaries too strict, I won’t get/achieve what I want. But then having boundaries that are more loosey goosey isn’t really working either.

I’m afraid to ask for more, even though I want more.

I’ve started asking anyway.

Here’s What I’m Learning

There really is nothing to gain from having a low personal standard for how you expect to be treated, but there is everything to gain from standing up for yourself.

When you stand up yourself, you’ll start attracting people into your life who also believe and stand up for themselves. Now that feels good.

I guess it’s not so much anger that I’m talking about as it is ‘fight.’ I want to be able to fight for myself… and I have been I think. I’m not a pushover, but I’m also not a super outspoken in your face sort of person. But maybe the way we fight for ourselves can be unique – unique to us.

Maybe we don’t all have to fight/stand up for ourselves in the same way, but I do think we need to do it. We need to defend who we are and why we matter if we’re ever going to make an impact. Because we do matter. I matter. You matter.

Which  brings me back to that Lena Dunham quote that I can’t stop sharing on this blog (I just love it so much):

“This isn’t how it works. When someone shows you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself. You are not made up of compartments! You are one whole person! What gets said to you gets said to all of you, ditto what gets done. Being treated like shit is not an amusing game or a transgressive intellectual experiment. It’s something you accept, condone, and learn to believe you deserve. This is so simple. But I tried so hard to make it complicated.”

Yeah, it’s not difficult. Love yourself. And then fight for what you love. Maybe it starts and ends there.

Header photo taken from ‘Fright Night’s’ at the PNE, 2014.