Have you made peace with healthy anger?
There's something in the air around anger. It's coming up more often in coaching conversations in one form or another. And there are plenty of reasons in the world to feel angry.
Yet anger remains one of the most taboo emotions in our relationships - especially for women, rescuers and over-givers - despite being important to boundaries and healthy vitality. Anger can also help break through the inertia of procrastination when there's something you really want to do, by bringing the cost of not doing it into focus.
In a peer-coaching group session, we shared practices that help clients work with anger and break through feeling stuck or low.
Here are three you can try:
[The principle is to feel the physical experience of anger - large muscles tensing, heat in the chest and face, a faster heartbeat - without analysing it or acting it out - staying in contact with it without losing awareness. It's not about venting; it's about befriending and rechanneling energy.]
Pushing a wall: Push firmly and let your body engage.
Wringing a towel: Give it a good twist and turn.
Aikido parry: Move your arm to deflect an imaginary attack, slowly but firmly (this helped me a lot years ago).
Bring awareness to how your body tenses, and to how it relaxes fully. Practise this cycle when you're NOT angry, so you become familiar with it. Let the cycle of tensing-relaxing be fully known. Keep breathing throughout.
Notice what shifts in your relationships and confidence. Practised with gentle awareness, these can become gestures of Compassionate Ruthlessness.
Does it become easier to say no or speak up, without bottling things up or exploding? Do physical symptoms of tension like headaches or back pain shift?
Emotions emerge from physical sensations, beliefs and habits. Get to know them and they can serve rather than control you.
Have a great week,
Amina
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