Last week I talked about what our anger tells us about what is happening around us—if a boundary is being violated, we sense injustice, or if we have an expectation that isn’t being met. This week I want to talk about how anger gets expressed in the world, and how we can channel it into our work.

The Expression of Anger

Anger is the “fight” in “fight or flight.” It’s an emotion that everyone feels. However, because of social norms in our “civilized” society, people often don’t feel permission to admit that they are angry or express their anger out in the world. There can be a gendered dimension to this—women sometimes feel that it’s not acceptable for women to be angry—but men can also feel frozen in their anger, that if they express their anger people will get hurt. In any case, the bottom line is that anger is an emotion that is often difficult for people to access and express.

The problem is that when anger gets frozen inside a person for a very long time, it begins to fester. Festering anger becomes infected, like with a disease, metastasizing into a cancer, rotting a person from the inside. One word to describe this festering anger is hate.

Channeled Anger: Hate

I believe hate is simply anger that has turned into poison.

This is anger that has been locked up inside for so long, the volume keeps building and building, that at some point the pressure builds up so much that the lid bursts and the anger explodes. It gets to a point where it consumes a person and shapes their entire worldview.

I don’t think people are born hateful. I believe the environment shapes them to be that way—their concerns aren’t heard, their fears aren’t acknowledged. Eventually anger—a defensive emotion—transforms into hate as the final expression of a person defending what little they feel they have left.

Channeled Anger: Passion

I see emotions as information. Information isn’t inherently good or bad. Although unexpressed anger can be warped into hate, the good news is that processed and constructively expressed anger can be transmuted into passion.

To me, being passionate about something means that we care about it. We only get angry about things we care about. If we don’t care about something, it wouldn’t make us angry. Passion means we care about something so much that it consumes a good portion of our thoughts and perhaps our lifestyle.

“Do what you’re passionate about” is generic career advice we’ve all heard. I used to disregard it, but as I’ve explored more of my own anger, I’ve realized that this advice is spot on. The process of discovering what our passions are is where most people get tripped up. My clue for discovering passion is simply, “what am I angry about?”

The Drive to Make a Difference

This is where the anger connects to our work, and where I encouraged the two women (from last week) to begin their search. For most of us, this is going to be anger that connects to our sense of justice—what is true about the state of the world that when our nervous system perceives it, it manifests as anger? Here are some questions to begin this exploration:

·       What is wrong with the world?

·       What can’t I stand?

·       What has to be different?

·       What do I want to change?

·       What has to change?

·       What can’t I tolerate?

·       What has to end?

·       What isn’t fair?

·       What is wrong with how people are being treated?

·       What is wrong with what people are going through?

·       Who is suffering, that I can’t stand to watch suffer?

·       What has to be protected that isn’t being protected?

·       Who did God put me here to protect?

One woman I talked to last week is passionate about building community. How did she know that community matters to her? She described a scenario where in a public place, she heard a woman’s scream, and she immediately began to move in the direction of the scream. Nobody else except one man reacted in the same way. Her emotion was anger—“why doesn’t anyone other than me (and this one other guy) care about a stranger who might be in trouble?” Her conclusion was that if people felt like they were in community with the woman who might have needed help, they would have risen to her defense. But because people didn’t feel they were in community with each other, a vulnerable person who needed protection didn’t get the protection they needed.

Each of us is equally angry about something. We just have to find that anger, and let it be our north star.

Exercise

Journal on the following or discuss with a friend.

1)      Reflection

Reflect on the questions above. When I ponder those questions, what situations, imagery, people, causes or issues come up?

2)      Connecting to anger

Verbalize what you feel is wrong about the situation, imagery, or issue that came up. Can you state what is wrong?

What does your anger want to say about the situation? How does it feel to say it out loud?

You may feel blocked at this step! Many people do. Committing to our anger is a big deal. If the anger well runs deep enough, there is no turning back. Committing to something that big is a risk, and our old friend, fear, tries to protect us from a path from which there is no return.

3)      Action

What is the smallest action you can take today, or this week, to address what you feel is wrong with the world?

For many of us, openly stating to the world what we are angry about is the first step, especially those of us that hide our anger.

Ultimately, however, action is about making a difference. If you can already state your anger out loud, what is the smallest step you can take that would lead to eventually making a difference? It could be getting outside of your comfort zone and meeting new people committed to the same cause. It could be making a financial contribution. It could be blocking time to actively research what people are already doing about the thing you are angry about.

Action usually leads to more action, so just get started.