What is it all about?

Anger is an important signaling system letting you know that you perceive a threat. It is meant to draw your attention to something so that you can take care of yourself or others. In the context of recovering from an abusive relationship, anger can indicate progress. Anger also can be a sign that someone is wanting to protect themselves.

When you are mindful enough to recognize anger as a signal, you can use it as a cue to immediately engage in a structured intervention. Effective interventions include at least these basics: naming it, accepting that it's okay to have it, feeling it in your body, and looking for the feelings and needs underneath it.

Anger becomes entrenched when you fan the flames of it with your thoughts and behavior. For example:

• Thought: Things should be different than they are. 

• Thought: Someone should act different than they are.

• Behavior: Yelling, blaming, judging, stomping about, etc.

Meeting someone in anger while experiencing a sense of safety can be very challenging because anger is often associated with violent behavior of one sort of another. Tragically, for those who are often angry, there is cycle of not being heard again and again. This cycle leaves loneliness and more reactivity in its wake. Part of accessing a sense of safety while another is angry is learning how to meet that person and learning how to set a needs-based boundary.

Lastly, anger can also be habitual. Understanding anger as a habit gives you access to a wide array of strategies for working with it. These include body awareness, replacement strategies, obtaining a critical mass of clarity, and identifying an underlying need for healing.