Anger is not my usual emotion. I tend to be more on the calm end of the spectrum than the angry end so this year has taken me by surprise. Not only have I experienced anger, I’ve experienced out and out rage. This is a totally new experience for me. Don’t get me wrong - I’ve definitely been cross at times, angry and upset. But rage? Never had that before.

I know right - how can I get to midlife without having experienced rage before? But somehow I did. And the funny thing is, my anger and rage have not been provoked by any living being. No person has done something to me that sent me into a seething rage. The anger came from the experiences I was having. Those around me were left confused and worried that they had done something wrong as I seethed away and made myself scarce as I tried to deal with it.

My initial rage lasted weeks. It wasn’t a flash in the pan. It was a full on, hard core, intense experience. I didn’t really know quite how to deal with it. I waited it out for a while, thinking it would dissipate. It didn’t.

What I tried

I journaled and meditated, went for walks and listened to positive music. Still the rage was there. What to do? Eventually I connected with an energy healer I know but by then I thought I had simmered down. Apparently not. He told me he could feel the anger coming off me so it was still buried in me, even though I thought it was pretty much sorted. He helped me work through it and I felt a lot calmer again.

This was three months ago. Since then, I’ve been okay but seemed to be more emotional and trying very hard to keep a lid on things as everything in my life seemed to be happening all at once. It’s pretty obvious now that I had only dealt with the issues on a surface level. But they were still there, stuffed down because I really didn’t know what to do with them. And they were uncomfortable. I didn’t like feeling anger and rage.

Surprise!

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the anger rose up again. This time it was while I was on holiday. I thought about the events that had happened over the last four months and worked myself up into quite a state.

I realised what I was doing and that I was working myself up but I couldn’t stop myself. In hindsight, this was exactly what I needed because I started venting to the Universe. And man, did I let rip! I ranted and raved, screamed and yelled, swore (which I never do) and just let the Universe know exactly what I thought of it all. I spent the whole day doing this, first on a beach by myself, then in a spa pool by myself (trying to calm myself down a bit - didn’t work), splashing water around in my anger. I didn’t hold back. I told them exactly what I thought of it all.

And the next day, I felt SO much better. It was like a weight had lifted off my shoulders. I felt calm and peaceful. Life looked better. I could move on. Clearly I’d been holding onto my emotions all that time, only thinking I’d dealt with them when in reality I’d just pushed them to one side.

So what have I learnt?

Anger is a secondary emotion. It’s caused by other emotions that arise and we quickly cover them up with anger because we don’t want to feel the hurt, fear, frustration, disappointment, not feeling good enough, unsafe, etc. In a nanosecond we move from those uncomfortable feelings very quickly and unconsciously straight into anger.

Even though I know to look below the anger and find out what the real problem is (i.e. any of those emotions above), and I’ve used this technique many times before, what I really needed in this instance was to have a voice, let it all out warts and all and to be heard (even if it was only by the Universe). And only then, once I had released those emotions, could I move on.

No thunderbolts

It didn’t matter that no one replied. In fact I think it was quite good. If someone had tried to rationalise things, problem solve or calm me down that would have just been fuel on the fire. And the Universe didn’t send down a thunderbolt to show their dissatisfaction with me. In fact, I feel like I was MEANT to voice my feelings and get it all out of my system. I tend to store my emotions, rather than speak them, so this was a lesson in the importance of getting them out.

I now can remember the feelings of discomfort that the anger was giving me for four months, yet at the time I felt like I had dealt with it. There were heightened emotions, frustrations, resentments and a general dissatisfaction with everything. Now that I’m out of that space, I can see it. When I was in it I couldn’t. But now I know.

More awareness

In the future I’m hoping to be more aware of this, more conscious of the discomforts in my body that are telling me things need resolving. I know I won’t get it right all the time but I have more awareness and plan to use this to voice and release those pent up emotions. I much prefer the calmness.

This is simply my experience over the last few months. It may or may not be helpful for you but I hope that in sharing it you can recognise your emotions and give yourself a voice as well, so that you can release and move on rather than allow those underlying emotions to fester and not be dealt with.

As my recent Instagram post said “If you are not speaking it, you are storing it” and we’ve just heard that’s not a good idea!

Karen