What To Do With Anger

The other day I came down the stairs to see a heap of candy wrappers, soggy lollipop sticks, and a brand new jar of Nutella that had been opened and been exposed to sticky toddler hands that were being used as spoons. 

My newly 4 year old (on his birthday party day) pushed a chair over, climbed up above the refrigerator, opened the locked cupboard and took out the candy basket, Nutella jar and whatever else that tickled his fancy that morning. 

My body filled with anger, all I could see was what I thought to be the cause of my anger. And then my brain started doing interesting things. It started seeing more and more reasons why this 4 year old was causing me grief. 

Through out the day I kept finding little squirrel holes filled with stashed candy. I found it in the closets, in old suitcases, I found it under beds and in shoes. I just couldn’t shake the anger, it kept coming up full blast following me throughout the day. 

Anger sure doesn’t feel good inside. It feels hot and aggressive like its trying to escape my body. It followed me throughout the day. (All while I am doing birthday preparations)

If it doesn’t feel good why was I  holding onto it for so long. And even WANT to feel angry with someone. 

Yuck, I just don’t like how it feels. 

But love, love brings this full and peaceful feeling into my body. Love feels light and freeing. When I’m feeling love throughout my body I feel like I can think clearly and make decisions easily. I can go about my day with a pep in my step, dancing about. 

Anger just takes over. It is all consuming it stops our ability to think clearly. It halts our progression because it keeps us in a tight tunnel vision. It can only see what it thinks has caused us this anger. It sees nothing else. Actually it then starts seeing more and more of the problem.  

Anger, like all negative emotions has to be dealt with one way or another or it will do what it pleases. (Like follow you throughout your day when your wanting to love on this birthday boy and bake his birthday cake for example)

There are four things we can do with negative emotion. The first thing is to resist it, that’s when we sweep things under the rug and just basically ignore it. The second is react, that’s when we feel the emotion (like anger) and allow it to take over our body. It manifests by crying, throwing things, yelling and so forth. The third thing we do is avoid. Avoiding you might all know pretty well. That’s when we feel the yucky and we want to feel good. So what do we do? We shop, we eat, we facebook scroll, we eat, we shop some more. That’s when I find myself with a bowl of ice cream scrolling facebook. But anyways I digress. Those are all things we do with our emotions but we are not actually allowing our body to process them. 

The final way, the ideal way, the way of “getting over” an emotion so we can function once again is this:

 The key is to truly allow it to come into our body. 

To sit with it without judgement. To even recognize what we are feeling. To label the emotion. To take a moment to describe how it is feeling in our body. To recognize that it is a vibration running through us. Our body is trying to tell us what is happening in our mind. 

Understanding this is essential to making it through this mortal experience here on earth. 

This IS the human experience. 

I am going to get angry with my children, I am going to be scared when they don’t come home at night as teenagers, I am going to be hurt when they tell me they hate me, or whatever else is coming my way as my children grow. 

So feel the emotions, allow them to be part of your experience as a wife and mother. They ARE the experience. Don’t let anger consume you (like me) and rob you of the beautiful feeling of love that is ALWAYS available to us. Don’t criticize yourself when you are mad, or sad, or disappointed. Be there for yourself in those moments, come to yourself with compassion and curiosity. Ask yourself, ‘huh, I wonder why I’m so off today?’ 

Take a moment to meet your brain and your body right where they are. Love yourself right where you are so you can embrace this crazy crazy beautiful ride of the human experience. That is all.