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If I were to personify anger, I would describe it as a mix between a stalwart castle sentry and an ancient sage. Anger sets your boundaries by walking the perimeter of your soul and keeping an eye on you, the people around you, and your environment. If your boundaries are broken (through the insensitivity of others or in any other way), anger comes forward to restore your sense of strength and separateness. The questions for anger are: “What must be protected?” and “What must be restored?” Both protection and restoration can occur quickly when you move anger’s heated intensity into your imaginal boundary. This gives you something immediate and honorable to do with your anger. With the intensity of anger, you can reset your boundary and restore your sense of self. All by itself, this simple movement will address your anger and circumvent any need for internal or external violence, because your boundary will be properly restored. When you’re fortified in this way, your ferocity will recede naturally, which will allow you to speak and act from a position of strength, rather than from brutality or passivity.
If you instead repress your anger, you’ll be unable to restore your boundary because you won’t have the energy you need to protect yourself; therefore, further damage will inevitably follow the initial affront. If you choose to dishonorably express your anger at the person who offended against you, your boundary will be dangerously unguarded, just as it would be if your castle sentry left his post and went out on a rampage. When your anger is used as a weapon and your territory is left without a sentry, your psyche will have to pour more anger into the situation. If you habitually express your anger, you’ll end up expressing this new infusion of anger as well, and you’ll break your boundary (and the boundaries of others) even further. This is how escalating rages and furies get started—the problem doesn’t come from the essential energy of anger, but from the unskilled and dishonorable use of anger when it arises.
When your anger flows freely, you won’t even know it’s there; it will simply help you maintain your boundaries, your inner convictions, and your healthy detachment. Free-flowing anger will allow you to laugh compassionately at yourself and set your boundary mercifully because both actions arise from the inner strength and honorable self-definition anger imparts. When your anger is not allowed its natural flow, you’ll have trouble setting and maintaining your boundary, you’ll tend to dishonor or enmesh with others, and your self-image will be imperiled by your reliance on the capricious opinions of the outside world.
Anger also comes forward when you witness others being made vulnerable through injustice or cruelty. Anger is a social emotion in that way; it doesn’t want to see anyone get hurt unnecessarily. When any of us chooses to unmask or to be vulnerable, the resulting openness is healing. However, that same level of openness and vulnerability, if it comes about without our permission, is nearly always threatening and invasive. And whether you’re being hurt or I am, my anger will be alerted. This invasion may also bring up fear, sadness, depression, or shame, but it is anger that both signals the injury and creates new boundaries after any invasive incidents. Because there is usually a layer of emotion right under anger, anger is often misrepresented as a secondhand emotion, which leads people to view it as unimportant or counterfeit. This is a dangerous mistake.
All emotions travel in groups and pairs, and all emotions are intimately connected to one another. You don’t call sadness counterfeit, even though it often arises alongside fear and shame, and usually leads to joy when you’ve truly let go. You don’t call fear counterfeit, even though it usually travels with anger, and often leads to contentment when you’ve skillfully addressed your fears. Similarly, you shouldn’t call anger counterfeit, no matter which emotions travel with it or which forms of happiness arise after you skillfully restore personal boundaries. Anger’s basic message is one of protection, for yourself certainly, but also for others. Anger will even protect your other emotions by running out in front of them in times of danger. If you’ve ever been paralyzed by terror and had your anger rescue you and shout down whatever was petrifying you, you already know how helpful anger can be. Anger is just as irreplaceable as sadness, fear, joy, or any other emotional state. There is a special alliance between anger and sadness (see section entitled “Notes”) that contributes incredible strength and elasticity to your psyche, and another alliance between anger and fear (see in section entitled “FEAR AND ITS RELATION TO ANGER”) that promotes brilliant, instinctive focus. But these alliances only flourish when each of the emotions can behave in its own specific way.
Healthy anger sets your boundary and helps you engage more effectively because it allows you to relate authentically and respectfully. When you have an awakened connection to your anger and a clear sense of your own boundary, you’ll be able to honor boundaries and individuality in others; therefore, your relationships won’t be based on power struggles, projections, or enmeshment. However, if you don’t have access to your vital, boundary-defining anger, you’ll be undifferentiated, certainly, but you’ll also be dangerous to the people around you. If you repress your anger, you’ll endanger others by creating a passive and poorly defined boundary that will lead you to enmesh yourself in their lives. And if you dishonorably express your anger, you’ll create an imposing, fear-inducing boundary that will degrade the stability of everyone around you. When you can instead channel this noble emotion properly, you’ll be able to maintain your boundary—and protect the boundaries of others—with honor.
Many people think that if we could just shed our sense of entitlement or separateness and accept that we’re all one, then peace would surely result, and anger would vanish. This idea seems logical at first, but if you sit with it awhile, you’ll see that it doesn’t come from empathic intelligence. It depicts boundaries and self-preservation as impediments to peace and relatedness—when both are actually prerequisites for peace and relatedness. You cannot relate coherently to another person if you don’t know who you are (or where you begin and end), just as you cannot nurture peace or honor the needs of others until you understand and meet your own needs. The idea that we’re all one, though it seems fine at first glance, proves to be deeply flawed when you look at it with all of your intelligences.
When we drop our vital, anger-supported boundaries and ignore our individual needs and wishes, we become spectacularly unprotected (we lose the “skin” of our psyches). This then sets off a chain reaction of emotional disturbance and psychological instability. I’ve noticed that when people try to maintain such a self-abandoning position, they often fall into cycles of depression (which often arise when you lose your connection to your healthy anger and your individuality) or anxiety (which arises when you lose your instincts). When anger is driven into the shadow by the “all one” mindset, turmoil results. It has to, because when the psyche is unprotected, anger becomes incredibly necessary, and if anger is continually forced into the shadows, it can only erupt in shadowy ways.
Let me say, though, that the “all one” mindset is not completely untrue from a five-element perspective. In fact, in our fiery, visionary spirits (which, if neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor is correct, may actually reside in the right hemispheres of our brains)[9] we are all one. If we can intimately connect with our spirited vision through focusing and grounding, we’ll always have access to a deep and abiding sense of oneness with all life. Oneness in spirit is healthy and natural, and it doesn’t require the destruction of boundaries, the denial of anger, the separation of elements, or the abandonment of self.
Intellectually, we can work to become one with others. We can work toward agreement and learn to think alike, but oneness in the intellect often requires the restriction of the gusting and flowing movements the air element likes best. Oneness in the air element usually requires the squelching of individual thought processes and the denial of individual emotional reactions (which, sadly, forces the entire water element into the shadow). Though we can all easily agree intellectually about the basics—such as love, health, safety for children, and security—ideological disagreements about how to create or sustain those basics have kept our war industries thriving since the beginning of human history. Oneness in the air element cannot be supported in the real world, because it is a form of intellectual imprisonment. We cannot all think alike, nor should we try to. Intellectual freedom is an absolute necessity.
In the watery emotional realm, it’s pretty easy to become one with others. It’s called empathy when it’s skillfully done and enmeshment when it’s not. However, it’s not healthy to be utterly empathic with everyone you meet (trust me!). Your emotions need to flow in your own life, not in your friend’s, or your spouse’s, or your family’s. If you maintain a constant, unwavering level of empathic receptivity without any balancing or cleansing practices, your life will become completely disordered, which will throw your angers into high gear as they try to restore your fragmented boundary. You’ll move from anger to rage in a split second, you’ll suffer through cycling guilts and depressions, and you may even drop into suicidal urges or the “soft suicide” of addictions.
The honorable sentry of anger begs you not to attempt emotional oneness with others unless you have highly developed skills and know exactly what you’re doing. Even then, I can report from many decades of empathic experience that it is far better to teach others to make empathic contact with themselves than it is to translate their emotions for them (which can lead to unhealthy dependencies). It is far better to respect the sanctity and native intelligence of others and use your empathic skills inside your own psyche. Besides, it is actually easy to create sacred emotional space for the people in your life in a nonenmeshing way—by simply welcoming all emotions as true and necessary. This level of empathy won’t hurt anyone because it doesn’t require you to erase your boundaries, throw away your anger, or move all your furniture into other people’s emotional lives.
In your earthy body, oneness is impossible. There is no way to become physically one with another person. We can’t climb into other people’s bodies; we can’t even trade blood or body parts unless the procedures are done very carefully. There is no way on earth to achieve bodily oneness with anyone else—it’s a ridiculous notion.
Similarly, in the center of the village inside you—in your personality—you cannot attain oneness with any other personality. You are a unique and irreplaceable creature; your central nature has never existed before, and it will never exist again. Your personality can’t ever be one with any other personality, because you are a complete original. Please remember this as you work with your boundary-defining anger; it will help you understand and support your need for bodily sanctity, intellectual freedom, emotional distinctiveness, and personal autonomy.
Spiritual oneness does not require any effort; you simply welcome your fiery vision by focusing and grounding yourself inside your vibrant, anger-supported boundary. Then you’ll have free access to fiery oneness through your visions, dreams, and daydreams. True and healthy oneness is a very simple thing to achieve; all you have to do is become one with your own visionary fire element, which means learning to integrate yourself with the help of the defining capacities your healthy anger contributes to you.
When you channel your anger properly, it will restore your boundary and your sense of honor. When you go on a rampage, you dishonor every soul you encounter (including your own). Similarly, when you weaken your boundary with repression, you become enmeshed with others and lose your sense of distinction and clarity, which paves the way for all sorts of crimes against honesty and humanity. If you can instead channel your anger into your boundary and light it afire, you will create a radiant sacred space around your soul that will enable you to focus yourself, ground yourself, and work with the many flows in your psyche. When you’re centered and grounded inside your strong, anger-supported boundary, you’ll be able to speak, act, protect, and restore honorably—you won’t need to retreat into a repressive deflation or explode into an expressive rampage.
Let’s look at a specific example: Imagine that someone offends you by calling you an idiot. This will usually bring anger forward, and anger exists to help you maintain your sense of self while protecting you and the people around you. If you choose to express your anger, you’ll most likely respond in an equally offensive manner. Though this counterattack may help you restore your sense of self in that instant, it will nearly always ignite increased anger in the offending person (who, you must realize, is already boundary-impaired, as is evidenced by the initial attack on you). In most cases, your counterattack will only increase the conflict, which will further endanger you and your attacker as your interaction deteriorates into mutual belligerence and hostility. When anger is expressed in knee-jerk and dishonorable ways, it cannot protect or restore anyone; instead, both parties will walk (or limp) away stripped of dignity, compassion, and honor. In this graceless exchange, the protective, restorative, and honorable intensities inside anger are utterly squandered.
Now consider going in the opposite direction: Imagine stifling and repressing the anger that comes forward when you’re called an idiot. You’ll most likely ignore the offense or make excuses for the offensive person—neither of which will restore your boundary or protect the boundary of your offender (if repression is your habitual response to offenses against you, please see the section on the relationship between anger and sadness in chapter 22). Anger comes forward not simply to protect you, but also to give you the strength you need to meet your opponent honorably during conflict.
This is a crucial point—when people are allowed to offend against you without consequence (though this may seem to be a compassionate way to deal with improper behavior), they will be just as damaged by the exchange as you are. Certainly, your own boundary and dignity will be injured in the attack, but if you do nothing—if you say nothing—you’ll also ensure your attacker’s descent into abusiveness and isolation by refusing to honor the conflict that has presented itself for healing. If you refuse to engage with people when they behave improperly, you dishonor them and the relationship. When you repress your anger, you degrade your own sense of boundaries and honor, certainly, but you also disrespect your opponent and ignore the uncomfortable truth of the situation. This has a devastating effect, because when you refuse to address your genuine emotions, you invite discord and deception into each of your relationships and every area of your life.
Now let’s look at a third response: Taking honorable hold of your anger and channeling it properly means allowing your anger to arise when you’re attacked. It means welcoming the potent surge of indignation and honoring the fact of the attack, instead of brushing it away with pseudospiritual gentility (or launching your anger on a search-and-destroy mission). The channeling of anger is probably the easiest task in the emotional realm, because anger sets boundaries, so all you have to do is imagine adding the intensity of anger to your boundary. You just choose a color, heat, sound, or sensation to represent your anger and pour it into your boundary. You can even set your boundary on fire if you’re really steamed (I call this the “flame on!” boundary). This quick movement honors your anger and increases your focus so you can halt the attack in its tracks, focus yourself, and ground yourself strongly, all of which will help you see clearly. When your own boundary is restored, you’ll understand that your opponent feels endangered or diminished and is trying to create an emergency boundary in unskilled ways: by smashing yours and weakening you.
Instead of counterthrusting and increasing your opponent’s sense of danger (or ignoring the conflict and increasing his or her abusive tendencies), you can protect yourself skillfully while modeling proper anger behavior. And remember, because we’re all empaths, your opponent will certainly sense that something new is going on, and he or she may learn through your example. When you’re centered and grounded, you won’t have to lash out or fold into yourself, because from within your restored personal boundary, you’ll be able to protect yourself and your opponent while continuing to maintain your boundary throughout the exchange. You can also set a verbal boundary by questioning your opponent’s behavior (“I’m sorry, but why are you picking a fight?”) or by bringing some self-effacing humor forward to defuse the situation (“I know I can be a goofball, but ‘idiot’ seems awfully harsh, don’t you think?”). When your anger is honored and welcomed into anger-inducing situations, it will no longer be a mindless hooligan or an unsuitably softened weakling; instead, it will take its rightful place as the honorable sentry of your soul and the soul of anyone fortunate enough to cross your path.
The Taoist saying “The glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall” is especially valuable in gaining an understanding of the honorable use of anger. Let’s face it: your boundaries will be threatened regularly, your self-esteem will be destabilized, your most cherished beliefs will be attacked, and your sense of right and wrong will often be violently disrupted. The task of a whole person is not to hide from these necessary diminishments, but to fall and rise again with honor, compassion, and integrity. Healthy anger does not (and should not) stop you from falling; instead, it gives you the strength to rise every time you fall. When you repress your anger, it is as if you’re trying not to meet the challenges of life, as if not noticing your injuries will somehow keep you from falling (if this is your modus operandi, please reread the section on anger and forgiveness in chapter 8). When you express your anger dishonorably, it is as if you’re trying to control life, as if your ferocity will make falling unnecessary. Sadly, neither position will bring you valid or practical strength. Repressers fall very far (often plummeting into depressions and cycling anxieties) because they separate themselves from the strength their healthy angers bring, which makes them incapable of rising again. On the other hand, dishonorable expressers also fall in tragic ways—into violence, abusiveness, extreme isolation, and self-immolating behaviors—because they hurl their angers in every direction, which leaves them boundary-impaired and unable to rise again.
When you can channel your angers, you won’t be invincible. Actually, you’ll continue to fall all the time, but you’ll also rise just as surely because you’ll be able to restore your focus and your boundaries at the drop of a hat (or the rise of a hackle, in truth). When you’re attacked or affronted and your anger surges forward, you’ll be able to channel its intensity into your boundary and rise up from the floor. When you channel your anger in this way, its intensity won’t be a liability. In fact, its intensity will correlate directly to your ability to define, focus, and ground yourself. Your anger will enable you to define yourself succinctly and draw a line in the sand, as it were. No one will be able to feel your anger when you channel it in this way, because you won’t express it or focus it on anyone—you won’t make angry faces or say angry things; you’ll just make your boundary stronger and more vibrant.
In an honorable engagement, your anger will give you the strength to recognize your wounds and your fall, which is something expressers and repressers cannot do. They waste their energy and endanger themselves by pretending the fall hasn’t happened. If you can channel your anger properly, you’ll see your fall clearly, not from a stance of victimhood, but with an awareness of the skill of your opponent and the extent to which you were open to attack.
Anger only arises in response to real threats. If I were to yell at you, “You are a Lithuanian sheepherder!” you would probably just laugh. My attack would gain no hold on you; therefore, your anger would not rise. However, if I were to whisper, “You’re not very good to your mother, are you?” your anger would probably flare up in a split second, because I would have hit a very sore spot. If you repress your anger in the pretense that I didn’t wound you, this spot will remain unhealed and unaddressed (and I’ll be able to bring it up whenever I want to best you). However, if you express your anger all over me in the pretense that you’re too fierce to be wounded, you might feel better in that moment, but you’ll have done nothing to clean up your relationship with your mother—and you’ll now have unfinished business with me. However, if you can honor the wound I’ve caused, immediately channel your anger and reset your boundary, you’ll be able to respond honorably to the accuracy of my attack—because, let’s face it, I nailed you.
First, you can tell me that I’ve hurt you and ask me to explain myself; clearly, I have some vital information for you (or you wouldn’t be so steamed up). If I’m able to speak coherently about what I see, we’ll be able to uncover important information about your real or imagined treatment of your mother. If the situation between us remains heated, you can continue to pour your anger into your boundary (and continue to rise every time you fall). This continuous boundary-setting won’t necessarily reduce the pain of your relationship with your mother (or silence me), but it will bring much-needed focus to your psyche. With that focus, you can set a boundary between yourself and my projections, ground any areas of discomfort in your body, burn contracts with me, your mother, and your attitude toward her—or any of a thousand other things. In this honorable exchange, you will surely fall, but you will just as surely rise. You’ll clarify your relationship with me, gain a new understanding of your connection and contracts with your mother, and honor your true emotional responses (whatever they may be) from within the sacred space created by your anger. When you honor your anger and recognize your wounds, you’ll gain more than just strength. You’ll gain clarity, wisdom, the capacity for mercy, and the ability to rise from any fall.
When you learn to channel your anger, you’ll discover that all angers arise in response to people or events that are important to you. In order for a boundary violation to occur, you must first give a person or situation significance in your life. Anger, in its strange way, is an honoring of the person or situation before you, because things and people that are unimportant cannot anger you! This is the most difficult thing to face when you’re angry. It’s easier to snap, “I don’t care about that idiot (or that stupid thing)!” If, instead, you can use your powerful anger to reset your boundary and burn your contracts with whatever has angered you, you’ll honor the fact that you’re a sensitive person who has come upon a deeply important issue. You’ll learn vital truths about the issues you need to face and the relationships you need to mend or honor.
Healthy anger is one of the most decisive and self-defining emotions you have. It exists to protect you, your moral structure, and the people around you. Remember that your anger and your personal boundary are intimately connected. If you have trouble with boundaries, you’ve got trouble with anger, and vice versa. Support your healthy anger by studying the boundary skills in section “Exercise: Defining Your Boundaries”, and support your boundary by working honorably with your anger!
Anger of any kind always goes into your boundary, either as a heat, a color, a sound, a sensation, or a movement. If it helps, you can imagine yourself as the sun and feel your anger shining or emanating out of your body and into your boundary. This practice welcomes and channels your anger quickly and succinctly while it resets your boundary, protects your body from overwhelm, and invigorates your psyche. With this burst of energy and protection, you can deal honorably with the angering situation, rather than hurting yourself or others through repression or dishonorable expression.
When your boundary is reinvigorated, you’ll be able to focus your attention and ground yourself strongly; both actions will help you remain upright and functional in the conflict. If your opponent is projecting an incredible amount of intensity at you, your angers will most likely intensify in response. Continue to pour these new angers into your boundary (if you keep them bottled inside your body, you’ll most likely erupt). This is the central skill in the anger practice—to continue pouring your anger into your boundary as you speak or argue, rather than retreating into the old habits of squelching your anger or hurling it at others. If you get really hot, imagine the heat grounding you strongly, and feel free to warn your opponent or take a break from the conflict for a moment. When I do this, I stomp away to complain privately (albeit loudly) or burn my contracts with my opponent with flamethrowers and bombs. In essence, I honor the intensity of my anger without destroying my opponent’s soul. When I return (usually in less than two minutes—empathic work is incredibly swift), my opponent and I can reenter the fray, which never contains the same intensity as when I left. Usually, other emotions arise from within the honored anger, and these help us move the conflict in new directions.
Remember the anger questions: “What must be protected?” and “What must be restored?” These questions will help you maintain the conflict honorably as you continue to protect and restore your boundary and the dignity of your opponent. Know that your task isn’t to win or lose, but to gain an understanding of your wounds and your vulnerability so that you can strengthen yourself in meaningful ways. You cannot strengthen yourself by repressing your anger or by going on a rampage with it; you can only gain useful strength through conscientious engagement in the anger-inducing conflicts that present themselves for healing. Remember this: conflicts will occur, you’ll be affronted and wounded, and you will fall—because every setback is necessary for your growth and evolution. Your healthy anger doesn’t make you invincible; it gives you the strength to rise every time you fall, with dignity, compassion, and humor.
When you’ve resolved your conflict, take a few private moments to reground and refocus yourself, burn a few contracts, move your body, and rejuvenate yourself. Anger releases incredible amounts of energy into your system, so it’s a good idea to refresh yourself and bring every part of you into the present moment, where you’re a much different person than you were when the conflict began. When you’re done, thank your anger and let it know it’s totally welcome in your soul as a sentry, a boundary setter, a conflict mediator, and an honorable protector.
Many people mistakenly respond to anger in others by affecting a falsified calm, as if there’s no reason to be angry. Though this may seem helpful, it’s actually a form of repression that severely isolates the angry person. If you can instead set your boundary and match the quality of the anger that has presented itself for healing, you’ll create sacred space. The angry person will no longer be isolated or ashamed because he or she will have an ally in you. Through this alliance, you can support others in restoring their boundaries—by letting them complain and de-steam, by commiserating with them, and by maintaining your own boundary throughout the engagement. This simple honoring won’t require a great deal of your time or energy. You won’t need to counsel, create solutions, or become a sage, because when people can get in touch with the reasons for their anger, they can usually find their own solutions within a few moments. Conversely, if people are cajoled, studiously ignored, or shamed out of their angers, they won’t understand why they got angry in the first place, and they’ll be unlikely to learn or grow.
Anger arises when protection is required; therefore, you should take heed and protect yourself before you engage. The analogy about the use of airplane oxygen masks is helpful here: in an air emergency, you should put on your own mask before helping others with theirs. In an anger emergency, you should set your own boundary strongly before attempting to intervene. You don’t need to feel angry; you can just brighten your boundary with the color or quality of felt sense you use when you’re angry. If the person you’re trying to support is raging, you can set your boundary on fire. In essence, you can protect yourself while you match the intensity of the situation, so you can understand how the person is feeling and become an ally in his or her struggle.
It’s very helpful, when dealing with angry people, to repeat to yourself silently, “What needs to be protected and what needs to be restored?” This will help you stay on task and allow the angry person to work honorably through his or her anger. Don’t try to create boundaries for angry people or “teach” them in any way; interference will actually degrade their boundaries further (which may bring their anger down on you). Just keep setting your own boundary—this practice alone will maintain sacred space and an emotionally welcoming atmosphere, which is the most healing and empowering thing you can do for yourself or anyone else.
Though it may seem contradictory, habitually angry people are actually deeply caring people, because anger always runs in direct proportion to concern (people can’t get angry about things that have no significance to them). When people in your life are habitually angry, bless them—they’re feeling too much of the world for their comfort, and their boundaries are in tatters. Their hearts are usually in pain, not because of their anger, but because they don’t know how to address their profound concerns in healthier ways. Habitually angry people see the injustice and boundary violations all around them, and they feel those violations right inside their bodies, so they lash out with anger in the desperate hope that they can control the world and stop the pain. They can also be extremely depressed underneath all their raging. Their explosive behavior doesn’t work at all, and habitually angry people are hard to be around, but in their essence, they are our deepest humanitarians and our greatest strivers for peace. That may seem counterintuitive, but it’s the absolute truth, as you’ll soon learn when you honor the anger in other people instead of shaming it, ignoring it, or counterattacking. Bless the angry people in your life; they are dealing with foundational issues of honor, certainty, protection, restoration, and boundary setting.
If anger causes any unpleasant aftereffects, just sit with them empathically. Anger should create changes in your body, because it contains intense heat and activation. You should feel energized, empowered, and even a little antsy; however, if you feel uncomfortably jangled and fired up, headachy, or nervous in the pit of your stomach, you may have forged a contract that helps you feel terrible when anger arises. Most of us carry some form of this contract because we’ve been shamed out of our anger since day one. We’ve also done some terrible things with our anger, so these contracts were probably quite protective and valid when we had no skills. Now, however, we have skills, so we can look at these contracts with new eyes.
Healthy anger, like any other emotion, comes up, addresses an issue, and then moves on. If anger lingers, disturbs you, or creates tension headaches or stomach upsets, its flow is being impeded in some way. If you feel unwelcome or uncomfortable sensations attached to your anger, know that you may have some sort of punishing connection with anger (this can come from just about anyone or anywhere). If you can imagine this connection as a contract (or contracts—there can be many) and burn them, your anger will be able to flow properly and become the healing force it was meant to be.
Here’s how to do it: Focus and ground yourself and brighten your boundaries with a fiery light or felt sense. Now, imagine a contract materializing right in front of your troubled areas (or in front of your entire body if you’re really fired up). Take a deep breath into the area of your discomfort, gather it, and imagine breathing this discomfort out onto your contract as you exhale. Repeat this process—take another deep breath into the area of your discomfort, gather the discomfort once again, and imagine breathing it out onto your contract. Stay focused behind your boundary and observe this punishing contract from behind your eyes; in this way, you can gain some perspective on it. Know that this contract is separate from your free-flowing anger—and from you as a person.
Keep breathing into whatever sensations, thoughts, feelings, or images you sense, gather them, and breathe them onto your contract. If your first contract becomes loaded with material, move it aside, create a fresh contract, and continue working. When you feel done for now (punishing contracts often require many contract-burning sessions), roll up your contract (or contracts), throw it out of your personal space, and burn it with whatever emotional intensity you feel. Let it go. You’re done! Follow this session with your favorite rejuvenation practice, then go out and play!
Be aware: Repetitive angers, especially in men, can be signs of an underlying depressive condition. If you’re regularly angry, incensed, riled up about injustice, or peeved, please check in with your doctor or therapist. Anger is an intense emotion; if you express it constantly, you can easily send your brain chemistry and your endocrine system into a tailspin. Also, if your brain chemistry or your hormones are unbalanced, you may express your anger continually, even when another emotion might be more appropriate. In either case, please seek help and support.
There’s a wonderful saying for situations of emotional disturbance: “You can’t step into the same stream twice.” If your emotions are allowed to flow, they’ll respond differently each time they arise; however, if they’re dammed up (through repression, unskilled expression, shaming messages you’ve absorbed from others, or chemical and endocrine imbalances), they’ll repeat themselves monotonously. Watch for this in your emotional life. No emotion should become so ingrained and stagnant in your psyche that it appears with the same intensity every time it arises, becomes your emotion of choice, or creates lingering physical symptoms. Watch for emotions that have no differentiation or that cause lasting repercussions in your body or your behaviors—and know that it’s not the emotions that are causing the trouble. Something unhealthy is going on. If you’ve got unhealthy beliefs about your emotions, you know what to do: burn your contracts and move on! However, if burning your contracts doesn’t work, then please seek help.
Rage and fury are states that arise in times of extreme distress, either when anger has not been heeded, or when tremendous boundary violations have occurred (or vital personal sensitivities have been ignored). As such, the physical and emotional environments of enraged and furious people must be examined carefully. Their angers may have been building for years, and their jobs or home lives may be unbearable. Uncontrollable bouts of rage and fury can also cause (or stem from) organic imbalances. If your rages and furies persist unchanged after you’ve channeled them a few times, a visit to your doctor is necessary.
Rage and fury are rapids-level emotions that carry tremendous power. Expressed rages and furies nearly always endanger you and others, while repressed rages and furies wreak terrible damage throughout your psyche. However, when the powerful intensities of your rage and fury can be channeled into fierce boundary definition and the focused annihilation of overwhelming and destructive contracts, they will heal and strengthen you in amazing ways. The intensities inside rage and fury will restore your boundary in an instant, separate you from abusive and endangering behaviors, and move you bodily out of any victimlike behavior. Channeling these powerful emotions helps you think on your feet and act in the present moment—where nobody gets hurt.
Furies and rages arise when the intensity in anger isn’t quite enough to deal with the situation—when the boundary violations are severe and even life-threatening. In relationships, they appear after repeated attacks on your sense of self. Fury and rage step forward to tell you that people can only abuse you twice if you (1) don’t communicate your discomfort, or (2) don’t leave when your communication is ignored. Both emotions exist to give you the strength to incinerate your contracts and end your relationships with the infuriating people or situations in your life. You may not need to sever all contact with your abusers (that’s not what burning contracts is about), but you do need to allow fury and rage to step forward and help you end the abuse. Rage and fury aren’t going to let anyone tell them what to do, where to go, how to feel, or how to live—and this is precisely the attitude you need to destroy abusive contracts. Rage and fury say that enough is more than enough, and that all the abuse or boundary violations that went on before end now, in this instant, no questions asked, no excuses accepted. The ferocity inside rage and fury can give you pinpoint accuracy and the certainty you need to make swift and decisive moves away from entrapment and diminishment and into a fully resourced stance.
The key to channeling rage and fury is to welcome it, without hurling it onto others or slapping it down and affecting a mask of falsified virtuousness. Rage and fury only arise when you’re in true danger. They signal serious, ongoing threats to your moral base, your sense of self, your health, and even your life or the lives of others. Rage and fury aren’t responding to everyday concerns with everyday anger—they’re the next step up. Expressing them throws their messages and their potency right out of your life, while repressing them is almost like sitting on a pile of dynamite. Channeling them is the only real choice, which is why the mantra for any of the rapids-level emotions is: “The only way out is through.”
It is extremely important to pour your rage and fury into your boundary the second you feel them. Their intensity can disrupt your body if you try to repress them (or if you bring them to a boil in preparation for an attack on others). Rage and fury both call for the incendiary “flame-on!” boundary, which honors their intensities immediately while setting your boundary forcefully. When you’re inside such a fierce boundary, you’ll feel all the strength and intensity of your rage and fury without needing to take yourself or others out of commission. Again, no one will be endangered when you channel your emotions in this way because you’re not focusing your rage or fury in word or deed—you’re marshaling your own energies in your own private territory. You’re increasing your focus and your ability to ground and stabilize yourself. You’re protecting your body from damage, and you’re protecting other people from harm. You’re doing the right thing.
Once your boundary is intensely delineated with the ferociousness of rage and fury, you should burn contracts right away—with flamethrowers. If you’re in a conflict, it’s good to excuse yourself in such a way that your opponent knows you’re not leaving the conflict permanently, but that you’re protecting him or her while your rage and fury are present. Get away if you can, and burn your contracts like crazy (or complain like there’s no tomorrow). Don’t try to sit still or hamper your movements; these emotions bring a great deal of heat and ferocity with them, so feel free to let loose with stomping, howling, and shaking. Fierce movement honors your rage and fury without hurting anyone, and it clears out your body at the same time. You can even kickbox inside your boundary and use your hands and feet to smack contracts (or complaints) away from you before you burn them. You’ll be surprised at how quickly your rage and fury will move on when you welcome them in this way (because this too shall pass). They’ll give you specific information about the damage you’ve endured, they’ll give you the energy you need to restore your boundaries, they’ll help you move your body in empowering ways, and they’ll help you incinerate your contracts with the behaviors and relationships that brought them forward in the first place.
When you’ve channeled your rage and fury, you can return to the original conflict because your boundary and self-awareness will be restored, your body and psyche will be cleared out, and you’ll be revitalized; therefore, the previously enraging situation won’t influence you in the old ways. If you were once a represser, you will no longer be the boundary-impaired and self-abandoning person who agreed to the original contracts or situations. If you were once an expresser, you’ll no longer be the explosive and unstable person who caused chaos and discord everywhere you went. Your properly channeled rage and fury will allow you to act powerfully and succinctly—without hurting yourself or anyone else.
Bless your rage and fury, and know this: they only appear when you’re in grave danger. Rage and fury rise up, sword in hand, to save your life. Welcome them, and they’ll protect your unrepeatable soul. Channel them properly, and that sword will be transformed into a ceremonial dagger with which you can cut away the behaviors and beliefs that entrapped you in dangerous relationships and situations.
Please contact a doctor or therapist if your rage and fury persist unchanged after you’ve channeled them a few times. Repetitive cycles of rage and fury can exhaust every part of you—so take good care of yourself and reach out for help if you’re having trouble. You may need to fortify your body and your brain chemistry before you can work with your intense angers in this way. If you’re a trauma survivor, please read on, but also, please reach out for proper medical and psychological support.
Rage and fury have important functions in the psyches of unhealed trauma survivors (who are often dissociated and nearly always boundary-impaired). Many trauma survivors dissociate or distract themselves to escape their traumatic memories and flashbacks, which unfortunately ensures their further suffering. Suffering can only cease when full awareness is brought to it, and when people dissociate, they remove their awareness from their bodies and their everyday lives. This makes grounding and focusing impossible, which then degrades their boundaries and their sense of personal space; therefore, dissociated and distracted people almost never have functional boundaries—not empathically and not psychologically. Most dissociated people exhibit interior instability due to their lack of focus and definition, but most also exhibit classic interpersonal instability (they tend to choose unworkable jobs or relationships that further their suffering) because they aren’t able to make conscious choices in their lives. Most unhealed trauma survivors and dissociated people also have a tendency to erupt in rages and furies, which makes perfect sense when you understand the constant assaults they endure due to their lack of boundaries. All emotions come forward with the exact amount of energy needed to address the situation—no more, and no less. If people’s wounds are deep and ongoing, then their emotions have to be deep and primal in response (put another way, if the emotions are intense, then so are the wounds, and vice versa).
The full healing of trauma is a process of coming back from near-death into life again. This process is not neat and orderly, and it is never emotionless. It follows the deep logic of the soul, where the remembrance of the original wound and the knowledge of the three stages of initiation reside. When we connect with this deep logic, we can understand the function of rage and fury in the lives of unhealed trauma survivors; we can see their fierce boundary energies surging forward to replace that which was lost in the trauma. We can also see that everyday levels of anger aren’t called for, because traumatized boundaries have not simply been affronted or impaired. Boundaries broken in trauma (especially in childhood) are often completely destroyed. They often need to be rebuilt from scratch, and only rage and fury carry enough energy for that task. Rage and fury, then, aren’t always signs of dysfunction or instability; rather, they are specific healing responses to the instabilities created by trauma.
Rage and fury are fiercely protective emotions that only arise in times of extreme need; they’re absolutely necessary for rebuilding devastated boundaries and for establishing sacred space for the journey through the three-stage healing process. When a boundary is created with the intensity of rage and fury, the psyche will have the strength it needs to pass through the first two stages of the traumatic initiation on its way to the blessed liberation of stage three.
The empathic process of trauma healing does not come with maps or guidebooks. It is an intense and unique journey undertaken in the soul’s own time and in the soul’s own way. Though it is most usual for rages and furies to come forward first, this does not always occur. For some people, the first emotions that come forward are the fears, terrors, and panics that often travel alongside traumatic flashbacks. We will certainly study fear and panic in the chapters to come, but it is important to create strong anger- and rage-supported boundaries first. If you don’t have a good boundary, you won’t be able to ground or focus yourself. And if you try to go through the flashback process in a disheveled and unprotected state, you’ll probably throw yourself into a crisis. Don’t. You have time to get your feet under you, and you have time to prepare yourself for the journey.
The flashback process is incredibly important because it returns you to the atmosphere of your original wounding (stages one and two). When you’re in a fully resourced position, you’ll know that you’ve already survived the trauma, which means you’re already a full-fledged survival expert. Moving through your flashbacks from this stance is essentially a process of housecleaning—you release any trapped stances or emotions through grounding and contract burning while you ask your proper empathic questions, move your body, and even kickbox your way through the situation (this full process is detailed in the chapters on fear and panic). However, if you’re not properly grounded, focused, and defined, you’ll have no ground to stand on and no skills at your disposal, so the traumatic replay will almost certainly knock you flat, just as it did the first time. You’ll most likely dissociate, repress, or explode with whatever emotions you feel, or run for the nearest drug or distraction just to survive the pain.
Our empathic healing process helps you stop running, because it gives you the tools and information you need to face your traumatic memories head-on. When you can channel your rage and fury into your boundary, you can immediately create sacred space in which to do your deepest work. When you can ground yourself, you can stabilize your body no matter what sensations bubble up. When you can focus yourself inside your boundary, you can bring yourself back to center no matter what thoughts or visions come forward. When you can burn contracts, you can move anything out of you—behaviors, memories, flashbacks, pains, or even entire relationships. When you can channel your emotions, you can use them to help you burn old contracts and complete your traumatic reenactments in victorious ways. Then, when you’re done, you can rejuvenate yourself and restore flow to every part of your soul.
When you’re ready, you’ll be able to perform this full-bodied movement to the third stage of initiation. For now, though, your first task is to create the sacred space in which that work can occur—to channel your angers, rages, and furies into your boundary and into intensified grounding. These preliminary steps will stabilize your boundary system and increase your ability to maintain your focus. Using your anger and rage to increase your grounding will also help your body release traumatic sense-memories, perhaps of the car hitting you, the flame burning you, or the hand touching you. Your grounding will also help you dislodge the emotional debris you picked up during the trauma, and it will help your logical and linguistic intelligences (which store all the thoughts, plans, schemes, and decisions you made during and after your trauma) begin to relax their hypervigilance so that you can think clearly again.
Setting your boundary with rage and fury gives your fiery spirit a fully defined space in which to settle and interact; grounding your body helps you release trapped sensations and discomfort as you restore flow to your emotional realm and help your mind think clearly once again. This in turn supports your central nature by giving you full access to each part of the village inside you, which means you’ll no longer have to wage futile battles with your emotions, your thoughts, your sensations, your fiery visions, your memories, or your flashbacks. When you can channel your rage and fury properly, you’ll be able to rebuild your boundary, increase your focus, and heal your soul. Rage and fury are your guardians and your sentries. Learn to attend to them in honorable ways, and they’ll protect you, heal your traumas, and save your life.
Remember to welcome your anger in all its forms: as your free-flowing ability to set and maintain your boundary, as your mood-state ability to understand when injustice is occurring, and as the raging rapids that surge forward when injustices have gotten completely out of hand. Welcome and thank your anger.