Healthy Expression of Anger as Activism | Amber Hawken Mindfulness Based CBT | YouTube Vlog

Unexpressed anger becomes violence against self or others. Be that mental, emotional, spiritual, verbal, or inaction. 

Don’t forget to listen to your anger, use its fuel to purify your own fears, and energize you to take empowered action. 

Don’t let it be wasted and mutate into aggression, passive resentment, bitter and twisted spite, revenge, or projected shame. 

Anger is similar in nature to fire. Fire purifies itself as it burns. 

Anger, in its most pure form, when honored fully, can be a purification of inner resistance that would have otherwise prevented us from taking action or speaking up, standing up, and showing up for ourselves in life. It uses beautiful energy to draw boundaries if we need a little more oomph for ourselves to action it. 

BUT, how often do you appreciate the energy boost and draw the boundary without projection or judgment?

We can appreciate that anger is a fuel that can work FOR US, and WITHIN US and is not meant to be used to consciously and intentionally cause other pain. 

If well related to, anger can be a catalyst for burning away old fears, powerlessness, or shame we push into the shadows. 

What commonly happens with anger, is people have years of their own inner battles with their sense of power and a little ball of self resentment begins to build within as we ignore a truth we didn’t express, action a niggle we noticed within, speak a desire, give permission to our power or say no to a request and or action. 

If we are to own our power and live in integrity with ourselves, we would have to admit it was us who was asleep, afraid, turning a blind eye, insecure, in denial, or not present to what we felt and when something outside of ourselves pokes this hard enough (e.g. the announcement of a world pandemic and regulations that conflict with internal values), the purification of anger can come out sideways as aggression, shame, blame, hate, judgment, cynicism or intimidation. It could even go the other way and spiral into a helpless sense of feeling at effect or victim to a situation at hand or in the past. 

Anger is probably one of the more powerful and most misunderstood emotions, second to grief (which is paradoxically the opposing force to joy and offers sweet sweet relief when honoured fully). There’s a lot of ‘rise’ happening within people at the moment. So here is a reminder to remember to not waste your anger by projecting it as aggression, and instead, let yourself feel the fire, the energy and burn inside and return to the vision of what you want and use the fuel of anger to create that, not destroy what is. 

The destruction of anything built on the premise of ego, fear, and pain will always naturally occur. We can influence the speed at which this happens by rising up and building the vision of what we want. The focus being living from an empowered mental and emotional state and therefore impacting the world and what’s creating around us with the energy we hold. 

hugs,

Ambs