HI Anita

Your post touches on this distinction when you mentioned anger potentially masking “primary emotions” like fear or shame. While I agree that anger can sometimes be a cover for deeper feelings, I wonder if you might be dismissing anger when it isn’t secondary—when it is instead a direct and valid response to something significant.

That is very possible. I don’t feel I’m dismissing anger as a primary emotion but can’t seem to relate to it as such… I can’t recall a personal experience where anger was the primary emotion. For me the primary emotion has been fear and or shame.

When I look into my soul anger its at God (entangled with Parent early on in life?) or put another way, that Life should not be as it is. I can’t say I have a great relationship with Life and realize now how related that is to my soul anger…. a cover up for fear and shame (the original sin?)….

A Christian mystic one said that the reality of each breath, the arsing and return, is that it is a ‘Birth, Betrayal, Death and Resurrection’. I know this as a truth even as I struggle with the betrayal part. Surly a breath should not be associated with a betrayal… perhaps that is the cost of consciousness? (the knowledge of good and evil – duality the temporal playground).
I wonder if this felt sense of betrayal of each breath isn’t the root of all soul anger that we then project towards others, our Parents and that our Parent project back.

Sorry going to stop the fall into the rabbit hole. Was going to delete… but no editing. 🙂

I’m concerned that you my feel my response discounts your experience and realization.
I love your realization and how you arrived at it. I am inspired to to explore my soul anger further and maybe get to a place I can say I appreciate you. I do know that it is though such experiences that we grow… but am I grateful for such method of growth… For now a healthy respect is what I can do.

I can say that I don’t “think” I get angry for being angry for being angry anymore. Today when I get Angry the energy dissipates as I tap into other sources to engage with life. I can say thank you anger for getting my attention and not carrying me away.

Hi Everyone

Thank you Anita! I value your insight too and of course Peter’s as well. 😊

I have an additional thought about anger. It feels like being close to someone makes it easier for me to feel angry.

I worked in customer service dealing with angry customers all of the time and I was able to shrug it off.

Perhaps part of it is that I feel safe sharing my feelings with people that I’m close to. Another part is that I have higher expectations of people I care about and who I know care about me. It hurts more when they make mistakes. But we are all human and no one is perfect. Part of it is also that I blame myself when people I care about communicate issues with me because I care a lot. I don’t just shrug it off. I take it very seriously because I value their opinion.

I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this?

I would like to get to the point where I can react the same way inside. Not disturbed no matter what happens around me.

I feel like the past piles up on top of the present too and I am no longer dealing with the situation in front of me. This leads to my feelings being disproportionate. And of course, anxiety feeds into this. Worrying about the meaning of interactions, future interactions. Worrying.

Hi Anita

You captured my perspective quite well and thanks for linking to past post as I’m glad I’ve been consistent as I try to come to terms with what we are now thinking of as soul anger. The sense of betrayal is definitely part of that.
I found this statement “I am talking about the kind of shaming that does not allow improvement…” difficult to hear/read. I’ve mentioned before that I feel undeserved shame is the orignal sin not disobedience, a theology that I wonder isn’t a sin itself creating the experience of shame and evil you written about.

I was writing up the following before you posted.

Contemplating on my experience of anger I recall the following experience.
My Girlfriend had ended the relationship with me and a few weeks later I was laid off. I was upset, depressed and mostly ego angry, the usual stuff one experiences when such things happen. The anger as I recall didn’t have much energy associate with it and for the most part was directed inwards. The saying that “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have” proved true. I had glimpsed a possibility of who I imagined I could be and a life that might have been but would never be. I was mourning the loss and the anger transformed general into depression. A story as old as time.

A few months latter I run into my X and saw that she had replaced me and moved on. The moment hit me like a fright train and that night I tossed and turned. I was angry, really angry with no place to direct it. I could not deny the reasons my X gave for needing to move on. Love required the relationship to end. I even had to acknowledge that my past employer had little choice in letting people go as the project we were working on ended. Still, it hurt. Life hurt

At about 2 AM it started to rain, and I got out of bed to look out the window and watch. As I watched I allowed myself to feel my anger and as I did it began to rain harder. I watched as the rain hit the ground and I wanted it to hit harder. I wanted to punish the earth. As I directed may anger into rain, the ran shower became a storm, lightning and thunder, the rain drops becoming noticeable bigger hitting the earth hard enough to bounce. Harder, harder… I became the storm, each individual drop of ran battering the earth, so satisfying… and the earth laughed…

I fell back on the bed exhausted. I don’t know how much time had gone by and can’t recall ever being so exhausted as I was in that moment. The anger spent the storm passed returning to a light drizzle of rain. The earth unharmed and amused, I fell into deep sleep.

The amount of anger turned to rage scared me. I recalled a time I almost struck my brother… when I woke in the morning I reached out to a therapist.

When I think of that night, I wonder if something hadn’t broken, or if something was healed, maybe both. The moment turned out to be a turning point as this was when I “entered the forest where there is no path” to begin my quest. What was it I really believed, was I being true to what I believed, but more importantly what’s Love got to do with it.