How Much Anger is 'Normal'? The Role of Anger in Evolution And Maintaining Free Will / Balance.
Some of us are very firmly oriented towards being 'anti anger' - because... 'anger is bad', 'anger is dangerous', 'anger causes problems' and 'I want to be positive'. However, anger is actually a form of love that moves to protect us and keep us alive - allow me to explain..
When emotions are allowed to be as they are - they generally fulfil a role that helps us. If though, instead of accepting them as they are, we mentally judge them with unloving thinking that twists them into what we say they are instead of what they truly are in their natural state - they can become dysfunctional. The reality on Earth is that most of us have so denied our emotions' true state that we have little idea left of what they really are! It takes a strong intent and dedication to increasing self awareness and cleaning up our energy field and thought processes for us to have a chance at knowing what our real feelings are.
For example, anger in its natural state will move to protect us and that which is loved - it is effectively our own love moving to protect and uphold love's intent to continue to exist. If a human hunter moves to steal a wild animal's child, for example, he/she will soon find out what loving anger has to say about it. However, if that same wild animal has been punished, tortured, abused and rejected (denied the love it needs) - then that creature's anger may have become warped and ready to attack even those who pose no threat. A zoo animal, for example, that has been beaten out of the public eye, every time it expresses anger to protect itself - may become destructive and it is at this point that the unthinking minds of humans may view it and reinforce their own judgements that 'anger is destructive' - when in truth it is lovelessness that is destructive and they are witnessing the effects of lovelessness on anger itself.
Correcting the effects of lovelessness (unloving light) on anger and other emotions is a case of needing to allow these emotions to express safely, with acceptance and compassion for their injured and denied state. The more real love and heart felt acceptance is present, the greater the healing will be.
How much anger is normal?
Given that what I have just described means that few of us really understand even our own anger and many of us are deeply emotionally imbalanced as a result - can any of us really say accurately what is a 'normal' or healthy level of anger?
There are those among us who are convinced that having zero anger is the only healthy level of anger. While it may be possible to theoretically exist without any anger - at the same time this could only ever be achieved as a result of having already lovingly accepted a lot of anger that has been generated through our own evolutionary journeys. Those who deny their own real needs and desires may THINK they have no anger, but it is more likely that they are simply emotionally dead inside - giving the appearance of being 'peaceful', when in truth their real anger has simply been forced to become unconscious. 'Road Rage' and other such violent events are only examples of this unconscious rage finding a vent when the heavily controlled conscious mind loses its grip temporarily in the choke hold it has placed on the emotional body. The unconsciousness involved tends to make the results of this deadly - yet there is no need for this.
From my perspective, anger is healthy when it is being fully felt and understood. Healthy anger is a response to a threat - whereby the focus, accelerated energy and power that is within reach of all of us is allowed to manifest in order to passionately meet the aim of surviving.
If anger is being generated that is greater than is needed to resolve whatever has triggered it in a safe way, then there is a good chance that the anger is actually 'old' anger that needs release. So such excess anger is not healthy, per se - but it IS healthy to acknowledge its existence and allow its expression. The anger itself is not really unhealthy, rather it was the CONTROL of that anger that was unhealthy.
I realise this is contrary to the unloving 'therapy' that many have been subjected to, which states that it is healthy to control your emotions - however, if you really feel into yourself now and feel in to what emotions actually ARE - then you may come closer to realising that emotions need to be allowed to MOVE (emotion = energy motion). If you control them with your mind, as if your mind somehow knows best - then you are effectively trying to build a dam (damn) in your energy field, rather than simply allowing yourself to be fully free. In a sense, controlling your emotions is akin to building a modern city and being uncontrolled is akin to living wildly in the jungle... You may at first think that the city and your control are great advances, since they appear to solve a few challenges; however, eventually the control's limiting effects will catch up with you and you will find you are weakened, facing disease and an ever spiralling list of challenges that you don't know how to solve. You don't know how to solve them, mostly, because you have lost the intuition and emotional power you need to live freely on a free will planet ;)
Those tribes who survive in what is left of our jungles may appear to be 'backwards' to some who live in cities, yet who will survive if there is an extended catastrophic failure of the electrical grid and industrial support systems? The tribes won't have much problem - but in the cities, many millions may die due to them having no clue how to really survive.
So the question here, that really matters, is not so much 'how much anger is normal', but 'from what reference point must we measure anger in order to understand it correctly and to know what is REALLY normal?'
It is key to realise that everyone is unique and so it is not really so helpful to attempt to give some kind of 'ideal' measurement of anger. The events of our lives call for an ever changing response, so the most accurate answer is perhaps:
Anger is normal and healthy when it is responding to a real threat and is supporting survival and balance. When anger is free from limitation and control it serves a role in creation that cannot be replaced with anything else and cannot necessarily be understood in advance - therefore, anger itself decides what is normal and healthy for anger - and it must be respected and nursed to health for us to stand a chance of experiencing this level of conscious anger. Until we are fully whole and balanced emotionally, spiritually and in all other ways - our minds need to take a step back and just allow anger to guide the mind to new understandings - rather than the other way around.
When do we learn the most? When the human controls the jaguar, or when the jaguar teaches the human?
Only the human who stopped controlling will ever find out!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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I would go even further and say that anger is healthy whenever the alternative is something worse, like depression. Anger isn't a state we want to normalize, but as a momentary response to what we should not happily tolerate, it is something that naturally arises for a reason. Learning to be with our anger without acting it out is a big part of maturity. We have the right to feel whatever we feel, but that doesn't give us the right to take it out on others. The confusion comes when people think that feeling it is the same thing as expressing it in a way that makes it someone else's problem. Personal responsibility and healthy emotional responsiveness, including anger, is the combo we all need.
This is the PRIMARY reason why I generally ABHOR the "modern" cognitive-behavioral focus in the "mental health" system, where - because you can get a more TANGIBLE measurement of "results" - which ultimately makes it more easy for the insurance companies to justify and quantify costs, including drugging people up with massive amouts of eomtion-numbing neurotoxins - the "healers" focus on covering up the more "surface" components of "mental health", which merely drives these more innate, and fundamental, emotional factors deeper into the denail realm of the psyche. The end result is that you get a population SUCCUMBING to EPIDEMIC levels of drug addiction and violence (ex. mass/school shootings), etc...
I am no expert on CBT in average settings, I do know it can be used to go deeper if that is the intention. I agree, though, that suppression of symptoms is the usual path in modern treatment settings - for a variety of reasons, including convenience and a general lack of understanding of what is really needed. To some extent, the logic appears to be: "if the patient isn't screaming and I can tick the right boxes, then I'll get paid and a pat on the back".
Indeed... 'felt fully and understood'...very well put.
I think that integration is one of the key factors... anger, just like with the 'darkness' that dwells within us, is best utilized when we stop seeing it as outside ourselves and as an integral part of ourselves which has its own use and value...
absolutely, yes - separating self into 'good' and 'bad' parts will end in death!
Bitcoin is a result of outrage of central banks. We should all aspire that our anger can help motivate us to do grrat things.
Yes, 'negative is the mother of change'!
It's refreshing to hear this positive take on anger. I feel strongly that anger can be an awesome force when it is used to get fired about something and use that power by channeling it into passion. For me anger is often frustration with myself, so when I transform this into passion, it really becomes something far more incredible than had I not got angry in the first place. This happened to me about a month ago, before I was teaching Kundalini Dance something triggered me quite strongly, and then during the session, I really was on fire, and reached a whole new level for myself, and the whole crowd!
Absolutely, yes! It is valuable to understand that anger and fear are not really separate, so when anger is triggered - maybe seek to learn what the fear is that is associated to it.
Nice. Yes, not to get lost in the emotion, but take space to understand why it is happening. A strong trigger is an opportunity!
I think the important thing is learning how to control and acknowledge, but not suppress your anger. Figure out where it is coming from; sometimes the roots are deeper than we believe. I've seen so many relationships fall apart because anger and hurt was suppressed early on because partners did not want to show each other their "bad sides." I think about it like a controlled burn. You have to let it come out from time to time in reasonable ways so you don't end up with a wildfire. I think you're right that being devoid of anger is actually just being emotionally dead inside. Even the most dedicated yogis and meditators I've known have virulent road rage, and somehow, they don't see the contradiction there.
I understand now that control and suppression are synonymous. Control requires a controller and 'the controlled', which means there is a separation being made between self and emotions - however, emotions are part of self. They are movements of our own energy - so control is not really needed. A more balanced approach that feels good is to understand the origin of emotion and to respect it fully such that you know in advance it can move all it likes, without there being a problem.
Meditation and Yoga, like anything else, can only be beneficial when there is no denial involved. The primary method of meditation in use today involves total denial of emotions in favour of 'returning to the breath' - this is a recipe for carnage on subtle levels and will never produce balance beyond the appearance of balance for publicity photos. ;)
Hmm, well I don't mean to disrespect you, @urasoul but the context by which you suggest meditation is "total denial of emotions in favour of 'returning to the breath'" is rather benign and uninformed.
I am a hard-core survivor of uncontrolled anger, both as a recipient and as an offender. I watched it slowly devour my family and then each person individually. Some died from suicide, some from cancer, some from sadness, most are utterly alone and slowly fading from life.
For myself, NOTHING has helped more than MEDITATION. IT has been the single most important undertaking of my life and I believe the single greatest that any person can take. -And it is difficult. You clearly misunderstand the true tenets of the practice. The beginner's training of the practice of breath is the first level of self understanding and self control. The focus on breathing is the PROCESS by which you are simply learning to master your own thoughts, feelings and emotions. It is learning to control and create a singularity of mind. To discover "True Self".
In this place of pure mind there is simply no need or purpose for emotion. Especially anger.
Anger is actually the purest form of BLAME. Think about that for a minute. It is aggression against the outside universe. Yes it occurs naturally and has a natural place in the universe for any being's survival, it is flight, fight or freeze. It is the necessary function of the cerebral cortex.
Frankly, the answer you are looking for regarding anger is to NOT REMAIN THERE for more than a second. Yes It happens. You recognize it. You transform it. To hold on to anger or use it as a creative/destructive power for more than an instant is the very act that poisons your body, your mind and your being and everything around you. YOU feed it and IT feeds you. Literally.
Anger is Anti-Love. Do not stay there.
~X
Aloha!
Following over 10 years of emotional healing work and also a lot of meditation, I continue to disagree with what I feel to be subtle judgements in your perception here.
Firstly, when you speak of being a victim of uncontrolled anger - you are describing anger that is being directed by unloving thought processes (aka heartlessness). Heartlessness is SO heartless that it can even take a fully loving relationship between two people and twist it deliberately to become a weapon to achieve an agenda (such as might be plotted and carried out by 'secret services' for example). My point here is that in the case of anger, the unloving light of mind that has been dominating on earth for so long, often has warped anger into a destructive form, but that is not anger's natural state. Anger's natural state is actually more loving than what many people are calling 'love' at present. Anger is the energy that moves in a mother to protect her children against a predator - it IS love. Even love can be warped by heartlessness.
The only way to successfully transform held rage/anger (and terror/pain/fear) on all levels is to fully accept that energy and learn to move it using sound, in private (in a safe place). You are describing the results of unloving mental energy directing anger in a dangerous way. I am describing loving mentality compassionately accepting the rage and allowing it to move how it needs to move - WITHOUT doing any harm to anyone. These are two very different scenarios.
A state of being that has no emotion is psychopathic and psychotic.
Meditation can be achieved without DENIAL. This is what I advocate. Meditation is an important skill for healing self - absolutely, but until you come to understand the unseen role of denial, it is likely that what appears to be healing will actually be only increasing denial and causing unprocessed emotions to simply change form and become even harder to detect, understand and heal.
Anger is very important as it can enable us to maintain boundaries and is also an active state that can lift us out of depression and apathy.
It isn't somewhere to spend too much time and there are often more creative solutions available than the ones we come up with when angry. However, it can definitely serve a purpose.
I think anger helps us do something about a threatening situation. I feel one needs lots of courage to express the anger ( and do so constructively), especially if we've been taught to be a 'good girl' 'good boy' all the time. I know someone who, looking from the outside, should get really angry about their situation, but seems to be afraid to do so - 'good girl' syndrome...
Greetings! Courage is from the same root as 'heart' - in French the word for heart is 'coeur'. What is needed is heart consciousness that connects the emotions to the conscious mind/self. Usually anger exists in response to a fear - so having a fear of expressing anger is a serious dysfunction that will lead to ever more fear and anger. 'Good girls' love themselves and others enough to be emotionally real!
I find that 'good girls' ( of course, it depends how you define the term) are often trying too hard to be always positive and afraid to express negative emotions, which sometimes in life is really necessary.
It's good that you highlighted this issue. I think many people who want to take a spiritual path and free themselves from suffering have adopted the notion that "negative" emotions are bad and living in "bliss" can only mean a constant state of joy where bliss is generally meant in the context of being at peace with whatever emotions are arising and allowing them to be, as you say, feel into them, rather than feeling you're wrong to have them. Suppressed emotions or emotional avoidance are where the problems manifest into such things as addictions or indeed anger issues. Sometimes anger is absolutely necessary to establish your boundaries, unfortunately sometimes people may try to take advantage of one's good nature for example, and one may need to get a bit stern to let one know that one is not a fucking mug.
indeed - i notice that anger is an anagram of 'range' - one sets the other :)
You have hit a lot of nails on the head. With anger , I my self would not be the person I am today without anger it cost me a lot of Karma that I gave myself and I have paid ( maybe ) .In my mind I have opened up and taken in where anger took me. It will make you or break you. As we get older with all trials and tribulations that we go through, Anger is a good teacher. It does bring out the good in us. There is some that cannot get away from it. I feel I am one of the fortunate one's . Great post food for thought.