I was often angry as a child. Very angry. I expressed my indignation with great strength, impact and perseverance. The memory of it is still just as vivid in me as is, what I concluded from the experiences with my environment during my childhood: anger separates. Being angry takes the people I love away from me.
When I was in my early 20s, I found myself in a state of speechlessness in my relationship with the future father of my son, which surprised even me. I had no words for what was 'going on' with me. There was only inner helplessness and the feeling of being numb or empty. I couldn't say what I want. I had no experience that what I want deep down, this power, this irrepressibility, can be in contact with another person without inevitably creating separation.
I am holding a photograph of a six-year-old girl, who used to be me. She looks mischievous - and there's an effort around the mouth. Every time I saw this picture hanging on my parents' or grandmother's wall, I felt a diffuse uneasiness deep in my stomach. Now, 40 years later, I can feel the fear, anger, and sadness buried beneath the numbness, and so get in touch with the root of that unease. The anxiety came from remembering the betrayal of myself. The picture was taken a few days after I made a big decision. I had decided to be 'a good girl'. I would wear a mask, make my mouth different from what it actually was. No one should be allowed to see what I really felt. It was just too painful and too dangerous to show myself with my desires, with my love, with my limits or with my indignation by expressing them unfiltered...
I have now found my language again. I could find words for what I want and what I don't want, but the anger behind my expression was still mixed with the sadness and fear of that time for a long time and has often turned into an emotional mixture that I have discharged in a way that has been toxic for the intimacy in my relationships. It has taken years for me to be able to use anger as clarity, as a force that makes me visible in my contours and allows others to be in touch with me as I am. Then I thought I had mastered the power of anger in relationships until I became a mother... My son has asked me for the third time today if he can see Kung Fu Panda. I am annoyed. I already said no! What he gets from me is a strained tone, no eye contact, a harsh no, or reasons why watching movies is unhealthy. Obviously, my first 'no' hadn't landed in him. So back to 'Go', don't collect 2000$...
So here I am again. The basic assumption that anger is something to be avoided, something dangerous or bad is repeated in the contact with my child. Especially here, because he's younger, vulnerable, smaller than me, so sensitive. I can't possibly be angry with him... That's the logic. But since my anger is there to set boundaries, the inevitable happens here too, when I suppress it instead of expressing it clearly, right from the moment it starts rising: the anger shoots out of me unconsciously 'sideways', and thus poisons the connection in a subtle way . The pot lid lands on its pot much louder than necessary, my tone grows grumpy and I hold my breath before exhaling tightly, noisily. There it is again, that form of angry expression that, along with a clear "stop" or "no," includes a subtle blame or accusation. As if someone else is responsible if something doesn't go the way I want it to. This "annoyance" as a form of my expression of anger, which goes back to my experience of powerlessness as a child, is now, tragically, addressed to the wrong recipient again.
Luckily I can choose to stop this now. With the team that I found and helped create in the context of Possibility Management, I started to create experimental fields in which I can feel and express my anger in low, medium and high intensity and get feedback and coaching as I find out more and more about my clarity, authenticity and directness. A team that holds space for me to feel the pain of the high price I pay for blaming others for my unclear boundaries and keeping the people I care about most at a distance.
Now the miracle happens every now and then: I state my no clearly as soon as my body tells me that it is there. I keep eye contact and keep in touch without deviating from my decision. The intimacy that arises is sometimes almost unbearable. We look at each other, I'm clear and stay clear, it lands in him, I see what's triggered in him and he sees that I see him...
Feeling my anger in every moment as a living stream of energy and information and using it for my actions is an exciting ongoing experiment and sometimes something completely new emerges:
I am sitting in the car with my 9 year old son and my 10 year old niece in the parking lot of a toy store. Our mission is to buy two big balloons. They want to make tea-light candles fly. I dread the toy industry's seductions and highly likely pocket money investment discussions that await me. I feel a loud, very clear NO in me. The two seem to feel the same way, at least my niece suggests I leave them in the car, otherwise they just "beg". However, both of them have very specific ideas about what the balloons should look like, so we decide to go together. As we cross the parking lot, I initiate them into the “secret arts” of Possibility Management. It only take you a few seconds for them to understand what I mean when I suggest that we draw our "swords of clarity," center ourselves, and "click" our connection to the earth with our energetic declaration as our fingers snap. Just before the store door, we wrap ourselves in our “bubbles” that shield us from the temptations in the guise of glittery unicorns or five-camera remote-controlled drones that we don't need now. So armed we enter the store. Three and a half minutes later we are back outside and have bought exactly the balloons we need for little money without getting caught in the maelstrom of temptation. That was high-level fun!
If you feel called to get back the clarity and power of your conscious rage then please check out the Rage Club sections in 'Offers' and 'Events' on my website.
