my friend anger

if you have never ridden a bike before, built a house, or cooked a complex meal - what is your expectation surrounding your skillset with that? Would I be an expert in that situation? I’d like think to think we can objectively agree that I would be an amateur, a work in progress.

the same goes with our emotional skillset, i.e. maturity or lack thereof.

we agree we are not born as engineers, but we so easily fall into the false belief we are born with highly trained listening skills (both to ourselves and others i.e empathy) and negotiation with presenting our non-negotiable social needs whilst defending against the projected requested over-responsibility / indulgence of another person’s level of poor emotional development.

I first tapped into anger only a couple of years ago, sure we might all have an outburst here and there, but for the most part i viewed it as sinful, wasteful and or flat out denied its presence.

despite it very well earning its seat at the evolutionary table of emotions.

by not calling upon that subject expert, i’ve fell into people pleasing, victimisation and dissociation. by-products of never employing anger. reminders at each time to focus on it, but taking three decades to realise the lesson that sit within the disturbance.

if we only saw conflict with a threat of disconnect, if we only saw emotional regulation via suppression, distraction or escape - we have yet to earn our degree in building the bridge of emotional stability. we owe it to ourselves to do that today, compassionately recognising that there will be overcorrections / moments we fall off the bike without the training wheels on but recognising also that to not take that path is to submit to cyclical outcomes we do not desire but enthusiastically curse their appearance.

to your healing 💙,

jas