Untreated Fear and Anger

Untreated fear turns to anger.

This insight struck me the other day.  For many years I was a very angry person.  I would be subject to seriously intense verbal outbursts of anger.  For many, many years I'd feel like a boiling pot, bubbling over.  During my darkest moments I'd dive deep into this anger, until I was spent, exhausted, and ashamed.  For you see a part of me would recognize value in release, but another part of me would be aghast at having thrown myself so deeply into anger.

And then one day it was pointed out to me that perhaps I was losing my temper when I felt helpless.  This insight was powerful.  It allowed me to begin to understand the trigger.  And in the months that followed this realization (it must be a couple of years old by now) my anger shifted, and over time I have come to look at anger in a different way.  I rarely, if ever, feel helpless these days and my anger when it does surface has a markedly different expression and feel.

But then I consider the insight above.  What if anger is unresolved fear?  How much fear have I had and been exposed to in my life, and to what extent has that influenced how I experience anger?  What if the cause beneath the cause of helplessness and fear that had been pent up over years?  What if the fear about me in the environment I grew up in was contributing, nay even fuelling this fear?

The insight above really does make sense to me.  Anger for me in the past couple of years has subsided for many reasons. I am not talking about stifling the natural defences of knowing one is being hurt or needs to be expressed for safety.  But I am talking about the anger that was caused by so much fear learned over so many years.

I wouldn't give this experience up though.  Having come through the lesson of anger as I have has given me a chance to see fear from a certain vantage point, and it is a powerful one.  As I look around me and within me I now see anger, like any other emotion, as a signpost.  If I am angry I now know to begin asking myself, what fear or fears have I not resolved, treated, or surfaced?  What is there for me to face and to more deeply understand?

I am here to heal and move through feelings.  Anger is a feeling that passes, not an emotion that rules my life as it did.  I am stronger for understanding fear in relation to anger and I hope that if, like me, you are learning through the lesson of anger that you discover your own insights. 

Know the Flow as you go