Caring for Your Anger in a Healthy Way, ATH Episode 139

Awareness That Heals, Episode 139.

A very warm welcome to Season 3 of Awareness That Heals, where we have progressed to be able to focus on one challenging emotion at a time. This will allow you to choose a specific emotion that you've had challenges with, and each one will have a progressive series of guided meditations that will allow you to go deeper and deeper into self-compassion. For me, it's truly inspiring because each emotion has unique nuances for both self-care and responding to your environment at the same time. This is subtle and a rare skill, as all too often we don't stay aware of how we can care for ourselves as we are. I hope that you'll not only find it helpful, but also give you deep resources that you can internalize when the emotion is most emerging. Welcome to the second meditation on caring for and responding to our anger or related feelings.

So the first step is always awareness. And for most of us, we really don't understand how vital it is that that awareness is really focused on in a stable way while we identify or while we're experiencing anger or the related feeling that you have chosen. So again, go back to your experience of your anger or the related feeling that you choose, that you feel is most relevant in your life, that's repeating or is currently happening. So just take a few seconds and be generous with yourself and let yourself feel that that feeling as fully as possible and stay aware. So you might say, "Anger, I see you. It's fine. I see you. I'm aware of you. I'm feeling you." Once you really stabilize the awareness and your experiencing of the anger, then you're ready for the second step. And the second step is going inside yourself and really asking the question— it's kind of an absurd question— do I want to find a way to care for myself in a healthy way while I'm feeling this anger? And of course you do. You don't want to reject yourself. You don't want to condemn yourself for feeling angry. You want to find a way I want to find a way to be able to look for a way of being with the anger where your own attitude is accepting, is tolerant, and is allowing the anger to be there. So you're giving yourself messages like, "Anger, I want to find a way for you to be a servant in my life." I want you to find a way to serve my life. Just pause here. You're aware of your anger, you're experiencing your anger, and you find this other place that says, of course I want this anger to serve my life. I don't want it to create a rift. I don't want it to create distance. I don't want it to create isolation. I don't want to just destroy. I want to care for the anger itself, and in that way I'm caring for myself, and I won't have to suppress it. And I want to find a way to care for it without immediately acting it out, but definitely not suppressing it. So it's really 3 steps at this point. I'm identifying the experience and experiencing it. I'm aware of it. And then I'm going into that question of, do I want to care for myself? And of course I know I want to be supportive of letting myself feel it in a harmless way that's not acting out toward the person that I'm feeling these feelings toward. It's not acting in against myself. It's not suppressing. It's just allowing the awareness, the experience itself, and I want to care for it. I want to find a way where it's going to be useful in my life, and it's also not going to unnecessarily hurt other people. Thanks for joining us for this second meditation out of 7. And I hope that you'll come to the third one that will further give you steps to really have anger be a vital source of vitality, well-being, and peace. And that you'll be able to understand the paradox that by feeling anger and learning how to be with it, that it will serve your life and help you be very alive.

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