Someone struggles to ask permission before expressing anger in their relationship. The responder says recognizing this limitation matters, that uncontrolled anger is self-destructive, and that asking permission and seeking empathy is a rare skill worth learning.
You've talked about asking permission from the person you feel an aggressive emotion towards to express it and how important it is and maybe critical it is. I find it impossible to consistently do it. I simply in the moment don't feel as genuine. I want to express it or I get exasperated and I want to leave, but I find it very difficult to slow down and respectfully say, give me permission to just vent, don't take it personally or whatever it may be. I don't have the discipline. How can I support myself to do that?
I think the question is one of the most important questions in all of our lives. And having the initial honesty to recognize that you don't have the patience or the awareness to stop yourself is the critical level of development to be able to have a chance of stopping yourself. And you need to suffer more. You need to see more. You need to see how unbelievably futile dumping your anger is. You need to see much more clearly how ineffectual you are, how self destructive it is, how much it hasn't worked your whole life, how much resistance you get back, how rare it is that it actually breaks through to any kind of longer term trust or well being or the original need of wanting to be heard or trusted will happen. And so our self centeredness really believes that anger will work because sometimes it will intimidate the other person to get them to be in line. But our wisdom sees that even if they get in line, eventually they're going to act out in ways that they act out and they're going to equalize the anger. And our awareness isn't deep enough to see that it simply never works long term, that it creates an animosity that we keep trading back and forth. Yes, you might be able to control Susan short term, she might stop. Then she's going to do her way of getting angry with you the next day, and the next day she's going to do her way of doing that with you and you're going to do it back to her the next day. And the only way we really evolve is when we ask for permission. Because then what's happening is our essential nature, our greatest sensibility, our greatest sensitivity, our greatest integrity is running our lives. And none of us virtually have had modeled a way of being aggressive and sensitive at the same time. Some of us have had parents that don't fight. Yeah, that happens, but we still don't know how to deal with anger. Some of us have parents who fight and they fight unfairly and then we still don't have a model of how to do both. But what we're talking about here is not only asking for permission, but we're also talking about, will you actually look for what I need? Will you actually be empathic towards me while I'm being angry? Because we need permission first, but we also need understanding and empathy to be there, to have any evolution in our love lives or any possibilities of our souls to develop.
Isn't that asking a lot for me to be angry with Susan, simultaneously asking her to be empathic with me?
Yes, it's asking an enormous amount. And it really, developmentally, again, is the highest level of development in relationship. And it's a level most people will die never touching. So it requires a maturity to even see that you can't do it and you wish you could. That's quite a high level of development because most people just feel entitled to just do it and don't think about it. Wrestling with it is a pretty high level of development. Then when you get the knack, which really comes from seeing that it just doesn't work, it's not beneficial to me or anyone else. That is really the highest level of development. And it's what we're all looking for for, in my view.
