By Julie Peters | Source

Anger isn’t something to suppress or fear—it’s a powerful ally that protects your boundaries, needs, and authenticity. Discover five practical ways to slow down, listen to what your anger is really saying, and turn it into a wise guide for healthier relationships and greater personal power.

Manage your anger, the books tell us. Tame your inner tiger. Quiet the angry beast inside. Anger is an ugly, scary aspect of each one of us, so we’d better overcome it fast, right?

Actually, no. Anger is a core emotion, an inborn part of who we are. Getting rid of it would be like getting rid of a vital organ: It would leave us at a huge disadvantage.

All our core emotions have a purpose. Some of them keep us physically safe (fear, disgust), while others help us navigate our relationships with others. As social animals, human beings need each other in order to survive and thrive. We don’t tend to do very well on our own, and our core emotions are there to help us figure out how to be together.

A therapy client once told me something that has stuck with me ever since: Anger is the emotion that loves you the most. It’s true. Fear loves safety. Sadness loves something or someone that is missing. Joy loves the experience that’s happening right now. Attraction loves connection. Anger loves you: your true self, your needs and boundaries, your authenticity. Anger will show up when something threatens the you of it all, flaring at your physical and emotional edges.

Anger has a particular quality, though, that makes many of us uncomfortable. It is a certain I don’t care what you think of me quality. Anger will leave. It will break up with someone. It will flip the table over and burn the house down. This is necessary. Anger can show us who is safe to be around and who is unsafe; which tribe members share our values and which are enemies. Humans tend to want to connect overall, but anger knows that sometimes connection can get in the way of more important things.

What Is Your Anger Trying to Say?

Of course, with such a powerful tool at our disposal, we must be careful how we use it. Anger can push away people we really do want to be close to. It can get confused when it’s trying to protect us from feeling vulnerable. If we consistently ignore and suppress it, it can explode, and then we fail in its mission: to get our relational needs met.

The most powerful move we can make with anger is to start listening to it. Rather than reacting immediately, it needs us to slow down and take a moment to hear what it’s telling us. Once we figure that out, we have choices about how and whether to communicate that anger to others.

Here are some ways to work with, rather than against, your anger.

1. Slow down. 

When you feel the body sensations associated with anger—jaw tension, throat tightness, heat in the hands and face, and so on—slow down. Take a moment to notice that your anger is with you.

2. Breathe.

Notice if you are trying to make the anger go away. If you are—stop. Just sit with your anger. Breathe with it. Let it move through your body. Don’t take any action yet. Simply listen to the anger.

3. Ask questions.

Anger usually appears only under specific circumstances:

• It sees an injustice.
• A boundary is being crossed.
• A need is not being met.

Imagine your anger as its own entity. (Many people imagine a fire-breathing dragon!) Ask it which of the above things it is reacting to. Sometimes I like to journal from the perspective of my anger, as if it could speak for itself. What is it trying to tell me?

4. Communicate.

So much of the time, all anger needs is a gentle, loving communication of needs and boundaries. In a healthy relationship, everyone would love to help the other get their needs met. We just don’t often know what they are.

A useful (if difficult) side effect of communicating your needs clearly is that you may discover others can’t or won’t meet your needs. That could change or end the relationship altogether. Sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed.

5. Take action.

Often anger is trying to get your power back when you feel it’s been taken away. We can’t always control what’s happening to us, of course, but it can help to think about the choices we do have. If you’re feeling powerless over a particular issue, what’s something you could do to remind yourself that you do have power somewhere else?

Take this practice with you every time your anger comes up. Your life may begin to change for the better, or you may simply feel more at peace, more empowered. Experiment with what it could mean to work with your anger as an ally.