Anger is a
natural human feeling. It protects
and defends us often aggressively. It is
a loud and strong emotion. As a result
we seem to put great stock in it and give it a lot of attention. So much so that we often forget to look at or
talk about what the anger is protecting and defending. These are usually softer more vulnerable feelings
like sadness and fear. Anger repels so
much so that couples can have a hard time looking each other in the eye. Eye contact forces us to see our partner as
actual person; a person who in all likelihood is suffering in a similar way to
us. When we go beyond and beneath our
anger to see and feel our pain and are able to see, hear, and acknowledge the pain
beneath our partner’s anger, we enter a space where we can start to connect and
heal. Anger is important as a feeling in
that it tells us we feel something is wrong or we feel unsafe. The work is in figuring out how to take care
of selves and be a good partner without being aggressive. One place to begin is to look beneath the anger
and see what it is protecting and to ask your partner to do the same. In actually hearing each other’s pain and
fear we can begin to reconnect. And in
doing this we can leave the destructive path of aggression and enter onto a
path of empathic problem solving.
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