Beneath and Beyond Anger

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.