Why you need anger to create fulfilling relationships
By: Oliver Arnold
Tags: Anger, Relationships, Conscious Feelings

Step 1. Learn how to feel anger: Investigate for yourself if it is ok to feel or not. Why not? Who told you? Try it out to be angry for no reason. Scream and hit a cushion. Try to be angry for a reason. What is it that you don’t want? What are you angry about? For me this was a long and pretty random process that started in mosh pits at heavy-metal concerts, where I didn’t even realize I was expressing anger. It was paused while being a non-violent yogi and meditator and continued in Osho inspired therapy groups, where I learned to express anger and somehow use it to say no and set boundaries. There it stopped until I heard the word „Rage Club“ that was magically attracting me and made me start participating in one, just one day later. This opened a new world to me, summing up my previous experience and complementing it with new distinctions, especially that I can also use anger to say yes and to create.

Step 2. Learn how to use your anger and use it to come back to yourself. Start to take back your center, stay centered and in your own energetic bubble. Take back your authority. Learn to be yourself to be able to connect to other people from where you are, without energetically merging with the other person, sacrificing the I for the we. These are all big concepts, each deserving an own article (you can read the linked websites instead). Basically it is about using anger to draw back your energy from others to yourself, getting a sense for your boundaries, also physically and energetically. I’m just starting to do this, so the stories I can share are very limited. One experience I made was that while I was energetically being too focussed on a women I felt confused and cranky (like being needy and not getting this neediness fulfilled). Once I used my anger to pull my energy back to myself I was able to clearly feel my feelings again. In that case it was sadness, helping me to let go.

Step 3. Dare to use your anger with the person you love. Here, the stories of why it is not ok to feel and express anger come in especially strongly. At least for me. My old story is that if I am angry (let alone express it) I will scare away the person I love and love will disappear. And as so many people see anger as a bad thing, it could actually happen that somebody get triggered and leaves. This seems the appropriate point to bring in the distinction about feelings and emotions: Feelings happen in the moment and are a normal reaction to what you experience. Emotions are old unexpressed feelings from the past that get touched (triggered) by similar situations in the present and lead you to react to the past instead to that what is actually happening. For feelings to be constructive forces in relationships make sure you use feelings, not emotions. This also includes becoming conscious of your emotions so you can put them aside and use them for healing the past wounds (preferably in a healing setting and not in your relationship). The experience I’ve made using the feeling of anger was always transformational. I showed what I did not like and ask for what I wanted instead which created something new. Also I have noticed that I am often very grateful for receiving somebody’s conscious anger, because the reveal themselves and also very often it contained very useful information about myself that helped me to grow.

Step 4. Use your anger to make proposals about what you want. That is the next step out of being reactive to being proactive and therefore creative. It is more about finding and communication what you want to create and invite your partner, friend or colleagues to be part of it. Right now I am experimenting to make at least two proposals a day. I need anger for this, because it’s a very clear and direct way of communicating that my conditioning about being nice is not so keen on. Instead of saying to somebody: „well, maybe we could have dinner sometimes“ I say: „I propose to meet for dinner tomorrow at 7 in Jacob’s restaurant. Are you in?“ It requires the other to make a decision. He or she might feel something about it. I might get a no and I might feel something about this, too. Anger helps me to move with clarity anyway.