When it’s a negative emotion, anger is clearly an identity trait. But it can be both. One can also be angry without creating separation; for example, when a father is angry with his child while continuing to love them even during anger. Separation is recreated when one identifies with anger against something, against oneself, or against another. That’s why anger is not always an identity trait. Sometimes, it can also help wake someone up. But one must not create separation.
This compassionate anger with love is what has sometimes been called divine anger. It contains something just, which touches nothing else. Whereas the other anger necessarily puts you in separation.
Yes, it creates unnecessary suffering within oneself.
With the rejection of the other.
The subject is interesting, because this anger in three-year-old children who throw themselves on the ground is an anger that constitutes their identity. It’s really very strong. They reject the true and assert themselves in the false.
With frustration as well.
It’s a reaction to powerlessness, facing something that doesn’t go as they want.
It’s clear that at the origin, you always find powerlessness.
In the same way that pretension is a particular case of identity mechanisms, anger is also a particular case because it goes very far in the construction and restitution of identity. Adults who get into separative anger recreate their identity. Afterwards, they feel better, stronger, because anger has reinforced their identity. In children, it is constitutive of identity.
According to the enneagram or other models, anger will function differently depending on the types of people.
Indeed, it can be expressed differently. Anger can also turn against oneself. But I believe it’s truly the energy of transformation when we go further in the teaching. Anger is the first of all transformative forces. One must first welcome the necessary suffering. When you have an outburst of anger and manage to enter into the necessary suffering instead of leaving room for the expression or repression of anger, that’s where you live that negativity in consciousness is a great force of transformation. It’s what makes us grow.
I agree about the transformative power of negative emotions, but I’m not convinced that this is true only for anger. It seems to me that for other people, it could be other negative emotions, like sadness for example.
No. Anger goes beyond that. Sadness has no transformative power. One must nevertheless see anger and especially, not suppress it, nor express it. That’s where it plays out. Afterwards, there are different forms of expressing anger, but at the base, it changes nothing. Anger is an extraordinary force, a vital force. And it’s double-edged, it can destroy but it can also regenerate.
And sometimes, it can consist of not being able to get angry. But it’s always anger.
At the base of each separation, there is always anger.
The expression can be different, but the essence is anger. It’s obvious.
I wonder how I can work on this.
You must especially work on it when it happens. You can’t do much before.
But concretely, when I feel it rising, what can I do?
First, welcome the necessary suffering that is hidden. Anger wants to hide the necessary suffering. There is only vigilance, and also, the fact of remembering the hangovers you have experienced after having missed this. There is nothing else. Like a teenager who sometimes has a hangover and says, “I will drink less next time”. Anger outbursts are totally harmful. They must become a reminding factor. It’s the same with panic attacks. You must absolutely do everything to systematically remind yourself that next time, you will welcome the necessary suffering and powerlessness. You must truly decide this and regularly remind yourself not to let yourself go. I believe that’s all you can do.
There is a frustration linked to the same origin. Either it’s anger, or panic, but it’s linked to powerlessness.
Knowing is not enough. I know this well and I want to emphasize a point: it’s about taking absolutely all opportunities, even minimal ones, to welcome the necessary suffering, because the more you do it all the time, the more easily you will be able to do it when it’s big. Because otherwise, when it’s big, it’s too late. And you have to manage to get on an ascending spiral. Otherwise, you always return to the same point and you don’t move forward. And as W. says, what is very important is to find everything possible to remember at the moment when it’s vital.
It’s almost an existential decision: “I no longer want this”.
And I think you can identify the conducive contexts, the contexts where there are warning signs and where vigilance must be absolute.
Yes, there is a red light that comes on.
It’s really about refining vigilance. Like in the metaphor where at first, you only see that the elephant has already passed, then you see the elephant’s tail, later, you see it when it shows its trunk, and finally, you know it’s going to pass before it arrives. Here, you detect anger, but then, you will perhaps detect a little earlier the rationalizations you make to temper an incoming anger with thoughts like “it’s not serious”, when perhaps, precisely at that moment, you are not welcoming the true necessary suffering, but generating an accumulation of frustration that risks exploding. And afterwards, when you are discussing with someone who would normally trigger your anger, you will find more accurate words that will defuse the process. It’s really about tracing back further and further with vigilance. It’s observation.
And vigilance consists of constantly knowing that it can happen in the next moment, and you must be able to switch to welcoming at any instant.
When in your childhood, you experienced anger, through that of the father for example, there are two reactions: either you reproduce it, or you refuse it by withdrawing, but that’s false. That’s not welcoming.
Neither express, nor repress.
Exactly. And anger is a good way to realize these two facets; just because it is not expressed doesn’t mean it’s not there!
So it’s about immediately seeing the necessary suffering that I’m trying to hide through anger?
Yes. And for those who know anger, when you think back to an experience where it happened, what does it bring back to you?
The original belief.
So we clearly see that this is The great force of separation. It creates identity or refreshes identity. But there is also, here, a transformative force to go beyond identity, to let it go.
I’m starting to understand. Things are falling into place for me. Because anger, I know it very well. I would even say that it provides my vital energy. But I hadn’t yet made the connection with withdrawal. I believe there’s really a huge blind spot here.
You were more repressed. But the work is the same. When you detect anger, you must welcome the necessary suffering and transform the energy.
And moreover, you had this way of taking refuge in silence, solitude.
I would call that “disappearing”.
Yes. Completely.
Yes, regarding anger, internalized anger, as Ab experienced it, which consists of taking refuge in no longer being there, being absent, I realized that I know this, and it strongly moved me; it’s a kind of “protective background” to not go deeper while remaining in bodily consciousness, and it’s still the expression of an identity mechanism.
The worst part is that what we just explained about anger, I knew it intellectually, and it had completely faded away.
This is the danger, because when you miss this, you lose a lot of benefit each time. It’s also a very destructive force for self-work. You must know this. It can undo in a few seconds the fruit of good work done over several years. Which means that the more advanced one is, the less room there is for mistakes. Afterwards, one is in a suffering that is both useless and necessary. Useless because it produced a big error, a shortcoming, and necessary because this suffering needs time to be evacuated. It’s like a hangover, but which can last several days or even more, where you no longer find your state of grace, your bodily consciousness, which can temporarily disappear. It disrupts everything you have accumulated as the fruit of good work on yourself. Then, you no longer know much, you lose the red thread, and it generates confusion. Normally, it should be enough to experience it once or twice, so that afterwards, you do everything to no longer reproduce it.