It’s funny. For years and years I spent a good part of my energy being “tough” and “together.” When my mom gave me the book “The Highly Sensitive Person” I took it so very personally. I denied my sensitivity fiercely, displaying bravado and loading far too many hay bales into the barn (literally). All to prove that no, I am not a sensitive person!
So there you have it. I am sensitive and highly so. The transition into being a full-blown out-of-the-closet sensitive has been full of interesting twists and turns. In fact, here’s a confession while we’re at it. One of my lynchpins is anger. Holy crap is it ever. Can you relate?
You see, anger, is one of those emotions that most of us have no idea how the heck to deal with in ourselves or others. It feels crazy uncomfortable, disconcerting and so very volatile. It feels, for lack of a better word, terrible.
Coming from a Great Brittanish background (my word for describing the English/Irish/Scottish blood coursing through my veins), I was taught very early on about the good ole’ stiff upper lip and about holding things together no matter what. Anything less was considered terribly bad manners. Pair that with a hair-trigger temper and hyper-sensitivity and you’ve got a veritable bomb just waiting to go off. And when it did it was not pretty (I’m using the past tense to denote a very welcome degree of emotional intelligence that has made its way into my life over the last decade). Repression is the name of that game, and if you’re anywhere on the sensitivity spectrum this works about as well as plugging a dam with bubble gum. At a certain point something has got to give. And yet, what is the strategy? How do we move this stuff? And what do we do when it feels completely overwhelming?
Even though I feel strongly that this really needs to be taught in school, the fact remains that for the time being we’ve got some self-education to do. First thing, if you’re sitting there reading this and telling yourself that you don’t have any anger, you’re either the Dalai Lama or you’re lying to yourself. We all carry oodles of the stuff, however stuffed away it is.
What we do with it is really the question. For years, the anger that stewed in me came up and out like daggers. I used it to harm those that I felt were doing harm to me. I attacked and justified it to myself by saying that I had something to defend. In all honesty, I was just mean. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that communicating from a place of anger is never ever helpful. Ever. In fact, it’s deteriorating or worse still, destructive. Yuck.
The thing is, experiencing anger is not the same as communicating with it. It means being with it rather than stuffing it, repressing, recycling the same shit all over again. It means healing and getting lighter. We need to feel it, to accept it, but it doesn’t have to rule us.
Like good parents, you can parent that angry part of yourself, hold it close and with love, let it rage and then move into sobs and then whimpers and then peace. There is no rule that says once we allow anger to come up it has to be a destructive and violent force. What if anger coming up was actually our ticket to freedom?
When I was in the midst of a insanely painful back injury two years ago, I couldn’t access my anger but I knew it needed to surface. One night, I limped painfully into a gathering of woman and struggled to the floor to sit amongst them, tears streaming. When the dancing began, I retreated to a tree outside and settled into her trunk, sobbing. I felt, in that moment, incredibly alone. A woman on her way to the washroom took a brief moment to gaze down at me and then went on her way without a word. That was all it took. The floodgates opened and as I slammed my car door shut the screaming began. I screamed for a full half hour, a scream from the depths of my being, so full of rage and heart break. Yet, throughout I felt amazing, as if the floodgates had finally opened and I was free. I felt gratitude to this woman for getting things moving. And my back and I felt much better. It was not about the woman. It never was.
When we choose to hang on, hold a grudge, or make it about something or someone, anger festers and twists. It becomes jealousy and hatred, blame, resentment, or even vindictiveness, no longer anger in its pure form. These are the manifestations of suppression, when we hang on, when we fear treading the waters of our anger for longer than a second. For many, getting comfy with our anger is akin to swimming with sharks, dangerous and terribly unpredictable, and yet, our other choice is to hang onto it all and let it seep out like poison into every part of our life. Isn’t it ironic that the latter choice is the real danger?
It was, not surprisingly, my horse Diva who got the ball rolling when it came to experiencing my anger. I recall an incident where she “accidentally” kicked me in the forehead ever so gently as I was picking her back hoof. That got things going quite nicely as I raced into the middle of the field and began screaming like a banshee, stomping about and generally losing it. After that, I realized that even though the neighbors probably thought I was complete nutter, this was a far better solution than the alternative, which in this case would have been taking the entire thing out on Diva and making her wrong. After my anger had passed, I was able to see clearly how loving her tap had really been, her innate intelligence recognizing the need for a deep release of old stuff. She was able to push me over the edge without actually harming me, an incredible gift.
Over the years, layers of anger, rage, resentment, even hatred have sloughed off. I now trust that the goodness that lies beyond the discomfort is oh so yummy and liberating. In fact, when I get triggered now I’m more curious than anything else. What was that about? What was the button? And how the heck can I move this stuff on through?
My biggest tool for being with my anger? So simple – its breath. Good ole’ breathing. Nothing like a little lamaze breathing to get anger moving through. Sound works like a charm. Movement rocks. I sometimes just shake or dance furiously around my living room, stomp around like a troll or run headlong into the woods for a little screaming and moving combo. Other times I head to my fave BodyTalker or healer for a a little aid. The big thing to remember is this – it’s just energy moving, that’s it. No need to blame, to judge, to point fingers or even figure it out. All you need to do is be there with it. Present. Accounted for. That’s it.
It’s not easy, but it is simple. And if you, like me, are so very ready for a life free of the constriction and yuckiness of stuck anger, then the only way out is through. In the end, being sensitive just means that you are able to feel. And that, my friends, is not such a very bad thing at all.
