Resolving the anger that comes from absence of control
Many many years ago I was an angry kid and grew up into an angry young woman. It wasn’t just the red hair, or the self righteous view I had of how well Lady Justice was performing her job in the world. For all sorts of reasons, I ended up [angrily!] siting on a couch opposite an anger management counsellor when I was about 20. But I owe three life lessons to that chat.
One – anger is not a real emotion, it is a symptom of something else. Fear, frustration, hurt, disappointment, take your pick. Usually they are the emotions with the softer voices, who find it hard to be heard over the constant banging sound of the imposter, Anger, pummeling their heads into the wall.
Two – you cannot control what happens to you. You can only control how you react to them. Anger is what happens when you’re in a state of resistance rather than acceptance of that little fact.
Linked to that is Nicole Kidman’s life lesson from Days of Thunder (another red-head!) who said it best “Control is an illusion, you infantile maniac” (to soon-to-be-hubby, Tom). I prefer my version – control is a delusion. We delude ourselves into thinking that something may change the louder we yell. And unlike crying, I am an extreme athlete when it comes to anger. Well, I used to be. Slamming doors, throwing remote controls against walls (a near miss), wrapping my arms around my legs so that I physically couldn’t get up and hurl the dining room chair across the room. Those were moments when I lost myself.
Anger is a powerful weapon. I’ve used it many times when I’ve needed absolute clarity that a door to injustice had to be slammed shut, never to be opened again. What’s interesting about anger is when we talk about it, we give fuel to its very existence – a lack of control over it. It’s “I lost control of my anger” or “I can’t control my temper”. Choosing anger, however, has no role when we instead need to open the door to self-compassion and healing. It would be like asking Arnie (T2 version) to read a bedtime story to a kitten. (I've been doing Terminator re-runs lately).
So here’s the kicker in life lesson no. 3 – it’s a choice whether we ‘lose control’ of our anger. It’s a choice whether we invite anger in at all and sit across from it.
For most people sitting on a couch opposite a doctor telling them they have cancer, anger is waiting backstage to get its own microphone, practicing its big Broadway style mic-drop, and hoping to slap its star performance onto your backside as you leave the room. Thankfully for my doctor that day, the distance that comes with 20 years and some emotional evolution, I just cried rather than up-ending the table.
I have been surprised and shocked as anyone that I have not had an anger relapse, because you’d think of all things, THIS would be one reason to tell the other life lessons to go to hell.
But I didn’t. And I haven’t. Because choosing anger would erode my ability to nurture and care for myself. It would mean that I move one step further away from acceptance each day I wake up and say no to self-care/self-love or to just give-a-shit-about-myself. So I get up every morning and choose me. I choose yes to nurturing and caring for myself. And by extension, I’m saying yes to my beloved, my relationship, and those who love me that THEY matter. It doesn’t have to be omm-ing in the moonlight or wheat grass shots with a turmeric chaser. Sometimes it’s just reading quietly in the sun. It's walking to my local coffee shop because it’s a good day (I can make it past the corner !). It's driving an hour and a half to walk/shuffle along the beach with one of my oldest and dearest friends. It’s caring about me in that moment, on that day.
No amount of anger from me, my friends or my beloveds, will remove cancer from my life. It’s done. That was the path laid down at my feet on the 29th of March 2018. My job now is to walk that path with dignity and integrity and respect for myself and those who care about me. I'm not suggesting that every day I'm dancing that path like Pollyanna, because that would be part of the delusion. But on most days, my head is upright. And on those other days, I am more than ok with using sticky tape, a glue gun, blue tac or even someone else’s hands to hold my head for me.
Either way, I'm not letting anger control my response to the uncontrollable. The fact is, bad things happen. Little girls get killed crossing a car park. Older girls get murdered walking home from work. Wildlife warriors get killed by the wildlife they’re fighting to save. Two year olds get thyroid cancer. Thirteen year olds get ovarian cancer. Fathers get brain cancer. I got breast cancer. Sometimes, anger will win – it will knock on the door and come and stay for a day, or a week. Or it might just take up residence with its second cousin RAGE. But the over-staying guest(s) will leave the morning you wake up, take a new breath, and say “Today, I choose Me.”
