This has never happened to me before but last week a chestnut-backed chickadee pair flew to my living room window. One of them chirped at the sill as if it was talking to me directly. I exclaimed in delight at this tiny bird watching me as I watched it. The encounter reminded me of the power of joy. To that end, I want to reshare a post from a solid 10 years ago.
A few weeks ago, I listened to a radio show by Radleigh Valentine and he said on average people laugh 15 times a day. Fifteen times! And then he asked, “Do you remember if you laughed at all yesterday?” He pointed out it’s easy to remember the unpleasant things – the times we’re sad or scared or anxious – but the joyful times, the laughing times, are easier to forget. He encouraged his listeners to take note of when they laugh, to see if it adds up to 15 times. And then he said something really interesting: Plan for joy.
When he said, “Plan for joy” I wanted to pause his radio show so I could take that in. It hasn’t occurred to me lately I would need to plan for joy – I assumed joy would sort of happen if I bumbled around in my life. But you know? That’s not true – I mean, sure, I stumble across joy every once and a while like an adventurer coming into a clearing – but it wasn’t necessarily something I planned for. I assumed I’d experience joy once my life was peachy keen – when my financial situation improved, the love of my life came along, etc. I think you know this already, but joy is the quiet moments, the small events that we may not remember long after they happen.
More of this. Photo by Mieke Campbell on Unsplash
Joy is having a friend call you up spontaneously asking to hang out. It’s laughing along with a television show. It’s finding out the book you put on hold at the library has become available.
Joy can be spontaneous but it can also be planned and that’s what struck me the most about Radleigh’s show. In an interesting juxtaposition, I had a powerful therapy session this week. I went from fearful, anxious, and insecure in one moment to laughing, goofy, and joyful in the next.
My therapist asked me to recall a moment I felt joyful, loved, and appreciated and then embody it. She asked if a movement or sound accompanied joy. It did – joy for me looks like strutting with my toes flexed and my heels out singing along to, “Let’s go fly a kite” or Life of Brian’s “Always look on the bright side of life.”
What amazes me is no matter how icky I feel, strutting around my cottage and singing “Always look on the bright side of life,” automatically puts a smile on my face and lifts my mood. I can be melodramatic and negative but there is also joy to be found at those times. Joy is not winning the lottery or buying a new car, it’s humming to myself while I walk, it’s remembering all the times I laughed yesterday, it’s making an active effort to improve my mood because I am continuing to plan for joy.
I dream of a world where we remember we can access joy at any time. A world where we all have that one song that brings a smile to our faces. A world where we remember the number of times we laughed yesterday. A world where we not only experience joy, we continue planning for it.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
This morning I dreamed a seashell the size of a baby whale was sucked back into the ocean, despite my best efforts. I held on to the rim of the seashell and tried to swim back to shore with it. Two-story waves kept crashing over my head leaving me gasping for air. Eventually, I gave up because I knew if I didn’t let go, the riptide would pull me so far away from shore that I wouldn’t be able to swim back and I’d drown. I released the shell and crawled back to the beach exhausted, relieved, and disappointed as this shell I’d wanted so badly slipped further and further away from me.
I’m sure there are many layers to unpack with the dream but I’m going to share about the most obvious. It’s hard for me to let go. I will literally water a dead plant. The way this shows up in my relationships is I’ll keep holding on long past the point where it’s wise. I may not have heard from someone in months but I’ll still text them and say, “Hey, it’s been a while. Let’s catch up,” or, “I’d love to see you soon. Are you busy next week?” Despite not hearing anything in return, I’ll try again.
I do this because when I love someone, I really love them. I forgive them for their flaws, show understanding for what they’re going through, and accept however they want to show up in the relationship. I do this because I focus on the good times, the times we were close, the times when the relationship was working, and so it’s hard for me to accept the current reality where I have no clue what’s happening in their lives. It’s painful, really painful. What helps me is remembering that just because the relationship is dead doesn’t mean it didn’t matter.
Jung said, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” We were both transformed and on my end, every relationship leaves a mark. I wrote about this in my unpublished romantic comedy. The main character is talking about romantic love in the quote I’m about to share but the sentiment applies to every sort of love. I’ve changed the wording a bit so it fits with this blogpost:
“She expected falling in love to feel like a bomb – explosive, undeniable, irrevocably changing everything. Instead, falling in love was more like a leaky bathroom faucet, the slow and steady drip of water eventually wearing away the porcelain until it left an indelible mark. For better or for worse, the person now had a permanent space just for them.”
Sometimes that permanent space is like a scar, a reminder of what was, and other times that permanent space is like an internal organ, active and functioning. I often long for the scars to turn into organs but they very rarely do.
I opened this post writing about letting go and that’s what I’m doing here. I’m acknowledging most scars remain scars and longing for what was doesn’t serve anyone. Who I am in the present moment deserves to spend time with other people who make an effort for me in the present moment. Otherwise, it’s like I’m holding on to a giant seashell that’s destined for the ocean.
I dream of a world where we’re able to let go of old relationships and the dreams we had for those relationships. A world where we understand everyone we love has a permanent space in our psyches but sometimes that space is a scar. A world where we recognize sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is let someone go.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
What follows is a repost from 10(!!) years ago so not all of the examples are relevant anymore. For instance, I no longer have a neighbor who plays loud music, nor am I waiting for my passport in the mail. I’m also far less anxious and melodramatic but the general wisdom about not spinning out and attaching a story to an emotion still applies. Enjoy.
I had a very interesting conversation this week with a friend. He said there’s a difference between feeling an emotion and attaching a story to it. For instance, I may be sad about losing a relationship, which is a natural emotion, but what makes it worse is the story I tell myself on top of it such as, “I’ll be alone for the rest of my life,” “No one will ever love me the same way,” etc. I can compound an emotional state by adding a story and really working myself into a tizzy.
What’s hard for me to do is let the emotion go through me. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life doing what I could to not feel, to avoid feeling my feelings at all costs, to keep them at bay because I was afraid of feeling the feeling. In my mind, it was better to not feel angry, sad, lonely, etc. in the first place. So now that I’m sober (i.e., actually feeling my feelings and not trying to numb out), I still have a hard time letting my emotions pass through me, precisely because I can drag them out by adding a story to them.
Can we let things move through us like the wind blowing grass? Photo by Abdallah Kokash on Unsplash
The emotion turns into a big dramatic thing. I make it so much worse by piling on untruths such as, “I’ll feel this way forever,” or, “Things will never change.” There’s a lot of “always” and “never” in my stories. And a whole lot of catastrophizing where I jump from, “My neighbor is playing loud music,” to, “Oh my God, I need to move somewhere else!”
I’ll admit that much of this has to do with the fact that I’m anxious and melodramatic. For those of you who aren’t, you probably can’t relate to what I’m writing about. But for those of you who can, I want to point out how these stories and the catastrophizing make the emotion so much worse than it has to be. If I allowed myself to feel my moments of grief or loneliness, they wouldn’t last NEARLY as long.
I’m not sure what to do about all this other than to make myself aware of it. My dear friend who’s a therapist often tells me that awareness alone can make a huge difference. Maybe by understanding that I tell myself a lot of false “truths” I can catch myself in the act and remind myself they’re not the case. Just because I’m scared about not receiving my passport on time to leave for Europe, doesn’t automatically mean my boss will get pissed and fire me and never send me to Europe again. Instead, it’s better for me to stay present with what is and acknowledge, yes, I’m anxious about my passport arriving in the mail, but that’s all I get to be anxious about because nothing else has happened.
It all comes down to being present, to paying attention to what’s in front of me, and not future tripping or spinning out about what could be. There are a million things that “could be,” and when I start attaching emotion to all those possibilities, that’s when I really get into trouble. Can I let it be what it is instead?
I dream of a world where we feel, process, and let go of what’s before us. A world where we stick with whatever emotion we’re feeling and not compound it by telling ourselves falsehoods. A world where we allow emotions to come in and emotions to go out, understanding the process can be fast or slow depending on how much extra stuff we throw in. A world where we just let things be what they are.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I recently took the University of Pennsylvania’s VIA Survey of Character Strengths in an effort to leverage my strengths and become happier. Marty Seligman, the father of positive psychology, said to be happier we can use our top strengths and apply them to something we don’t like. For instance, if you don’t like filing your taxes and your top strength is humor and play, you can gamify filing your taxes.
My top strength completely shocked me. When the result came in, I texted a friend and said, “Is this right? This doesn’t seem right.” My top strength? Bravery and valor. BRAVERY AND VALOR. UPenn defines this as, “You are a courageous person who does not shrink from threat, challenge, difficulty, or pain. You speak up for what is right even if there is opposition. You act on your convictions.” OK, well, when you put it like that, it’s true. And then the universe answered my question about whether that’s my top strength because independently, unprompted, someone told me over Facebook that I’m like a first responder always running toward the fire, that I don’t shy away from issues. Message received!
I don’t know how to apply bravery and valor to filing taxes but what I am applying this character strength toward is other things, namely my relationship to fear itself. Our society has a very combative relationship to fear. We say, “Screw fear! Don’t let fear stop you! If you’re scared, do it anyway!” We think of fear as a bad thing, something to push away or bulldoze over. I get it. Me too, but it’s not really working for me anymore. I find that instead of feeling less afraid, fear is taking over and I’m falling into a fugue state where I can’t concentrate on anything because there’s not anything to do. In other words, my fears are not around things like ice skating or public speaking. They’re abstract.
Telling myself all the reasons why I shouldn’t be afraid, also doesn’t help because I become irrational when I’m afraid. I thought about it and asked, “What would approaching this issue from my top strength of bravery and valor mean?” And you know what it means? Facing fear head-on without trying to fix, change, or solve it. I’ve been setting a timer for 15 minutes for the past few days and just letting fear flood my body. I’m not trying to soothe myself, push it away, or do anything. I’m letting it be. I’m saying to myself, “It makes sense that you feel afraid. It’s OK. I’m here. It’s safe for you to feel afraid.”
No one has ever said that to me in my life. It’s safe to feel afraid? I don’t have to run from this emotion just like I don’t run from anger and sadness? I’m finding that’s exactly what I need. Like I wrote about a month ago, change requires not only awareness and action but also acceptance. Before I can do anything about the fear, I need to feel it. I need to accept that it’s there, not minimize the emotion or declare all the reasons why it’s invalid. I can’t speak for everyone but for me, I perpetually want a container. I want a safe space to fall apart, to unravel. I want someone to witness me with love and neutrality. It’s one of the reasons I love therapy so much.
However, I only talk to my therapist once a week. What about the other 167 hours? I am the only person who is with me constantly so the best thing I can do is become a safe space for myself. It feels like the most terrifying thing I can do, let myself feel afraid, and yet doing so I feel more settled, more present, more adult because I’m not letting a scared inner child take over my body. I’m giving myself the space to feel my feelings like a good parent. In other words, I’m being brave. And wouldn’t you know it, I do feel happier.
I dream of a world where we stop trying to force ourselves to feel one way or another. A world where we create a safe container to feel all of our emotions. A world where instead of making fear an enemy, we recognize there’s a reason we feel scared. A world where we let ourselves feel afraid because we know it’s safe to do so.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
P.S. If you take the strengths test, I’d love to hear your results.
Sometimes I have temporary amnesia in that I forget how much can change in a day, an hour, an instant. If I feel blue, I think I’ll always feel blue. If I feel happy, I think I’ll always feel happy. I pretend a state of being is permanent when in reality, it’s anything but. For instance, I’ve been hawking my bank account, just waiting for payments to come in. I started to fret about what I would do if I didn’t get paid, the steps I would take. And then, cha-ching! The money arrived! Hallelujah! I literally danced with joy.
But the opposite also happens. I can cruise along, feel that all is right in the world, and then receive a text message that a friend died. Before receiving the news, I could have been smiling, but after reading the text I would start crying. Emotions are like this. They’re energy in motion. I rarely remember that though because I’m either chasing the happy, feel-good emotions, or I’m pushing away the sad, feel-bad emotions.
Wait it out. Photo by Semyon Borisov on Unsplash
Our society does this too. We are encouraged to buy things – shoes, a phone, a car – or use drugs – alcohol, weed, ketamine – to chase away the pain. Our brains encourage this sort of behavior because they are in a perpetual quest for more dopamine, the feel-good, “more” molecule. But instead of trying to create a feeling, what if we just … waited? What if we instead recognized everything, EVERYTHING we’re feeling is temporary?
The temporary nature of life is on my mind because I wasn’t speaking hypothetically about receiving a text message notifying me of a friend’s death. That happened. I saw him on a Zoom call and then two days later he died of Parkinson’s. It’s surreal to me how quickly things can change. And my friend’s death is shaking me up because he was a staple of my childhood. Someone who was always around. I took it for granted he would continue to be, even after he got sick because I forgot everything is temporary.
My spiritual teacher says, “This expressed universe is nothing but a collection of temporary entities which are undergoing constant metamorphosis according to the sweet will of nature.” We are all temporary entities and we are all constantly changing. Nothing stays the same. Nothing. When I remember this, every emotion becomes easier to bear; every experience becomes richer precisely for its impermanence.
This isn’t a profound post, I’m not revealing a truth you don’t already know, but maybe like me, you forget. Maybe you forget the person next to you is not immortal and neither are you. Maybe you forget the pain you feel will end. Maybe you forget at any moment you can feel euphoric because you received good news. Instead of chasing after a feeling, what if we pulled back a little, practiced more detachment and surrender, and understood all we have to do is wait? Because even if it doesn’t seem like it right now, you’ll feel great again soon. I promise.
I dream of a world where we understand emotions are constantly changing. A world where we realize we can’t force ourselves to feel one way or another and we stop trying. A world where we understand if we just wait, we’ll feel great again.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
In 12-step communities there’s a saying, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.” When I first heard the expression, I thought it meant secrets, along with the things you’re ashamed of, and/or the emotions and memories you’re trying to repress, will drive you to act out in your addiction. While that’s true, I’ve also learned recently that secrets can make you physically sicker. I don’t mean the stomachache when you’re hiding something from your best friend. I mean arthritis and cardiovascular issues.
In a meta-analysis, meaning a study that looked at numerous other studies, Marcus Mund and Kristin Mitte found those who repressed their emotions had significant associations with cancer and high blood pressure. There’s also a study from 1999 when Dr. Joshua Smyth assigned asthma and rheumatoid arthritis patients to write either about the most stressful event of their lives or about emotionally neutral topics. He and his colleagues found the patients who wrote about stressful life experiences had clinically relevant changes in health status at four months compared with those who wrote about emotionally neutral topics. The gains were beyond those attributable to the standard medical care that all participants were receiving, according to the authors.
Expression, not repression. Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash
Meaning, just by writing about stressful events, by sharing their secrets, patients with asthma and rheumatoid arthritis were clinically, measurably, better off than people who kept their thoughts and feelings bottled up. The effects may have lasted longer than four months, but Smythe and his colleagues didn’t follow up to find out.
As someone who is extremely psycho-somatic, meaning I have a strong link between my mind and body, I already know this information. However, what is news to me is the measurable effects. Not only do people feel better emotionally when they express their internal landscape, but researchers have demonstrated their blood pressure drops, their heart rate decreases, and pain levels decline. That’s really freaking cool if you ask me. I love when science confirms something I know to be true anecdotally.
Why am I writing this post? I think it’s because there are likely people out there saying to themselves, “The past is the past. I’m over it. I don’t need to talk about it. Why dwell on something you can’t change?” For those people, my response is, “You can’t change the past, but you can change how it’s affecting your present. How it’s impacting your body. Expressing a stressful event, even if it’s just in a journal, will help you feel better physically. And you don’t have to take my word for it – researchers have found that to be true as well.”
Not only researchers, but spiritual teachers. In fact, mine says, “It is natural for all living beings to search for a way to express themselves fully. Sometimes this expression takes the form of crude physical pleasure, and sometimes that of subtle psychic pleasure.” He also says, “Repression directly affects the subconscious mind. Gradually the psychic structure is severely damaged, and finally the mind is totally changed. The result is that people are inflicted with a defeatist psychology and an inferiority complex.”
That doesn’t sound great to me. I’d rather be strong physically and mentally. I want to feel happy and free. Who knew that could happen with something as simple as writing in a journal for 15 minutes?
I dream of a world where we recognize repressing feelings and past events takes a toll on our physical, mental, and emotional health. A world where we understand it’s our innate desire to express. A world where we realize we’ll feel stronger and happier if we express what’s going on for us. A world where we understand we are only as sick as our secrets.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Sometimes I have the expectation of myself that I’ll function like a robot. That no matter the circumstances, no matter how I’m feeling, I’ll be able to accomplish XYZ regardless. And if I’m not able to accomplish XYZ, then I beat myself up and make meaning from it like, “You’re so lazy.” This may sound silly, but what I often forget is that I’m a human and human beings are not robots. We aren’t able to show up the same way every day.
Something my therapist says is, “Everyone is doing the best they can at every moment and sometimes their best sucks.” Yep. I’m doing my best every day and sometimes my best sucks. Sometimes my best entails lying in bed under a pile of blankets watching terrible television because I can’t motivate myself to contact potential new clients. Sometimes my best means my bathroom mirror has flecks of toothpaste on it because cleaning it feels like too much effort.
I see this lack of respecting the natural ebb and flow of each person reflected in society. The other week I wrote about how people are turning into small children, throwing tantrums in grocery stores, and yes, it’s because many of us struggle with feeling our feelings, but I also think it’s because in the U.S. anyway, we forget we’re human and instead we’re being asked to function as if we aren’t. Your kids are home from school? You should be able to accomplish as much work as if they weren’t! Your colleague is out sick with Covid? You should still be able to meet that deadline! Um, no.
They’re cute, but let’s not aspire to be like them. Photo by Eric Krull on Unsplash
The expectation that life can or will continue as normal even when circumstances change is absurd. We are not robots and it’s not feasible to “power through” everything. Furthermore, maybe we’re not supposed to power through! Maybe we’re supposed to be smart, adaptable human beings that fluctuate day by day. This is something living with a chronic illness teaches me over and over again. Some days I can go for a swim, write for hours, clean my house, make dinner from scratch, and connect with friends. And other days I’m only capable of getting dressed and heating up a premade meal. Both happen and yet I beat myself up on the days I don’t have energy to do as much as I’d like. A lot of it has to do with internalized capitalism, but it’s also because of the expectations I place upon myself.
What if instead I treated myself with compassion and understanding? What if instead I recognized that at some point the bathroom mirror will get cleaned and inspiration will strike to contact potential new clients? Because that always happens. It reminds me of a quote from the late, great, Thích Nhat Hạnh who said, “No one is more worthy of your kindness and compassion than you are,” and also, “Real love means loving kindness and compassion, the kind of love that does not have any conditions.”
Real love for myself and others means recognizing we each have good days and bad days. It means understanding there’s a natural rhythm and cycle to life. It means acknowledging as much as society wants us to be robots, we aren’t. We’re human beings and human beings fluctuate, make mistakes, and have limitations. For better or for worse, we show up differently every day and not only is that OK, it’s natural, normal, and to be expected because again, we’re not robots.
I dream of a world where we treat ourselves with love and compassion. A world where we reduce the expectations we set for ourselves. A world where we understand our best will change from day to day. A world where we remember we aren’t robots.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Can we take a moment and acknowledge how hard it is to be alive? And in particular to be alive right now? I keep thinking about this New York Times article detailing how in the retail world, adults are acting like children because they are unable to cope with the stress of life. Grown men are screaming because the grocery store is out of the cheese they want. Women are becoming inconsolable because their packages are delayed. In the U.S., and likely other parts of the world, we are not doing well, emotionally speaking.
Many of us don’t know how to handle our feelings and instead turn to something external to cope. For instance, at the start of the pandemic, Forbes posted an article about how people are consuming more alcohol, smoking weed, playing video games, eating a lot of junk food, binge-watching Netflix and adult films more than ever before. But that trend hasn’t stopped. More recently in September 2021, USA Today shared that nearly 1 in 5 Americans are heavily drinking. Heavy drinking is defined as four or more drinks per day for women and five or more drinks per day for men, twice in a single week.
When life feels hard, give us something to feel better. And I get it, I really do. I’m an addict in recovery. I know all about turning to something external to feel better because I did it for years. But does repressing or suppressing emotion work? Ever? For anyone? Or instead are people turning into small children because they’re no longer able to be instantly gratified?
These eggs! So expressive. Photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash
Emotions are meant to be felt. They are a form of energy in our bodies that must be moved, must be expressed. When there’s a loss, the best thing to do is to cry, not get drunk. Tears literally make you feel better because they release the chemicals oxytocin and endorphins. If you’re angry, don’t scream at a grocery store clerk, express it in a safe way by yelling at an empty cup that represents the person who crossed a boundary, or writing a letter you never send, or whatever. Taking out your anger on someone as collateral damage is not OK.
We’ve forgotten how to feel our feelings in this culture because we have so many quick fixes at our disposal. But this pandemic is doing away with those quick fixes, at least some of them. Are we crying about that? Are we weeping for our losses, not only deaths, but the loss of certainty, connection, freedom, normalcy, and more? I know for some people it’s hard to cry or it may not feel safe to cry. If that’s you, you’re not alone. I highly recommend checking out the Westfeldt Institute for Emotional Hygiene because this is what they specialize in – emotional regulation. You can also listen to season one of the podcast “The Healing Feeling Shit Show.”
Feeling your feelings not only helps you, but it helps others. The world needs more adults. We’re witnessing what happens when inner children are at the helm and it’s not pretty. Being an adult is not only about making money, it’s also knowing what to do when you feel scared, angry, or sad. I have zero interest in being screamed at because I looked at someone funny and I have zero interest in retail clerks consoling a customer because the shop ran out of dish soap. Can we not? Can we instead feel our feelings? It’s not always easy but it’s worth it.
I dream of a world where we practice emotional regulation in healthy ways. A world where we feel our feelings as they arise. A world where we take care of ourselves and each other by acting like adults when life gets challenging. A world where we know what to do when we have a feeling.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve heard something to the effect of, “It only takes one person to feel grounded and safe in a crowd to change the atmosphere for everyone else.” It’s a nice sentiment, but is it just a bunch of hokey-pokey b.s.? Can little ole me really have that kind of effect on other people? It turns out, yes.
Emotions are contagious just like colds and scientists think this “emotional contagion” is due to the mirror neuron system. Essentially, when you do something yourself and watch someone else do that exact activity, the same neurons are firing, aka, mirror neurons. Pretty cool right? So how then do emotions catch on? According to this article in Healthline, it happens in three stages: mimicry, feedback, and experience.
Mimicry is just what it sounds like: mimicking someone else. If I smile at you, chances are you’re going to smile back at me. However, typically your reaction is not conscious. It’s happening automatically. But that mimicry has a ripple effect and creates feedback in the brain and body. For instance, if you’re mimicking my smile, even if originally you felt cranky, just by smiling, you’ll feel happier. And that feedback will create a response in you so that you actually are feeling happier. That’s the experiential part of emotional contagion. You mimicked me, created feedback for yourself, and thus “caught” the emotion I’m expressing.
I don’t know about you, but looking at these folks makes me smile! Photo by Siviwe Kapteyn on Unsplash
What fascinates me about this process is not only the one-on-one contagion, but also the group contagion. We see this with mob mentality, or herd mentality when people are influenced by their peers to adopt a behavior or viewpoint on a largely emotional basis. What we’re all creating is a collective mind. We’re syncing our minds up and this happens whether we want it to or not.
The question then becomes, what to do about that? My spiritual teacher says, “The collectivity is yours. The collectivity is not outside you – your future is inseparably connected with the collective fortune. You must take the entire collectivity with you and move toward the sweetest radiance of the new crimson dawn, beyond the veil of the darkest night.”
Later on, he says, “Now, changes will have to be effected in the mental flow of this collective mind; you will have to create a new wave of thought in it. Because of the manner of human thinking thus far, the pace of human progress has been painfully slow. If it is given a new direction, the speed of progress will be greatly accelerated.”
Frankly, I’m all for moving toward the sweetest radiance of the new crimson dawn and accelerating the speed of human progress. And that means how I feel, how I act, matters. How you interact with other people has an impact. It transmits something and together we create something that wouldn’t have been there before. We are each contributing to a collective mind. But what are we contributing? Is it something that will move humanity forward to a state of equity, justice, love, and respect? Or is it something that creates more discrimination, inequality, and division? Knowing about emotional contagion, what will you choose?
I dream of a world where we recognize how we feel, what we express really does matter. A world where we allow ourselves to be authentic, but also understand we affect and even infect those around us. A world where we are conscious about what we’re contributing to the collective mind because we understand emotional contagion is real.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Anger has been on my mind lately. Frankly it’s because I’m fuming. On Saturday, I came home to my apartment and found the workmen charged with replacing my bedroom window left my place a mess. Furniture was not returned to its rightful place, area rugs were askew, and pictures lay on the floor. Not only that, I was gifted with dust in every nook and cranny of my bedroom and random paint splatters on my floor. I literally spent an hour and a half vacuuming, scrubbing, washing, and putting things back where they belong. Minus the paint splatters. Those I couldn’t get rid of.
Suffice to say, I am NOT a happy camper. Quite the opposite in fact. As a deeply spiritual person, am I doing something “wrong” by feeling angry? With so many messages in the world about how anger is unnatural, destructive, something to avoid, etc. am I harming myself in the long run by feeling this way? In short, no.
First of all, anger shows up when there’s a boundary violation, as in the case of my apartment. Boundaries help us determine what we are and are not OK with, and if someone crosses the boundary line, that’s when anger often appears. From a nonviolent communication perspective, anger is a messenger notifying me about unmet needs. In this case, unmet needs for consideration and care.
Sometimes it’s good to “see red.” Photo by Alex Mihai C on Unsplash
The other thing I learned about anger recently is even in my own spiritual tradition anger isn’t a villain the way it’s often portrayed. Don’t get me wrong, my spiritual teacher talks at length about how anger can become a bad habit and even says, “The tendency of anger harms the body, stuns the mind, and creates obstacles for spiritual progress. Shiva, the great yogi, was well aware of this truth, and thus he clearly stated, Krodha eva mahán shatruh – ‘Anger is a great enemy.’”
So yeah, my teacher calls anger an enemy, BUT later on he also makes a distinction between sentient anger and static anger. He says if anger takes control of you, it’s static anger. But anger when it’s used for good, to stop the unholy activities of people in society for instance, is called sentient anger.
What does that mean? My takeaway is that anger cannot be an unconscious controller. The emotion is harmful if it’s unregulated and instead it requires training. A dear friend of mine uses this analogy: Anger can be likened to a guard dog. If it’s untrained, it may bite the mail carrier. Alternatively, the dog may wag its tail and let burglars stroll in and steal your stuff. Neither situation is how you want a guard dog to behave. The same is true for us humans and our internal guard dogs. We don’t want to get angry at the wrong times nor calm when it behooves us to be angry. When spiritual traditions advocate non-anger, they’re focused on static anger. But there is a place for anger, even in spirituality.
One more point: Until we’re all enlightened, omniscient beings, we have no idea what other people’s boundaries are. Anger, along with communication, are how we communicate that. Anger provides important information and that means for us spiritual people too.
I dream of a world where we recognize the value of anger. A world where we work on training anger so it doesn’t control us. A world where we understand anger has a rightful place and can in fact, even be something good.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.