Empower yourself - reconnect with your anger

Last month, there were a couple of situations when I lost my balance. Preparing to move house can do that to me. As can an infrequent meeting with the extended family. I got angry, I got sad. And my "same old, same old" coping strategy: "flee! At least emotionally!" activated. I got lost. I started feeling the need to reconnect with my values, to regain my centre.

But how? Talking with friends helped. Surfing the web. Also, I rereading this years' newyears post. I looked for what struck me in Peter Sloterdijk's work when I encountered it, googling him. What's going on around him? I found this essay "the gave van de woede" by Ranfar Kouwijzer (in Dutch). Kouwijzer is a Dutch minister.

Kouwijzer explains quite clearly how anger, is a form of "thyme", from the ancient Greek. This thymothian energy motivates and triggers action. The kind of action that makes people want to wage a war. But also the kind of energy that makes you want to stand up for what you believe is right. This kind of energy can liberate and restore connections.

My personal click with thymothian energy, is the link with depression. Trilby Fairfax, the first therapist that did me any good, this was '04 - '06, taught me depression is imploded anger. Sloterdijk's explanation of anger as energy, somehow gave me permission to feel it. Feel the anger. More accurately: it eliminated the need to suppress it. Suppression was taking up my energy resources and, paradoxically, forcing the anger to become stronger and harder to control.

I felt angry that no one was noticing the wonderfulness of me. I felt angry that the only expression we were taught, is that of consumption. I felt angry at being estranged from myself. I was angry at being unable to connect with other people, really and truly connect. I was angry that I did not know what that meant to me, exactly.

The concept of thymothian energy helps me recalibrate these feelings. I have a passionate need, a pride, an honour, for connecting with people on an emotional level. I need to experience emotional leadership. The kind pack leaders the future should have, like Cesar Millan describes. I need to feel part of a pack. It is what I have been missing most my life. I have been living in an emotional power vacuum.

Good, wonderful, cunning people of the world: it is time to get angry about being good. Get angry about living and connecting based on LOVE instead of fear. Get angry about what you need for you - and go get it!

PS november 2022: Trilby Fairfax is practicing, based in Dorset UK these days, find her professional data here; I found she also recorded a podcast, 60' on Voice Dialogue; that should be very interesting too.

PS november 2022: the primal connection between emotions and anger shows itself in newborns, and I love Aletha Solter's take on it as she describes it in her "Tears and Tantrums".