Why Angle is Essential to Healthy Relationships
Many of us have some very definite ideas about anger. We see
anger as destructive and hurtful. We consider it to be an
inappropriate response. We equate anger with violence. In short,
we feel that anger is simply wrong, and that when we experience
anger, there's something wrong with us. Anger isn't nice. Anger
isn't polite. And anger certainly isn't our friend.
Anger can be all of these things. But anger is also useful,
necessary and even healing. We need our anger. We simply need to
learn how to express our anger in appropriate, conscious,
supportive ways. On its own, anger is neither good nor bad. It
can be used to hurt, or it can be used to heal. It may not be a
particularly pleasant emotion, but it's an important one. And
anger-or rather the skillful use and understanding of anger-is
essential to creating healthy relationships.
Guy Williams, a friend of mine who also happens to be a minister
of Religious Science offers a tremendously insightful approach
for understanding anger. Guy says that anger arises from a
communication not delivered or an expectation not met. Anger is
actually a tertiary response: our initial responses are grief
and fear. First, we grieve the death of the expectation that was
not met. Next, we fear that things will never change. Finally,
we experience anger.
So few of us recognize that anger can be a positive, healing
response. When we allow ourselves to experience anger, it
focuses our minds, and strengthens our resolve. We discover
reserves of strength and power. Our anger is what gives us the
courage and the power to confront our fear that things will
never change, by creating change.
So many of us equate anger with aggression. We believe that when
we experience anger, someone will be hurt. In order to create a
more spiritual and skillful relationship with anger, it's
helpful to recognize that we can defend ourselves without
attacking.
Consider that we each carry a sword. When someone crosses a
boundary, we experience anger (because our expectation that our
boundaries will be respected was not met). At this point, we
have a choice. We can choose to use our sword to attack, lashing
out at the person who crossed the boundary. This will inevitably
violate our partner's boundaries, and make our partner feel
unsafe and angry. They will, in turn, pull out their sword and
begin to attack us in earnest. The result is a classic
"lose-lose" scenario, where both participants are wounded and
feel less safe than they did at the start.
We do have another choice, however. We can choose to use our
sword to defend our boundary by simply removing it from its
sheath and displaying it. Brandishing our metaphorical weapon is
usually more than sufficient to hold the attention of the person
who crossed the boundary. Once we have our partner's attention,
we can calmly make them aware that they have crossed a boundary,
and ask that they take a step back and respect that boundary in
the future.
Because we are merely defending ourselves and not attacking our
partner, we are far less likely to make our partner feel unsafe,
which in turn means our partner is far more likely to apologize
for having unintentionally crossed a boundary. It's a "win-win"
situation because we feel safe once again in the expectation
that our boundaries will, indeed, be respected, and our partner
feels safe because they are now more aware of the boundaries in
the relationship, and no longer need to fear that they will
accidentally violate them.
If we choose not to take things personally, and always assume
that the boundary violation was unintentional, we not only avoid
stepping into the role of victim, but we also avoid the need to
forgive our partner, because we never blamed them in the first
place.
Avoiding blame, by the way, is another way that we defend
ourselves without attacking. When we blame someone for their
actions, we are, in fact, attacking them. We cut them off from
the flow of our love. This makes them feel less safe, and
frequently is interpreted as an attack. More importantly, when
we blame someone, we reinforce the lie that we are separate from
All That Is, and cut ourselves off from the universal flow.
So how is anger essential to healthy relationships? Anger is our
call to awareness.
Remember that relationships are all about meeting our
fundamental needs. In every relationship, we need to feel safe
and we need to feel validated. As long as those needs are met,
our relationships are truly amazing.
When we feel angry, we know something is not right. We become
acutely aware that some of our needs are not being met. Anger is
most often associated with safety violations. If we feel angry
because our validation needs are not being met, it's usually an
indication that we have an attachment to meeting our validation
needs-a sign that one of the main ways that we feel safe is to
feel validated. When we feel angry in our relationships, we
usually respond in one of two ways. The first response is to
express our anger, most often by lashing out in some way. We've
already seen how this is always a lose-lose proposition.
The second response is to repress our anger in order to avoid a
full-out confrontation. (Notice how this response also assumes
that the only other way to deal with anger is to express it by
attacking!) When we repress our anger, we attempt to restore the
balance in our safety accounts by isolating ourselves and
disengaging from the relationship. Eventually, we will no longer
be able to repress our anger, and it will manifest in a
confrontation of unexpected and inappropriate intensity.
Neither response meets our relationship needs, of course.
When we cultivate a more skillful relationship with anger,
however, we have a third option. When we feel angry in a
relationship, we can become aware that we're feeling unsafe,
that some expectation has not been met, and that our needs are
not being met. We can own this experience, recognizing that it's
about us, not about our partner. And we can choose to take
appropriate action. Instead of attacking or withdrawing, we can
choose to engage in the relationship more fully.
Before we engage in the relationship, however, we must first
recognize that we're feeling unsafe, and remedy this. We may be
able to shift our awareness and restore the balance in our
safety account in an instant. We may need to disengage (briefly)
so that we can cool down before we reengage in the relationship.
Whatever the method, it is essential that we feel completely
safe before we proceed. If we don't feel safe, we won't behave
in a reasonable or rational manner.
Once we feel safe, we can explore why we felt angry. Remember,
anger arises because an expectation was not met, or a
communication was not delivered. What was the expectation? What
boundary was crossed? What was not communicated? What was not
understood?
Now that we've identified the reason for the anger response, we
can consider it objectively. The most important question is
whether our expectations were reasonable. Remember that we are
responsible for meeting our minimum daily requirements of safety
and validation on our own. When our unreasonable expectations
aren't met, we do experience anger, but that anger is a call to
make us aware that it's time to adjust our expectations, and
this does not involve our partner in any way.
If we discover that our expectations are, in fact, reasonable,
and that our partner is responsible, then it's time to defend
our boundaries and hold our partner accountable.
Holding our partner accountable, however, is not the same thing
as blaming our partner, yelling at our partner, insulting our
partner, "tearing our partner a new one," or in any way making
our partner wrong.
It's important to recognize that much of the time, all that we
need is an acknowledgement that our partner has not met an
expectation, and an apology. All we need in order to feel safe
again is to be able to believe that our expectations will
actually be met in the future.
This may seem hard to accept-how could a simple apology ever be
sufficient? It's something each of us has to experience for
ourselves. The desire for punishment or revenge exists because
we have disengaged from our relationships, and we believe that
our partners are responsible for meeting our safety needs. When
we take responsibility for restoring our sense of safety and
choose to engage in our relationships, all we need is an
apology-an acknowledgement of the boundary violation-and then
forgiveness comes naturally.