In one of the last DV classes I taught, I took a minute to talk to think. (Whenever I talk to think, I get words out of my brain so that I can see them more clearly and ponder them from different angles to discover if the words are true or not.)
With many of the men I work(ed) with, I have to teach them about emotions. To do so, I created a worksheet to hand out that reads something like this:
When we say we feel bad we might be saying…
- I feel hurt — Something that makes me who I am has been attacked, broken, or damaged
- I feel sad — I’ve lost something
- I feel lonely — I am disconnected from others
- I feel guilty — I did something bad
- I feel despair — I am without hope things are (I am) never gonna change
- I feel scared — things are going to go badly
- I feel disgusted — I experienced something that I found to be inhuman or gross and had a visceral or somatic reaction to it.
Shame is its own category because it is a combination of fear and shame; but, it is fear and shame about myself.
- It is fear that either, I am too much, or I am not enough
- It is despair that I will never be enough or always be too much
- It is fear that if you see me for who I am you will not understand, accept or delight in me
- It is despair that this won’t ever change
My favorite definition, though not clinical, is simply, the inability to meet the gaze of another. You can’t look them in the eye. You can’t let them see your soul.
Surprise is its own category as well because when we say that we are “Surprised,” we may be expressing a negative or a positive feeling.
Surprise happens when someone or something has caught us off guard and we weren’t prepared to experience it.
Like Surprise, “Anger” is not always a “bad” emotion. Sometimes it feels good to feel Anger.
Anger is one of those bad feelings combined with a sense of injustice or blame — "Someone or something else is responsible for my bad feeling and I am powerless to do anything about it."
We feel anger toward others, ourselves, institutions, cultures, people groups, and objects
Many times, the anger we feel at others is really anger we feel toward ourselves that we “transfer” to them or “project’ onto them to avoid blaming ourselves. Other times, we “transfer” or “introject” anger that we feel toward others onto or into ourselves to unconsciously gain more of a sense of control. Typically, this happens when fear is the “bad” emotion we are “unjustly” feeling.
Sometimes, anger is justified, righteous and empowering. When this is the case, we rightly condemn the wrong action or the evil without judging the person who chose it. This is a very difficult discipline.
As I thought about this, I thought about my Mum and the fact that she helped a ton of people and was someone that my brother says, “is the most evil person he has ever met.” Since she sexually abused me, it is hard to deny her this title, but something in me needs to if I am to stay sane.
Dwight Friesen was my advisor at The Seattle School. His office was filled with “&’s.” Over my three years inhabiting that holy space, I learned the power of holding the “and.” Mum was both completely evil and a saint. I had to learn to hold both truths about her. The question was could I hate her evil — her actions that broke me and my brother (including but not limited to her sexual abuse of me) — with the fury of all that is holy; and still hold her as my mother who was herself broken and worthy of love?
So, "holy anger," is anger that is directed at the evil that is done, and not at the persons who do it. It separates the evil act from the person who acts. This is so hard to do! It is far easier to hate the person who does the act than to focus our hatred on the action and the evil that leads the person to take the action.
Anger directed at evil changes the world. It led William Wilberforce to dismantle slavery throughout the English Empire in the 19th Century 40 years before the American Civil War. It led amazing women to lead the Women’s suffrage movement in this country. It led Martin Luther King Jr to lead the Civil Rights movement, and Gandhi to begin dismantling the caste system in India. The hatred of evil is an amazing motivator for change in our world.
This is true in part because Holy wrath is always organically connected to love. We “hate” that which destroys personhood and mars the image of God in people. But can you see how close that is to hating people for doing evil? It is a fine line and it takes a lot of hard emotional work to hold it. But, it is worth it because malingering anger at others eats away at the foundation of our souls and though it is rooted in the past, haunts us in our present lives and relationships.
So How Do We Get There???
There are 3 prerequisites for holy, world-altering anger:
- Grief
- Forgiveness
- Proper Boundaries
Grief is mourning what is lost. Someone rightly said it is the removal of the opportunity for us to love. We grieve when we have lost something or someone that/who gave us hope for a better tomorrow, for connection, for understanding, delight, or beauty.
Grief
Many people have addressed the stages of grief: denial and isolation, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Others have outlined how we don’t simply step through each step in an orderly fashion, we bounce from stage to stage, and then back again.
What hasn’t been addressed is the fact that for many of us, get stuck in the anger in an attempt to make an end-run around the grief and not fully experience it. We don’t want to feel the loss and the hurt, the loneliness, and the sorrow, the fear or the anguish that accompany grief. Instead, we stay angry so we don’t have to feel the sorrow. Anger becomes our defense against the grieving process. When it functions this way, we don’t cycle away from it. We get stuck in it.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is making a choice to give up judging the person and/or the need for revenge against them. It is not giving up the right to judge their action, nor is it necessary to enter into or hold a relationship with someone you have forgiven. Forgiveness does not mandate relationship. It only mandates judging or holding resentment against another. A lack of forgiveness is a sign that we view a person to be little more than their actions, choices, or emotions. And, none of us are merely our actions, choices, or emotions. We are much more than merely the things we do, feel, or choose.
Boundaries
For the past two-plus years a national debate has raged over the nature of our nation’s southern border. The debate has been over the nature of the boundary that we have with Mexico. On one extreme, some argue that there should be no border and no boundaries. And, on the other, we need to build a wall, and perhaps a moat to stop anyone we don’t let anyone in that we don’t want in. Most of the country falls somewhere between these two extremes.
That picture provides a handy metaphor about personal boundaries. Personal boundaries exist to protect us from others and others from us while allowing for relationship and connection with others.
Like in the national debate, people with poor boundaries fall into two extremes: People who don’t really have a sense of who they are except through the eyes of others - who can only feel good about themselves if those around them feel good about them (these are similar to the people who want no border); and, people who hold a position of not caring or needing anyone else and being complete loners, refusing to let anyone know what is happening inside of them and not really caring what is going on inside of others (these are the people that build a wall and dig a moat around themselves to protect themselves from getting hurt.
Having good personal boundaries means that we are both differentiated - knowing who we are and what makes us us; as well as being attached - knowing who we are through our relationships with others, creation, and the Creator. When I talk to clients who don’t believe in God, instead of using the term, “Creator,” I refer to “the transcendent realities of our world” - things that go beyond reason and rationality such as love, wonder, and awe. I guess what I mean by that, is that when I go to Ecola State Park and look over the knoll where I poured out Mum and Dad’s ashes to the Pacific Ocean with seems to go on for an eternity and pounds into the rocks below, I learn about myself in relationship to my world. When I crested Piegan Pass in Glacier National Park, I literally fell down to worship, not because I was tired (though I was) but because I was full of awe and wonder at the creation that opened up before me. At that moment, I not only saw the majesty of the Northern Montana Rockies, the peace of the hollers below, and the beauty of the glacial lakes hidden in them, but I got to see myself in light of all those things. It gave me perspective about myself and my limits. Perhaps the best illustration of this is found in a little part of the 1991 movie, The Grand Canyon. When Simon (Danny Glover) sits on the curb talking to Mac (Kevin Kline).
Simon is really talking about boundaries without knowing it. It is difficult to see where we start and stop. We need to see this reality if we are going to deal with our own unhealthy anger. If we are going to hold to boundaries that promote life and health.
It sounds a lot easier than it is because in close relationships our boundaries overlap. the choices you make affect me, and the choices I make affect you. We lust for freedom that infringes on the boundaries of another far too deeply. If I own property and dam a creek to create a reservoir for myself and for irrigation, it means that the people who live downstream are robbed of water that they need. If I build a four-story house, it might block the sunlight from yours. Actions have consequences and so the freedom we long for can often limit the freedom of another.
We feel anger when we see freedom impinged upon by another. This balancing act is at the heart of nearly all the social debates and dialogue in this nation. As I work with clients who complain about dysregulated emotions (their emotions are too big for them to handle and it causes problems), to work effectively I need to work along two fronts: 1) giving them tools to help them regulate their emotions in healthy rather than unhealthy ways, and 2) helping get at the issues that cause the dysregulation in the first place. As you can see above, it is because they have faulty boundaries. So the work becomes exploring the unconscious reasons and motivations they hold to those boundaries.
For you guys to thrive this will be your work as well. For anger not to rule you. For you to be able to hold to the righteous anger at the evil people do while not feeling anger toward the people who do them is perhaps the single-most Christ-like behavior we can practice. Living this way is why I say I am a Christ-follower. It is perhaps the single hardest thing we Christ-followers are called to do. It is also how we get to experience eternal life in this life. It is a life full of joy and sorrow. And it always promises adventure for us as we follow in his steps, leaving drops of grace in every step we take.
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