The Courage to Know Your Own Pain
El coraje de conocer tu propio dolor
A question about working with recurring anger, particularly in close relationships, and the discovery that anger often masks deeper pain that asks to be met with vulnerability rather than avoidance.
The Courage to Know Your Own Pain
A question about working with recurring anger, particularly in close relationships, and the discovery that anger often masks deeper pain that asks to be met with vulnerability rather than avoidance.
I've been exploring and playing with anger, and I find that I have many experiences of anger throughout the day. I seem to have all these different conditions and desires for things to be calm and quiet in order to feel at peace. As I dive deeper into this, I find that it's all in my thoughts. The anger seems to be just perceptions I'm creating in my mind.
The difficulty I'm playing with is this: when I'm around other people who aren't necessarily doing the same inward work of uncovering and disidentifying with the illusion of thoughts, I have a hard time. I have a roommate, and we get into different quarrels. I find myself always having to empty out and also try to communicate, set boundaries, and so on. The more I'm able to look into the anger and the thoughts triggering it, the more I can be at peace. But it doesn't necessarily take away the other person's anger; it only takes away mine. How can I work with this in a way where I can still be around him, still talk to him and have a relationship, without ignoring him or ignoring his reality, while also not just identifying with it?
The root of anger is pain
A few things. First, often the root of anger is pain. A lot of anger can be dissipated simply by seeing what pain is there and being more in touch with it. One doesn't really identify with the anger itself. One identifies with the "I" who is angry, and with certain beliefs around that "I."
Another aspect: anger is not inherently a bad thing. But when we are angry from a place of illusion, it's simply not a useful energy. It can be useful, but it is very different when it manifests from wisdom. In that case, it happens more rarely, more briefly, and in a very appropriate context.
The specific anger I'm talking about is more of a resentment, a dissatisfaction.
Yes, and resentment starts to point toward pain. Even though it's dissatisfaction, that more generalized dissatisfaction can be around many things. For example, you talked about peace, and in a sense you're drawing an equivalence: when anger isn't there, then there's peace. Requiring the condition that anger be absent in order to feel at peace is itself going to create frustration.
Right. I find that to be a real challenge. I don't want to be experiencing this anger, and I don't want to give anyone my time of day. I just contract.
The hidden payoff of anger
There's another aspect for you to contemplate. When you say "I don't want to be angry," look at the part of you, or the way in which, you do want to be angry, the way in which you do enjoy being angry. It is chosen as a way of being. Then ask: what is that helping you with? It's probably helping you avoid different forms of pain, a sense of powerlessness, impotence, or vulnerability.
Doesn't anger come from a place of needing things to be a certain way?
Yes, but it will be more specific: needing for this pain to go away. If you instead learn to be with the pain, the anger dissipates in all the times and ways where it's simply not useful, practical, or the best response. Then you start to relate more deeply to what's actually there. If you try to deconstruct the anger, but the anger is actually a reaction to pain, and you try to disidentify with it so that you're at peace, all you're doing is using a process to avoid the pain. The anger is just the way you're avoiding it.
Right. I guess I'm also avoiding the anger because I have a fear of the anger.
Exactly. But the anger itself is a fear-based response. Unless, very rarely, it comes from wisdom and is therefore love-based. But normally it is fear-based, and it's going to choose the most useful way to protect. "Protect" means to protect me from this pain. So it's going to manifest as aggression, or as a defensive condition, or as various other reactions.
Instead of trying to undo the sense of identification around the anger, just look for what's really there underneath it, prior to it. Most likely it will be certain forms of pain, and with a more direct relationship to that, you can make more progress in seeing what's actually there.
Anger and love are not opposites
What I'm hearing is that it's possible to experience anger and also experience love at the same time. It doesn't have to be one or the other.
Yes. It is even possible that anger is the most loving response. But usually not. And what I just said is dangerous, because people can rationalize it: "Oh, I know I am being loving now and I am expressing my love through anger." That's madness.
What is that distinction?
I said it's possible that anger can be the most loving response. That's a possibility, within a specific context. But then the mind can use that expression to justify and rationalize anger when it actually is not loving. This is what normally happens.
This is probably one of the most common things.
And so it requires deep courage, vulnerability, and integrity to look at what's actually powering this anger, what its origin is, what its purpose is. It requires a great deal of inner integrity to look honestly at yourself. This isn't directed at you specifically; it's for everyone.
And underneath all the anger, at the root of it, could be feelings of helplessness?
The antidote to anger from ignorance
Exactly. The antidote to entering anger from ignorance is to discover what's at the root of it: the deeper cause, the form of pain that it takes. And then to normalize it, in the sense of being okay with it as it is. All the forms of that pain. Then anger will no longer arise as a way to avoid it. If I don't need to avoid a sense of powerlessness, if I don't need to avoid a certain vulnerability, then I won't use anger inappropriately.
So it's really about being brave enough not to avoid.
It's the courage to know yourself. The courage to really know yourself deeply and intimately. That's the inner integrity, the honesty to really say: "Wow, I've actually been hurting people to protect myself from my own pain." And remorse can come with that recognition. Facing it takes a great deal of honesty and bravery.
I find myself knowing where my anger is and not wanting to confront it, not wanting to be in the environment where it will come face to face with me. And I know that eventually it's inevitable, that avoiding it is only delaying something that is already inside of me.
The image of the open heart
Yes. Even when we might need to say something true and honest to somebody, something we know will be painful for them to hear, we might use anger as a way to express it, because it helps us not feel that pain. But it is pain that is meant to be felt.
There's no greater image to me of this (and it's tricky because it can get misinterpreted, and it has through the years) than the bleeding heart of Christ. It's an image, but it's also an energy, a door. The image represents Christ entering his chest with his hands, opening his chest, pulling his heart out, and placing it in front of him for it to be stabbed, cut, and wounded. What it shows is deep vulnerability, completely in touch with that pain. It's not peace because there is no pain. It's peace in the pain. And it cannot be damaged. That's a recognition, a realization. When it comes from that deep openness, no pain can damage it. And it's an offering of love.
And maybe thinking that this pain could damage me is what strengthens the illusion, the false reality one is living in.
It's the sense that "I can be damaged by the pain that I feel." And then what I just described can be twisted and used, for example, in masochism, in going toward pain as a means to get something, as a form of manipulation. That is not the offering of the heart of Christ.
That's why sometimes it is appropriate to say no, to storm the temple and express anger. It's an indignation toward what is not appropriate and the expression of that. But the deeper you go and the more honest you are, the more you will be able to feel where it's coming from. Or rather, you will be able to feel more and more when it's coming from the wrong place. When it comes from the right place, it comes from a kind of not-knowing. When I have a sense of protectedness or righteousness in my approach, I know it's not the right place. When we are protecting that which needs no protection, we are in illusion. And that is very tricky in the situations I've described.
Appropriate anger comes and goes quickly
I agree, but there's also a realistic question: where am I in this process? How much can I bear?
You can bear a lot more than you think, and you can only find that out by exploring. There are probably many moments in a conflictive living situation that require a certain flavor of assertiveness and even a little bit of anger. But it can be quick: just "no," expressed clearly. It doesn't have to be dramatic. It could be a word, an energy. "Not this." That's it. When it's the right anger, it comes and goes very fast. It does not linger. It doesn't have narrative. It's just a response to something in the moment. The less narrative you give it, the better.
But this is not the same as mindless reactivity, which is not spontaneity. Aggressive reactivity can also have no conscious narrative while being completely driven by unconscious justification. What I'm describing is something more like a gentle, clear knowing: "Not this." It doesn't have to be gentle exactly, but it has to be appropriate to the situation. Most likely, with a roommate, it's not going to look like throwing things out the window every other day. That is probably an overreaction. And if that level of reaction were genuinely appropriate, you should probably move before it comes to that.
Sitting with your own heart
I've been noticing more of this process, my own neediness for things to be a certain way, and how most of that is just my own pain, my own process of trying to disidentify while still having attachments.
You said it yourself: your own pain. Just sit with that. Become vulnerable with your own heart, with your own pain, with everything you've wanted that you didn't get, and the heartbreak.
It feels unfair. It feels really helpless sometimes.
That can be cleared within yourself without the world having to change. Because it's coming from the past. Once that is clear, the response from you will become more deep, wise, and loving, because you'll be coming from a place of being at peace with your own feelings.
Right, but that may take time.
Yes. And usually that's why it's recommended to do the work in this direction. I think Christ said to focus on the log in your own eye before you try to remove the little splinter in somebody else's.
It feels very rich with activity, and with a quality of selflessness.
It's a beautiful journey, I have to say. It's the life of being in service to truth, love, honesty, authenticity. To be of service. Service to something of the flavor of truth and love, as opposed to being in service of avoiding one's own pain.
Yes. Fear, exactly.
It can be a lonely journey too. That's why groups like these, and there are many, are very beautiful and valuable. It's a journey into aloneness, together.
Painful and beautiful.