Tuesday April 4, 2023
Greetings dear Reader,
It’s only through my primary relationship—having been in partnership for 33 years—and through close friendships, that I have learned how unusual my upbringing has been around feeling the emotion of anger. As we grow up we don’t necessarily know how similar or different from others, our upbringing may be.
I have vivid memories of my parents encouraging my older sister and me to feel our anger if it arose. Not to act on it. But to feel it in every fiber of our being. And if we wanted to act on our anger, we were encouraged to go hit a bed with a tennis racquet. If you’ve never tried that, I fully encourage you to try it the next time you feel angry and want to express your anger. It’s such a great release of that energy.
And again, it’s only through talking with my partner and with friends that I’ve learned how unusual it is to not be conditioned that “anger is BAD.”
I’ve also learned as I’ve grown older, how to simply embody the experience of anger in every fiber of my being, to contain it, and hold the space for it, knowing that EVERY SINGLE HUMAN EMOTION—those we label positive and those we label negative—WILL PASS within 90 seconds (the neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor writes extensively about this in her book MY STROKE OF INSIGHT.) And if the emotion doesn’t pass, that’s because I’m clinging to it.
But what I have only recently learned about regarding the male experience of anger is that fear may arise in a man, when it comes to him fully experiencing his anger. The fear is around the fact if he fully experiences his anger, he may lash out and hurt a loved one.
This awareness about men and anger may be obvious to you, my dear reader. But again, perhaps because of my upbringing with three sisters, and how my parents were okay with and fully accepted the emotion of anger—they even encouraged it as one of the normal, natural human emotions that arises and falls away—I hadn’t realized the depth to which men can fear experiencing their own anger.
Which makes me wonder: if men are encouraged and supported to feel their own anger, NOT to act on it, but to feel it in every fiber of their being, and allow it to transform, how may that transform violence and wars that are so often acted out in our cultures?
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I recently watched and LOVED the movie Women Talking (about which my Gateless writing friend Gillian Summers wrote a fabulous Substack post) and I was talking about the movie with my 85-year-old mother in Australia, and she made an interesting observation:
“Yes, when challenging circumstances arise, women talk and men go to war.”
I have a sense that this era of the Rising of the Divine Feminine is also about men learning that if they’re able to embrace their own innate Divine Feminine energy, they won’t feel the need to physically act out their anger. They won’t need to act out violence. Perhaps they’ll find a way to simply sit with their anger. To allow it to rise and experience it in every fiber of their being and learn how to contain, digest, and metabolize that anger, and allow it to pass. Not cling to that feeling. I can say with certainty that this is my experience of what the Buddhist monks across the road here are practicing.
You may call me naive, but my sense is that every human being on the whole planet is experiencing a major shift in consciousness right now. After two years in hibernation caused by a worldwide pandemic, how can we not be changed?
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I was delighted to find the Buddhist meditation teacher Tara Brach speaks extensively about the transformative aspects of Anger. And How to Meet Anger with Awareness.
The purpose of anger is to let us know there’s an obstacle to our wellbeing, and to energize us to act. While natural and necessary for survival and thriving, this powerful energy often possesses us and leads to suffering.
This talk explores how we can use the RAIN meditation (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) in our personal and societal life, to meet anger with a mindful, compassionate presence. Freed from the identification with a limited, separate reactive self, we can listen to the message of anger, draw on the purity of its energy, and respond from our natural intelligence, creativity and care.
YES! That’s when we get into trouble with anger: when “this powerful energy possesses us.” i.e. when we’re IDENTIFIED with the feeling, rather than simply allowing it and observing it as it arises and passes. It’s possible to observe our humanity from our divinity—to observe every single very human emotion as it arises and falls away.
Every social justice movement has been energized by anger. The Revolutionary War, Civil Rights movements, Women’s rights, Gay rights, AND in every relationship, it’s often not until anger is unearthed, and mindfully processed, that we’re actually capable both of healthy boundaries and real intimacy.
So we need to honor the enormous power of this energy to move us in ways that are transformative. And we know the suffering when anger takes over.
For me, this is the key with ALL human emotions: to experience them in their entirety without RE-acting, without necessarily acting on the feeling. Simply allowing the feeling to be here. “It’s like this,” as the Buddhist monks across the road say all the time.
Historically, perhaps anger has been labeled as more “masculine,” and perhaps talking has been labeled as more “feminine.” And perhaps we’re finally at a point in time where we can honor ALL energies in EVERY human being.
Like Sarah Poet said in her Ted Talk I wrote about last week:
WHAT WE NEED IS THE FEMININE—in both women and men—IN LEADERSHIP! Which requires some conscious reprograming and restructuring.
I believe that many men become emotionally stunted around the ages of 9-12, limiting their experience of the full spectrum of emotions. This is particularly evident among many current business and political leaders.
I co-authored Taming Your Dragons: Making Peace With Your Emotions with Sue-Anne MacGregor. We discovered how to change the resonance of emotions and belief patterns utilizing popular movies as the medium. It was strenuous and difficult work and at times it got very emotional.
As a man, I have come to understand that anger is often the only emotion that is expressed by our fathers, uncles, and grandfathers, and it is respected in the workplace. This pattern has been passed down for generations and has become deeply ingrained.
When writing the book, I began to experience emotions more deeply than ever before, which was unsettling. I asked Sue-Anne: “Do women feel this deeply? She replied, “Sorry mate, but that’s what it’s like”. It takes a strong man to be willing to open up and feel deeply, especially since we have been trained not to show vulnerability or emotion.
Yes, I agree we’re in a renaissance of consciousness and it will be essential for men to balance their masculine and feminine aspects. When men see how strategic it is to have the full spectrum of emotion working as a highly sophisticated guidance system, then well see progress.
Thank you for your thoughtful post.
Thanks so much for shining a light on such a taboo subject especially for women. I loved learning about your rather unorthodox mum and her gutsy approach for bringing up her daughters. You were so lucky to have been given a handle on anger so young. I also love that you highlighted Tara Brack's work. Her RAIN model is a powerful tool and resource for EVERYONE and i too highly recommend it. it is for sure a hard truth that "when challenging circumstances arise, women talk and men go to war.” Here's to this current climate highlighting how men maybe need to talk more and war less, so we can all benefit from the healing it would unleash on the world. Great work Dearest Camilla 💜Thank you 🙏