Anger Is the Response, Not the Feeling

It's like a campfire.

Anger is an emotion that’s come up plenty in conversations lately. Many of us are reuniting with anger, fighting with anger, suppressing anger, or welcoming anger for the very first time, and for all those reasons and more, many of us aren’t sure what to do with anger once it gets here.

During our Return to Self webinar on Increasing Vulnerability, guest teacher Dr. Lexx shared a campfire metaphor for anger that touched on the often unspoken conversations around the feeling that’s actually not a feeling, but a response to a feeling.

It basically goes like this—anger is the fire. It’s hot, it’s aggressive, it burns when you get too close, it’s intimidating…you get it. That’s the brighest part of the campfire, the part you can see, and therefore talk about. But what keeps the fire burning?

Identifying the logs of the campfire are crucial when it comes to understanding the root of what you’re feeling, because those are the real emotions that are fueling the anger. These logs can look like betrayal, rejection, loneliness, abuse, abandonment, neglect, feeling unseen, hurt, and so many other things. These words are what you’re actually feeling, the anger is just the response.

We often find ourselves unable to express what’s actually going on or difficulty in communicating with others about our anger, because we’re avoiding what’s beneath it all. The logs. The root of the wound.

Until we can shed light on what actually fuels the fire—the tender parts of ourselves that are the catalyst for our fiery rage (and our change)—vulnerability will continue to seem unsafe, and healing won’t occur. The logs will continue to burn, and the fire will come in-between any relationship that you wish to spark.

Don’t you deserve some peace?