The Value of Anger - Heather McIver, L.Ac.
Anger can be a powerful motivating force. It can propel us to take chances we wouldn’t otherwise take. It can get us sober, it can get us out of a destructive job or damaging relationship. It can inspire and shape political movements. In fact, "I’m not going to take it anymore" is probably the primary force for change in any society.
Anger is the feeling you get when your creativity is being stifled, when you aren’t expressing who you are in the world and what you have to offer. It’s an appropriate emotion for springtime. This time of year, we are beginning to emerge from our winter hibernation and we’re ready for action. But if we don’t have a clear outlet or direction for our self-expression, we get frustrated. We begin to perceive the actions of others as intentionally placed roadblocks to our progress. We take everything personally... "Of COURSE it rained today, just when I was finally going cycling!"
The problem with anger, like any emotion, is not the emotion itself, but the stuckness of it. Anger is an uncomfortable emotion for other people to be around, and so we have been socialized to keep it hidden, to push it away while adopting our best sugar-coated smile. In certain cases, this may be a short-term strategy for self-preservation. But in a larger context, the emergence of anger is a signal for us to stop what we’re doing and pay attention. What’s going on? Where am I stopped? Who am I blaming? What am I trying to do or say that isn’t getting done or said? When we don’t stop and heed this signal, we just go on finding more and more evidence that our assessments about ourselves or others are correct. We find more and more justifications for our anger. And we get more and more stuck in it. If we stay there long enough, we will eventually wear ourselves out. It takes a lot of energy to maintain that kind of frustration and vigilance. Eventually, exhaustion causes us to give up and despair takes over. All of that creative energy that anger was trying to express gets suppressed and we literally become burdened by it. Now, we’re no longer angry, but we’re depressed. We can barely get out of bed, and any contribution we might made to anyone else is lost.
In Chinese Medicine this dynamic is sometimes addressed by a herbal formula called "Free and Easy Wanderer," which addresses the organ systems of the Liver and Spleen. The Liver is the organ responsible for keeping our Qi flowing smoothly. It’s also the organ that governs vision, allows us to see possibilities, to think creatively. When we get stuck in frustration, the Liver qi gets stuck, and we see symptoms such as tight neck and shoulders, jaw pain, headaches, PMS. Eventually, this "stuck qi" affects the digestive system (Spleen) and we see abdominal cramping and bloating, loose stools or reflux. After even more time, the digestion is weakened, we are unable to absorb nutrients from our food as well as we should, and we become fatigued and overwhelmed. By now, the fight has been taken out of us and we’re tired and depressed.
Free and Easy Wanderer helps to support the digestion while at the same time gently encouraging the Liver to move some of that stuck qi. As the qi begins to move, we begin to have more perspective. We begin to envision new solutions to problems that before seemed insurmountable. Patients comment that "I just don’t get as stressed by the same things anymore."After a while, the frustration we feel when encountering roadblocks in our progress becomes quickly transformed into determination to find another way--unleashing the transformative and creative aspect of anger once again.
