What do you do with your anger?

There’s a very dilapidated old church, from the early 1900’s,  in my historic neighborhood that I walk by every day. It’s interesting to observe the multiple ways people interact with it. Students from photography class use it as a backdrop, it was featured in a campaign to win a historic grant, and currently, it’s been painted by a local artist for the COVID-19 situation.

Anger tells your story

Your personal anger is like this old church. It’s deeply historical, impacts your soul, and tells your story. If you can focus deeply enough, you can see past your exterior, past your surface wear and tear, to your own core, appreciating the experiences that shaped your own life. This attention breathes new life, creating new opportunities for growth and creativity.

However, without the ability to focus deeper, your anger, like the old building, just sits there. When ignored, your anger becomes further debilitating, inviting you, as a person to slowly fade as time moves on.

Don’t ignore your anger

Anger often gets a bad rap, however, because the focus is usually on how it’s expressed. You are often taught that it’s a negative character flaw and should be repressed. Or, you’ve been a victim to other’s abusive displays of physical aggression or sometimes even worse, their passive aggression or dismissal, the kind like noxious gas, invisible, inferred or not spoken, but has the ability to stab your heart.

Anger is actually a very rich emotion that has so much investigatory powers, if you have the right tools.

Anger as activation

Instead of getting depressed or too sad, which is a passive state, anger mobilizes your energy towards making a needed, but perhaps tumultuous life transition. For example, getting pissed that you have to undergo cancer treatment or leave a relationship can be extremely important to harness energy to take care of all the necessary details for getting from now to your future.

Anger as an indicator of self-worth

Anger can be an indication that you are involved in a relationship that isn’t good for you. When you feel pissed that a job or relationship isn’t respecting your time or commitment, getting mad is a healthy response, not selfish. It’s important to pay attention to this reaction, not stuff it down, thinking something is wrong with you. Your anger is, in essence saying, “I’m worth more than this.”

Anger – Grief Combo

Anger, which can also be styled as cynicism, irritability, numbness, or sarcasm, especially when chronic, might feel comfortable as your personality style, but it holds a very different truth. Dealing with deep trenches of grief and loss can be debilitating at different times of your life, especially childhood and adolescence, so it gets pushed way, way down inside. Your heart may be ripped up, but to survive, you built a layering of scar tissue, then bandages, then more protective material, think of a big ski jacket. The pain is entrenched and protected, but your chronic anger is inviting you to actually ask, “What is making me so so sad?”

Anger as connection and hope

Being pissed that others are being mistreated also indicates that others are worth more than their circumstances dictate. It’s also a sign that you want to connect with others. You likely have empathy for others because you are in touch– whether you are aware of it or not– with your own pain and suffering through an injustice that you experienced. By repressing your own pain, “I didn’t have to deal with anything this bad” and being motivated by guilt to help others, is a way to hide.

We all have pain and suffering. Your outrage for others’ situations is also about acknowledging your own pain. As you connect with others, you can bring healing to the injustice you felt.

Anger as clues to your past

Sometimes you or your partner have irrational anger, big emotions buried inside or that explode out, that don’t seem to fit the vibe of the current situation.These reactions are often clues to lead you to uncover old repressed pain. If you slow down to analyze the underlying theme of “Why am I so mad?” you can see the unspoken pain of childhood or adolescence. For instance, my kids know I go from 0 to rage at being splashed in the pool. Instead of going off on them, which I admit I have, blaming them for my anger, I followed it’s path to uncover younger feelings of being dominated and powerless.

It’s fascinating how sometimes we can be so unfamiliar with these fundamental areas of our own selves simply because we never thought to look deeper.

What’s Next for Me?

Your own self knowledge is your most powerful asset in life. Stimulate the conversation with yourself and your loved ones.

Begin by asking yourself:

  • How important are my feelings on this subject to me?
  • Am I being mean to myself?
  • Do I need support?

Read our E-book Love Sex Trust: An Overview

Let it all simmer, until you’re ready for more.

Love Sex Trust: An Overview E-Book

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I reached a point in my marriage where I knew I needed help. I was thinking, feeling and behaving in ways I didn’t recognize anymore. Therapy was infinitely helpful but I also needed something more concrete (and accessible during those frantic late night moments) to hold onto. The ebooks: Separating: Due Diligence, Private Couple Retreats: DIY and Getting What I Want, were a practical tool for initiating meaningful reflection, providing options to consider, and, ultimately, offering direction on how to make movement through a challenging time. Most importantly, these workbooks approached the issues at hand with compassion and understanding while also confronting necessary truths head on. It was a loving invitation to grow up. As a result of accepting that invitation, I’m showing up in my relationship with more clarity, authenticity, and confidence- invaluable gifts in this messy thing called life.

I have been seeing Jennifer for roughly 13 years. My therapy journey started when my husband and I were trying to start a family. Initially, I reached out to her regarding our infertility struggles, but that quickly morphed into dealing with years of trauma from my childhood. Jennifer helped me work through repressed emotions and understand how those experiences and trauma were causing issues with my current life. I continued with therapy through our infertility struggle, grief and then our next chapter building our family through adoption. My husband and I started couples therapy, as well, and her guidance and support helped us work out many of the relationship challenges we all face. Jennifer has been my trusted therapist and confidante for over a decade working through all the ups and downs. She’s helped me set healthy boundaries, build confidence and self esteem, work through parenting struggles and been a wonderful career guide. We have covered so much and I cannot imagine not having her in my life as a guide. She’s empathetic, intuitive, warm, welcoming and one of the best people I know. Jennifer is a bright light; a truly positive guide that helps me steer this wild, beautiful life.

Jennifer has been with me through so many difficult and life-changing transitions. From a troubled relationship, to a divorce to finding love again, Jennifer has supported me in my emotional journey, allowed me to see strength in myself and given me the power to trust in what I want. She has also worked with me through tough job decisions. Always providing a solid sounding board and working with me to find and follow my path. I am so lucky to have found her and deeply value the role she plays in my life.

We really can’t thank you enough. We both feel like for the first time we have actual concrete information for what’s happening to us and the beginnings of a path forward. Because we 100% know we love each other and want to be together, and when we are happy, it’s absolutely incredible!! We’ve got these things in the way that we can’t seem to get around. And now we have more information as to why. We are so ready to do this work.

This book Getting What I Want, and the range of products offered by Love Sex Trust Productions is intended to help you help yourself. For decades, Jennifer has been helping individuals and couples have the life and love they want. She has a wealth of knowledge to share. I’m a Work/Life coach/consultant – I help people recraft their lives so that work is satisfying and is part of an overall satisfying life (worklifenow.com). My orientation is toward the practical. My own training and curiosity have led me to learn from therapists and neuroscientists. I’ve had the good fortune to share many hours of conversation with Jennifer, and am moved by her depth of knowledge and care. One of the passions Jennifer and I share is an interest in opening the tools of therapy up to people so that anyone has access to helping themselves. This book is the first installment. I’ve written a book with a therapist, Sweet Relief From the Everyday Narcissist, and through that process learned how challenging it is for someone who is professionally trained in a certain language and processes to shift into sharing their wisdom with people who do not share the same training and language. It takes a lot of work for a professional to understand what someone might need to know and to think through how they can learn that information without all the classes and hours of study. With this book, Jennifer has created an unusual offering – elements of therapy presented so that you can use it immediately and repeatedly to create the life you want. I assume you stumbled upon this book because you are looking for something, something that will help you change your life in some way. This practical, insightful guide is offered to help you – I hope you find the change you seek.

Thank you Jennifer Jones for the amazing insight , care and compassion to help me during a trying time in my life. Suffering from severe anxiety and depression amidst a pandemic and many major life changes, you helped me find my way back to being me. I was experiencing a lot of worry, sadness, doubt, hopelessness and a mix of other feelings and emotions and you listened and gave me new skills and insight on how to conquer all of those things. I will be forever grateful for you , your kind and caring heart and expertise to teach me how to be in control of my own mind and body to be the best me I can be!

You give me priceless insight from your experiences and your creative thinking lifts me up. The conversations we had, was the first time I felt like, I can DO this! You continue to encourage me and offer great advice. YOU are super, and I am grateful to you.

I am deeply grateful for Jennifer. She was recommended to me through a friend who was really pleased with how much Jennifer had been helping her. At that time, I was in a crisis, feeling completely unstable. Jen’s responsiveness and ability to meet virtually provided some much needed reassurance.

I didn’t realize how fortunate I was to have found my way to her. Her compassion and calming presence were such a comfort. From our very first interactions, she was clearly invested in my healing. I felt safe and trusted her even when the process or outcomes felt more brutal.

I found the abandonment work she recommended particularly useful and invested over 6 months working through it specifically. I’ve continued with other things as my healing progressed and taken new directions but have kept up with the journaling – albeit much more open and integrated than when I started. She has helped me tremendously.

Asking for guidance from someone outside my religion was a big first step for me. I realized for a while I wanted to experience the world more aware than I had been. Jen was patient with me, she listened and was keenly aware of my stealthy ways to hide during a session. Jen finds me and asks me to show up and dig a little deeper and actually feel and not just intellectualize how I feel. Jen and I started working together years ago and I can definitely credit the decision to start therapy and working with Jen as the starting point when my life became more of what I actually wanted.

As a man, and a somewhat prideful one at that, when my wife suggested counseling I was less than thrilled. However, now that we are on the other side of several issues we couldn’t get through on our own, I view counseling and therapy as a life tool I had been missing. Jennifer was unbelievable and was able to break down every problem we were going through and take us to the root of our issues. Our sessions taught me an entirely new way to communicate with not only my wife but all my friends. Obviously I’d recommend Jennifer to anyone; but more than that, I’d recommend therapy to anyone! Especially hard-headed men like me.

Thank you so much! I appreciate it very much and truly you have no idea how helpful it’s been.

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