Current Anger

Current grief brings up all past grief. This is something I’ve heard in my coaching community and have found to be true. Something bad happens, and suddenly I’m crying about every other time something similar happened. Like when my friend Grace got diagnosed with breast cancer [she is doing AMAZING, btw] and my tears weren’t just fear for her future, but also tears about my mom’s diagnosis, even though it happened over a decade prior.

Something I am present to today is: current anger brings up past anger. Particularly—and in the same way as grief— past anger that is shaped similarly.

A few days ago, someone really pissed me off. It was a boundary violation. It was something that I wasn’t able to address in the moment, and is not worth holding a whole press conference over, since the perpetrator is not someone I have any sort of future with. One thing I have learned in all my years of having people step on boundaries is that sometimes the best response is to simply say nothing, but withdraw your energy moving forward. So that is what I am doing.

In the meantime, I have been sitting with anger over the violation. I couldn’t fall asleep last night because my thoughts were megaphone loud, and I kept mentally rehearsing ways to tell the person off, even though I have no intention of doing so. I’m about to start my cycle, and anger is always more accessible to me at this time, but it’s been particularly intense. So, I’ve been doing some reflecting and journaling and trying to get to the core of what this energy is.

And that’s when I realized that current anger brings up past anger. Because of course it does.

I am not only processing this most recent boundary violation (which, on its own, is probably worthy of the level of wrath coursing through me) I am processing every time someone has done this to me. And every time I have not spoken up or removed myself from the situation.

Every time I have let myself down—abandoned myself, if you will—for the sake of keeping the peace.

Not my peace, but the peace of others.

'Cause I'm a black belt when I'm beating up on myself

But I'm an expert at giving love to somebody else

I, me, myself and I don't see eye to eye

Me, myself and I

-Demi Lovato “I Love Me”

Suddenly, the swirling hurricane hailstorm thrashing about my person makes a ton of sense, because the person I am most angry at, is me.

But I don’t deserve to be beaten up for it; I deserve to reclaim my own agency. I can use the anger as fuel to be clearer on and hold firm to my boundaries. To not rise to bait. To not be lured down to lower levels of vibration.

So that is what I am going to do. Thank you for bearing witness to my declaration, and please feel free to make your own or say anything else in the comments.