Making Peace with Your Anger

At just the time you surrender control, you gain control.

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No more guilt,
and no more shame,
when peace is built,
anger can be tamed.

Anger is present as the resolute and foreboding opportunity for peace. It stands as an invitation beyond guilt and shame; it presses us into the valley of decision; anger invites us to accept it as a means of conquering its fury.

Here’s peace: everyone has some kind of issue with anger. There, that ought to deal with the shame that comes from the guilt of losing control of your emotions yet again. We all do it. The one who thinks they don’t simply haven’t been pushed beyond their personal limit.

Here’s another thing.

Anger’s either expressed or it’s repressed.

It either comes out as an attack against others or it’s introjected into the self, absorbed, to harm the self.

Few people manage anger so well that they practice making peace with others and themselves as the default. Watch out if you read this and think this is you. If there’s one thing we’re usually in denial about, it’s our anger. The person who thinks they’ve got something mastered when they haven’t is most dangerous of all.

Anger is a cover for sadness and fear, which is a real problem for most of us, especially for us men.

It takes strength to own our weakness; the paradox, weakness owned is strength.

Face your anger and become curious for the sadness and fear beneath it and immediately the agitated edge dissipates. In this place, you just sit. In the place of acceptance.Not gleeful acceptance, but a more mature acceptance that can sit through the tough circumstance and not insist things be different.

Paradox upon paradox in this space. At just the time you surrender control, you gain control.

In the very moment you sit, even as you fume, you recognize you’re not being torn apart, that in fact, you can do it when you simply accept what you cannot change. It’s a decision. It’s an action. It’s continued action. And you prove to yourself you can do it.

It’s tough. Nobody’s hiding the fact. But you can do it.

 

 

This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Tribework

Featured Image by Selling from Pixabay

 

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About the Author

Steve Wickham is a Kingdom Winds Contributor. He holds several roles, including husband, father, peacemaker championing peacemaking for children and adults, conflict coach and mediator, church pastor, counselor, funeral celebrant, chaplain, mentor, and Board Secretary. He holds degrees in Science, Divinity (2), and Counselling. Steve is also a Christian minister serving CyberSpace i.e. here.