the south – Karen's New York Love Affair

Another view of anger

Readers of this blog will recall that one of the themes I have explored through my work in nature and writing on this blog is the phenomenon of anger. New insights keep arising over time, and new information comes to light that I’d like to share with you. Last time I wrote about Gabor Maté’s book When the Body Says No. He explores the relationship between stress and illness, and documents research that links the suppression of negative emotions with the likelihood of relapse or death in cancer patients. There is a very strong link between repressing anger and disease, because repressing anger increases physiological stress on the organism. Not only that, but “the experience of anger has been shown to promote healing or, at least, to prolong survival”! (p. 269)

This is a new perspective on anger that I have not come across before. Yet the expression of rage leads to high blood pressure and heart disease. That doesn’t sound healthy either. What is a person to do? The resolution to the paradox is that both repression and rage are ways of avoiding the genuine experience of anger. According to Toronto doctor and psychotherapist Allen Kaplin, “Healthy anger… is an empowerment and a relaxation. The real experience of anger ‘is physiologic expereince without acting out. The experience is one of a surge of power going through the system, along with a mobilization to attack. There is, simultaneously, a complete disappearance of all anxiety. When healthy anger is starting to be experienced, you don’t see anything dramatic. What you do see is a decrease of all muscle tension.'” (pp 270-1) Astonishing!

When experiencing rage, people tighten up, breath shallowly, and tense their muscles. These are all signs of anxiety! Gabor explains that acting out through bursts of rage is a defence against the anxiety that invariable accompanies anger as a child:

Anger triggers anxiety because it coexists with positive feelings, with love and the desire for contact. But since anger leads to an attacking energy, it threatens attachment. Thus there is something basically anxiety-provoking about the anger experience, even without external, parental injunctions against anger expression… Naturally, the more parents discourage or forbid the experience of anger, the more anxiety-producing that experience will be for the child. In all cases where anger is completely repressed or where chronic repression alternates with explosive eruptions of rage, the early childhood history was one in which the parents were unable to accept the child’s natural anger. (pp 271-2)

Gabor goes on to describe the two forms of defence people tend to use against feeling the aggressive impules of anger. One defense is to act out by yelling, hitting, or swearing. This is a defense against keeping the anger inside where it can be deeply felt. The other defense is to repress the anger. Both of these methods, as we have seen, lead to illness. (Gabor documents this extensively in his book.)

Gabor concludes that anger does not require hostile acting out. It is a feeling to be experienced. Learning to do that can be difficult (because of the incredible anxiety that often co-exists with anger), and it is something a trained person such as a therapist can help us learn to do. In the times when I have successfully felt my anger as a physical experience, it is actually quite simply a feeling of heat and energy in my body. It is sometimes even beautiful—a sparkly strawberry-red substance that can even have a sweet taste!

The second thing about anger is that it contains valuable information. If instead of acting out I can consider what triggered the anger, I can learn what is really going on (or, often, what I think is going on but is actually just an old pattern being activated in my psyche). Do I feel threatened and powerless? Unloved? Not considered? Has someone trespassed on my boundaries? Whatever the case may be, the anger can give me the energy needed to effectively deal with the situation. This is much different than unconsciously acting out my rage!

As I have mentioned before, anger and the red essence are energies we can work with in the direction of the south in the four shields psychology. It is very valuable work, learning to protect our inner child through the skillful expression of anger. BC therapist Joann Peterson says “Anger is the energy Mother Nature gives us as little kids to stand forward on our own behalf and say I matter“! (p. 274)

Gnawing away at that anger bone

It’s been a while since I’ve written about anger, and I’d like to come back to the topic today to share recent experiences with digesting this aspect of my being. As you may recall, I last wrote that I was starting a new technical writing contract, and hoped that I would handle new opportunities to learn about anger with skill and grace!

“Talents are better nurtured in solitude, but character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to test my character and grow through interactions with my colleagues in the workplace. It is so clear to me how the arising of Being through various people and situations is part of the perfect unfolding of the universe and my own life path, allowing me many opportunities to actualize myself as a real human being.

Each day, I go to the office with the intention of behaving with compassion towards all. I feel the gentle nature of my soul, and am aware of the innocence and lovability of my colleagues. And then! So often this wider awareness is lost as I fall back into my early self images and object relations.

My Diamond Approach group is doing a deep piece of work on identity, and it is marvellous how I can apply this work to the situations occurring in the workplace. The work of inner realization involves coming to know our true identity as luminous beings that are part of the oneness of reality, and eventually switching our sense of identity to this truth, rather than the conventional ego sense of identity that we all develop during our maturation process as human beings. In the Diamond Approach, the true identity is called “The Point.” I once experienced this as a point of light in my heart. And through my individual and group work in the Diamond Approach I have had many, many experiences of the exquisite qualities of my being and of reality. Yet I keep forgetting! I keep re-identifying with my ego self, which is primarily constructed of the impressions of myself and others that shaped my soul in my early childhood years.

During the past two months I have been working on a technical writing contract that involves going to the office most days, and interacting with dozens of people. During these interactions, my object relations are often triggered. This is what I referred to earlier as a great gift, for it allows me to see and understand the inner workings of my psyche. While I was living and working at Monkey Valley, the opportunities for interaction, learning, and growth were obviously much fewer, though of course incidents did still occur! This is why I gave the quote from Goethe, above. The time alone served its purpose, to develop my abilities and, in my case, heal, in the solititude and safe haven of nature. And then, when my soul was ready, Being propelled me back into the busy world of people to test and refine the qualities of my being.

For those of us who have experienced the trauma of repeated physical abuse in childhood, the defensive structures that we develop to survive this unbearable situation are very strong. One of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder is a continuous hyper-vigilance, in which the nervous system is on high alert for danger in the environment. Since this defensive structure, which is one of many structures that make up the entire ego sense of self, actually formed at a young age (say between the ages of 3 and 6) its sense of discrimination of what is actually happening in the environment is not very well-developed. Let me give you an example!

At work, I developed a plan for providing online help to the end users of the new banking software (which would be most of the employees in the credit union). I developed the plan after discussions with many people and extensive analysis of the current banking software and documentation that the company already had. I showed the plan to the project management team, the trainers who would be training the employees to use the new software, and others. The plan was approved by the project management team, and was in the process of being approved by the Senior Executive Team of the company. Then one day, several people talked about the documentation at lunch and came up with a new approach to the documentation. The new approach was actually something I had already considered and rejected in favour of what I believed was a superior approach, which would make the help easily accessible to the end users.

This probably sounds like a very dry, paper-like scenario, devoid of emotion and certainly not a source of danger! Yet my early patterning was triggered by this situation, and felt that I was in danger and needed to defend my self, my work, my plan (my identity as a competent technical writer)! Before I knew what was happening, I lost control and was practically yelling at a coworker. The defensive structure was in full swing and on the attack. I totally forgot about the truth of my being—in that moment all that mattered was making the coworker back down. I said No and she said Yes, and the angry confrontation went on for a few minutes before I regained enough control to realize this wasn’t productive and backed off. It took a week to unravel what had happened and come to regain some kind of mutual respect. Eventually I realized that my coworker hadn’t really understood what I was proposing. So to her the idea she put forth was better. Pretty simple. Just a misunderstanding. Yet I felt caught up in a life or death struggle!

This situation helped me see how quickly and automatically my defensive structures take control of my being; I identify with the structure completely, believing that this really is a life or death situation. And from this vantage point, any means is justified to protect myself. As you know if you have been reading my blog, anger is my preferred way to deal with the situation and protect myself! But something has changed. After the heat of the moment has passed and I am no longer so identified with the defensive structure, I start to notice the pain of losing contact with my deeper being and behaving in ways that hurt others. This actually feels very uncomfortable. I notice a feeling of dis-ease in my soul. Of course being cut off from my deeper being never feels good. But the part about noticing the feeling of discomfort at harming another—at not treating other beings with the respect and kindness they deserve as equally precious parts of the wholeness of reality—this is so new to me. I first had a glimpse of it at the Diamond Approach summer retreat last year, as I described in an earlier entry. And this piece of work keeps arising, through the outer events and inner experience in my soul.

I feel both powerless to prevent the defensive structure from kicking into action and a deep longing to remain in touch with the truth and treat others with kindness. And in this moment, a deep sorrow about the harm I have caused others, and the pain of being separated from my own heart. As I feel this sorrow, my heart becomes full of a tenderness that is both strong and vulnerable.

Returning from the retreat: innocence, security, anger, and a good burger

As I mentioned previously, I just returned from the Diamond Approach 10-day summer retreat in California, and I’d like to share some of the learnings from that, because they tie in with the summer part of the wheel. Summer is the time of childhood innocence. In fact, Bill Plotkin writes in Nature and the Human Soul that innocence is one of the gifts children give to the world. And it is the parents’ job to maintain the safety of the home-nest in the early years, to allow this innocence to flourish. Unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen. But we all are innocent at the core of our nature. Even George Bush, Hitler, and Charles Manson. Although innocence wasn’t directly the theme of the retreat, I found that when I was working with people, and being a very allowing, clear space of openness for witnessing their work, their innocence is something I kept seeing, over and over. And I also felt in touch with my own innocence. This is part of the radiant preciousness of who we are. I felt it was a gift from the universe to be able to experience this and know it directly, in myself and others.

So when I left the retreat, I was in quite an expansive, open state, after 10 days of working in a deep way with people during the exercises, meditating, and having many satisfying connections with friends that I only get to see once a year. I arrived at the Air Canada security line at San Francisco airport in this open, friendly state. Although the line was quite long, and only one belt was open, and they kept letting people in first class go around the side and to the front of the line, I was in my open state, had four hours before my flight, and didn’t want to get caught up in my usual reactive judgement about this situation. I spoke to the woman behind me, who was from Calgary, and we shared some airport security experiences. When I got close to the front of the line, a man asked if he could cut in. I asked if he was crew, and he was, so I said sure, and we had a nice conversation too. He was from Montreal, and we talked about different cities. It was very pleasant, and I was pleased to be enjoying this potentially frustrating situation.

I guess this is where the universe wanted to test how grounded and connected to being I really was, because suddenly my bag was halted, brought out, and the security guy asked who it belonged to. I said it was mine, and he said there was a liquid in the bag. I had thought my water bottle was empty, but it wasn’t, and that was why it had been flagged. I pulled it out and dumped the water in the bin, and put my bag back through. Then my laptop was halted, and the security guy asked who it belonged to. I admitted it was mine, and a jerk in the line who was late for his flight said “Have you got anything else in your luggage that doesn’t belong there?”

Huh! Snap! I was totally out of my open spacious peaceful place and into a defensive response that came to the fore automatically. I said “It’s not my fault security is so fucking anal.” Luckily for me, they weren’t actually that anal, because they let me go through and didn’t say anything about this statement. But the passenger continued to heckle me as I collected my belongings at the other end of the belt, and I lost it again and said “It’s not my fault you’re late for your flight.” And he said “It’s not my fault you’re a stupid *&%&!” I said “I didn’t call you names and I would appreciate if you don’t call me names.” He called me another name, and then took off down the hallway.

So that’s it, huh? That’s the limit of my capacity to stay open and nonreactive. Less than an hour from arriving at the airport. Altercation. Irritation. Feeling caught up in reactivity, which is very familiar, and feeling hopeless about being a slave to it. Why am I getting triggered so easily, all the time? Here I’ve just finished a 10-day retreat and I’m totally caught up in what some idiot stranger said to me. It was an attack, but I got caught in it. Where is the benefit of the practice? The openness and spaciousness? If you are familiar with the entity known as the superego, you will notice it at work, making the situation even worse by attacking me for not being more equanimous.

But I have learned something after these many years of various practices, so the next part of the story is how I worked with the stew of anger and reactivity I was caught up in. And, no coincidence, anger is also one of the qualities connected with the red of the south part of the wheel. It is a form of the red essential aspect which can be experienced as strength, and the heat, fire, and aliveness of it can help us to protect ourselves and others. It has often motivated me to take action in the world. But in its less purely flowing form it can be felt as irritation, frustration, rage, and so on. Which is one of the things I worked with over and over at the retreat. The movement, like here at the airport, from openness to frustration or rage.

As I walked down the corridor toward my gate, pulling my well-examined luggage behind me, I saw how I get caught in this uncomfortable place all the time. I felt the discomfort of it and the desire to move away from it. It feels so awful to be caught in this reactivity. And it happens to me all the time. This made me wonder what I’m doing to keep getting caught in this. Is this a familiar, comfortable pattern from childhood? (Well, yes.) Is that why it seems to happen over and over? Am I creating it? And I noticed how much I wanted to escape from the discomfort of it. I don’t want to feel this way. I want to control reality so I never have to feel this way. I wished I’d said something even more annihilating to completely shut the stranger up and stop him from making me feel this way. I spent a moment or two trying to think of what that might have been—what I could have said. I noticed again how the feeling was so uncomfortable that I wanted to move away from it. But it was inside me and I couldn’t. So I went to have a pee, and tried to remember to sense my belly center—the Kath meditation—a practice I had been doing for the past ten days (and nine years). As I was sitting on the toilet, sensing my belly, I suddenly flashed on my spiritual teacher, and how she probably doesn’t get caught up in this kind of reactivity.

The feeling was as if I’d done something wrong and the passenger who attacked me had told everyone about it, so I guess a kind of shame. I am normally very together, and follow all the procedures for passing through security correctly, but this time I was still in a somewhat expanded state from the retreat, floating along a bit, and didn’t realize there was still some water in my water bottle. Also I didn’t know I had to take the laptop out of its case. I had already taken it out of the suitcase, and put it in a separate bin, and I thought that was all I had to do.

So the shame I noticed mainly by the reaction to it—defending myself, as if I hadn’t done anything wrong. In my head telling him my IQ was higher than his, because he had called me stupid. But just seeing that my superego was involved didn’t really shift the experience of discomfort and an inner, red irritation that felt very difficult to be with. But as I was sitting on the toilet, I realized that the difficulty was that I was trying to maintain a self-image. My teacher wouldn’t care what her image was—what people thought of her (or so I imagined). But I was feeling so bothered because my self-image of being together and doing things right was challenged.

Seeing this started to bring me more of a sense of relief, inner space. I still noticed some superego activity as I went on to a bar & grill to have some dinner while waiting for the flight. Feeling sensitive and raw, seeing how many times I’d been reactive in the retreat and carried away by anger. But I noticed the table I was given by a window facing the sunshine was very nice, and the food was quite good, and I felt very fortunate to be in this amazingly quiet place in an international airport. Feeling some sense of the surroundings being safe and supportive helped me relax into my true nature, and the awareness of myself as an innocent and precious being. The reactivity dissolved completely and I enjoyed my meal.

Anger is a very potent doorway for learning for me. In this instance, seeing how it was working to maintain a self-image is what allowed the whole experience to shift from the almost unbearable heat and irritation to shame (which the anger was protecting me from feeling) to a sense of inner spaciousness and quiet enjoyment of my veggie burger.

P.S. The exploration I just described is an example of the practice of inquiry—the main practice of the Diamond Approach. Staying with our experience, being curious about it, and letting it unfold. The movement of the unfoldment, when we allow it to just happen, can go anywhere. In this instance, it went to spaciousness and a good burger.