Making Room for Anger

When intense emotions take hold, it is difficult to know how to proceed. By having a plan, we at least have a path that we can take. We just must make room to take a step in the midst of the intense emotions we’re experiencing. Regardless of our beliefs, finding our way through anger, depression and the host of other intense seemingly negative emotions is critical in moving forward.

The first step is to not re-act to the intense emotion. Then, we must attempt to not feed nor attempt to push the emotion away; both are mistaken approaches. Pushing away intense emotions is a form of ignorance. Feeding these is a form of indulgence. Both strategies yield the same result, more intense emotions later with no added information or experience to help de-escalate future situations.

This is where we make room to take a different step, by acknowledging that we need more information and experience to cope, we’re creating work for our mind to act upon in these difficult moments. Our mind wants to work as the mind is at work constantly. Through this method, each experience becomes an opportunity to broaden our internal awareness. This becomes a key to moving forward.

We’re taking back ownership of what we’re experiencing and how we experience it. Our mind needs direction, and if we don’t give that direction, our conditions will. We must take back ownership of how we feel, or we will always be a slave to our conditions.

None of this is easy. However, if we instill within us a desire for expanding our awareness of our experience, we will create room to act differently in future intense situations. We must believe or at least think it possible that all of these intense emotions are within us. As long as we look externally for the source, we’re going to continue to lash out at others. The source is within us, for both the cause of the intense emotion as well as its resolution.

We can do this.