Is there something you need to say?
I’m a big Twitter fan. It’s easy and fun to write 140 character snippets. But my favorite reason for being on Twitter? I get great writing ideas. Today @CrazyColumbian poised the following question, “How can we use anger constructively?” Great question and one I can answer since I used to feel way too angry (powerless) much of the time.
I figured out I got angry for two reasons.
#1 I needed to speak my truth. There was something bottled up inside of me that needed to come out.
#2 I didn’t feel like I could speak my truth, that the financial, social, political, familial ramifications would somehow be greater than the health ramifications of suppressing my truth.
Somewhere along my growing up line, I learned to ignore #1 out of fear of #2. Why generations of parents going back to the Cave Age would teach children not to speak their truths makes no sense to me as an adult. Society ends up with lots of depressed people turning their anger inward or outward, both destructive.
I either had to express my anger or spiral down into a life of very, very quiet desperation.
I chose to take my life back. I started with little baby “speaking my truth steps” like taking assertiveness training classes, returning things, telling off people into their answering machines, eventually progressing into saying things to people on the phone, then in person, then in public. I also became a writer. It’s a great way to get the “it” out, the horrible alien living inside that feeds off human organs.
How about you? Are you ready to stop feeding the insatiable anger alien living inside you?
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