ANGER!!!!

Anger is one of the most shameful emotions. People that are angry are people that are not in control of themselves. There is a derailing that occurs, a sense of loss of balance. There is an exertion of will and a desire to bend those around you. Anger. Anger is something that I personally feel I do not want to deal with. The thought of losing my temper in the supermarket at a worker, the thought of being angry on the road and the thought of not being able to sleep because I am angry at a colleague. Non of these ideas seem attractive to me. Even less attractive is the idea of being the subject of that anger. Knowing that someone was pushed to the limit and broken. Feeling the shame of being called out on some wrong doing and the feeling of wanting to crawl into a crack and  disappear. No one likes being on either side of anger.

On the enneagram, a personality typing system, there is a type of person that is supposedly always angry, but never angry. A mix of tension and peacefulness. A state of sleepiness to the self. The enneagram type 9 individual is the friendly man that always smiles, the woman that is agreeable and the person that does not mind any choice in any situation. There is a sense of peacefulness about them that makes people feel really comfortable and a willingness to please that many take advantage of. Yet under the surface these individuals are not so awake to themselves. There is a disconnection with their own emotions and a feeling that things aren't quite right. So the enneagram type 9 individual then buries that anger under routine, under the feeling that others are right and that they themselves have nothing to be angry about. Here is an example of this train of thought:

Susan made a cup of tea for everyone, but not for me. 

There is no way I could be angry at Susan for not making me a cup of tea, I didn't ask for one. 

She did make for everyone else, but I guess I shouldn't have gotten one in the first place. 

She was just trying to be nice to everyone. 

Maybe she forgot about me.  

The enneagram type 9 individual go about their lives minimizing themselves and justifying why others can walk over them. There are no real boundaries and the way that you survive is stopping the feeling that you fear: anger. This happens quite unconsciously, as a 9 myself I did not realise this was happening. I did not know that I felt violated. I did not feel that I was right and the other in the wrong. I did not feel that something was wrong. I was not an angry person - ever. All I started feeling was self loathing when I was alone, and a sense of numbness to everything around me. A sense that I had lost something. I stopped feeling. I stopped feeling happiness, I stopped feeling love. My life took a large turn into a depressive pit. One thing that I thought was clear to myself was that I was definitely not angry. The depression lasted quite a while. I started feeling a sense of panic as my wife at the time got pregnant. I started feeling a sense of panic as I started getting feelings for my coworker. I felt like I didn't deserve anything, yet I was so unhappy with everything I had. I just wanted those around me to be happy. I was incredibly sad. A video on Youtube made me think differently about it for the first time.

The thought of me being angry entered my mind for the first time. 

Could I be an angry person? I asked myself. What could I possibly be angry about? Can anger really just sit deep inside in such a way that I was not conscious of? Why could I not allow myself to be angry?

These questions ran through my mind. I was a long way off from finding answers, but I know that I now had a tool to inspect myself with. I was looking for anger. I first realised that I hated people thinking I was an angry person. I hated enforcing my will on others. I hated violating what I saw as those precious around me. Anger in all these ways made me feel incredibly sad and hurt. It became clear after just spending a few days pondering on my anger as to why I could possibly not want to be angry. I do not like that kind of person and more than anything did not want to be that person. Anger was very shameful to me.

The situation I was in got worse, I still could not see where my anger was coming from, I was still very much asleep to it. Deep searching did not yield any answers. It was only until I was put in certain situations where some of this anger showed up. At first I saw some of the anger towards my wife. I was talking with her the one day about the issues we were having, and all of a sudden I felt a sense of despair. I could not cope with the thought of being trapped in the state I was in. I broke down and started screaming uncontrollably and rolled on the floor under a table. I wanted to die. Now the marriage I was in was one of utmost neglect. My wife incorporated shaming me at every turn. Refused to give me sex, even when I did everything romantic and made sure to warm her up sweetly. She isolated me from everyone else. She had sensed that I was falling in love with someone else, and instead of confronting me about it talked me into us having a baby. We had regular sex for the first time in 4 years. Waiting a month or two for it seemed to be in the past. Then when she got pregnant I was sidelined again, and I slept in my own room and cooked my own food. When I was home she was either with the baby or asleep. When I spent time with her wherever she was I was ignored. This continued for several months after the birth. During this whole time I realised I had felt anger. I was angry for not being cared for. I was angry for just being used. I felt angry that when she said she loved me she was lying. In all this time of reflection I see that she never loved me, but saw me as an opportunity. She was a very low value girl, and thought she would be single for all her life. She made the most of the opportunity when I showed interest and then later married her. But, never returned any of the love I gave her, never gave me an ounce of respect. All this made me so angry.

Next, my colleague who I had gotten feelings for spoke sweetly to me when we were alone, and then ignored me when others were around. She came and asked for help when she needed it, but was very busy when I needed something in return. She seemed close and in hindsight, only close when it was convenient. I also found out that she had 2 or 3 other men that felt the same about her and with whom she had roused up feelings for her. I felt angry for being used, I felt angry for being lied to and controlled.

Further in, a life long relationship, the relationship with my mother. Now, I believe there is a good reason why a very large portion of  enneagram type 9s are men. I have seen the pattern in other 9s I know. Parents of 9s tend to be very controlling. Girls have angry dominating fathers, boys have manipulative and controlling mothers. The child subjugated to a world where any wrong action or out of line word could spark a blowout learns to control their environment by hiding all those feelings and actions that seem out of line. The 9 child grows up looking obedient and perfect, yet inside feels utterly afraid and shameful. My mother did this to me to the extreme. She had large fits of rage directed at me. Further, going through therapy has shown me that gas lighting was so normal to my every day experience that I thought it was normal. I had no sense of privacy, there was no closed door in my house that was ever respected, and it was made clear verbally with exact words that a closed door was a sign of invitation for her to barge in. It was clear that I had to resort to hiding and lying. I had to suppress. Because of the gas lighting I started getting a sense of Stockholm syndrome and defended her when others spoke poorly of her with all my heart and ate up every word she spoke. In reality I was angry. I was angry at being violated. I was angry at being confused and feeling like I lost a sense of myself. Deep inside I yearned for acceptance and love. Yet never found it, it was always only given to me conditionally. 

I discovered all this deep rooted anger in me. I started letting it out. To my surprise I found out that I was feeling angry all day. Angry at the driver racing his car around me, angry at the lady at the till for being rude to me and angry at the alarm for waking me up in the morning. I started tapping into that anger. To my surprise I was an angry person! The video below shows some of that.

Now, allowing yourself to feel anger and becoming a healthy individual are two different things. However, in my case I could not do the one without the other. I started looking at the anger and realised that a lot of it came from being violated emotionally, taken advantage of, not respected or cared for and from a deep sense that when other people made me feel like nothing I hated it. After going through therapy I realised that setting boundaries was important. I needed to allow myself to be worth something, I needed to feel that I can say no. I needed to put down these boundaries, I needed to enforce them and I needed to do them rationally. Acting out in my new found anger did not help, I was not justified in subjecting others to the painful treatment when I did. I did quite a few times. I had to trace my anger back to certain memories and people as those events became clear in my mind and deal with them. I had to work through them and I had to tell myself that in those events I was trampled on and that I was in the right. I was starting to love and accept myself as a person.

According to statistics 16% of the population struggle with this issue of anger and suppressing it completely. I am among that 16%. I am an angry person. I am not afraid of being honest about it anymore. I am someone whose existence is worth something. I can act in such a way as to look after myself, especially when others feel like they deserve a piece of me. I will live my life and I will make the most of it. The truth is that I can only love those around me when I love them honestly and with all of me present. Anger is an emotion I am allowed to feel, and I can use it to protect myself and those that I love. The peacefulness I so desired came through fighting for it, as opposed to the lie I always believed. I believed that being agreeable and never putting down my will would bring peacefulness. I was so very very wrong.

If you have a bit more time and would like to listen to a talk about this kind of anger the video below is a wonderful resource that has been so instrumental to my growth over the past 2 years.

I would like to end with a Pascal quote: 

Sorry that my letter is so long, I did not have the time to shorten it.