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Dealing With Rage
Rage, especially now, in this most crucial of times, is the most important emotion toheal. And yet, rage is one of the most misunderstood emotions. Rage, in a healedstate, is always appropriate. It can help protect us and help move us out of situationsthat don't feel good. It carries our ability to say "no". Rage isn't perhaps the right wordhere, however, because in its origins, and in a healed state, rage is not rage. It growsfrom a seed of anger, which is usually in response to being hurt or frightened or neglected. If the anger is allowed to express naturally and do its job, it never grows torage or worse, to hatred.
WHAT IS RAGE "EXPRESSION"?
When we say rage "expression", we do not mean words. We do not even meanexpressing rage TO or AT another person. It is not usually necessary to express your rage to the person who enrages you in order to get it healed. We are not healing ragewhen we scream in someone's face. We are not healing rage when we use angry wordsin a scathing email. We are not healing rage when we pound a pillow, or beatsomething with a bat.Physical activity can cause a small amount of energy release that will dissipate thesurface layers of rage. But, by themselves, words and screaming and pounding areonly skimming the surface of the feelings. The energy released through theseactivities doesn't reach down to the deepest levels of the rage that needs healing. Andthey are more often merely an "acting out" of the true feeling, and therefore, nothealing at all. In order to get to deep and lasting healing of rage, we must get toignition.
What is Ignition?
Ignition is the key, ignition is the goal. And ignition means angry tears.CRYING Rage??Yes.Most adults believe that crying is only for expressing grief. Many people seem tothink that pounding and screaming are the truest and deepest expressions of rage. Thatis simply not true.Find an infant and spend several days with him/her. Watch and listen. You will seehow rage gets expressed when there are no words. There will be screaming, yes. And physical movement, gyrations, fists pounding, face red, etc. And there will be tears.The key here is to focus on feeling the FEELING, on finding the deep-down, rawfeelings of rage and letting them express in the most natural and primal way. Onceyou reach ignition, what you do will be spontaneous and appropriate. You may findyourself crying "I hate you!" and pounding a pillow at the same time, but it won't beforced or contrived.
 
Pounding and screaming can be useful tools to get you to ignition, as described in thefirst step of emotional healing. For those who have heavy restrictions against noise or  being out of control, these can be useful ways of breaking through the resistancewalls. But the only reason to continue any behavior is to get yourself triggered to thedeeper levels of rage healing, to bring up the angry tears. That is the goal. And if your frenzy of physical activity never brings you to ignition, then you need to trysomething else. Do not be fooled into thinking you're doing all that can be done, just by pounding or screaming.
Don't Restrict or Predict
An infant doesn't draw lines around his/her feelings. A baby doesn't try to separateanger from hurt from hunger from fear. It all flows out naturally, often interminglingand intertwined. But adults will try to protect the powerful feeling of rage, byisolating rage from hurt or terror or heartbreak. Babies know no such distinctions.They feel it all, and they cry it all.If you say to yourself, "today I need to work on my rage..." you may limit the feelingthat needs to express. It's not wrong to have a goal in mind, but the feelings hiding just on the other side of the veil of your unconscious may not be what your consciousmind thinks they are. And rage tries to stay isolated because that keeps it feeling powerful. Rage hates to feel afraid and powerless. So it's important to let go, once youreach ignition, to let the feelings flow as THEY want to. You may find yourself screaming wordlessly into a pillow, and then sobbing grief, and then sobbing anger,and then screaming some more. The feelings will flow naturally and spontaneously, aslong as you let them.That's your guideline. Become as a little child. Let it flow out of you naturally.Without words. Even without action. Our bodies know how to do this processnaturally. As adults, we must re-learn. We must remember. When rage says it must usewords, it lies. Words are not necessary at all. Watch the babies, and re-learn how to letyour feelings flow.
When Others Are Raging At You
When we're faced with an angry person, we usually get immediately triggered intosomething of our own. We've all been raged at from childhood on, and we all have plenty of emotional baggage stored in our attics that cause us to have some kind of knee-jerk, unconscious response to being raged at.What that response is will vary, depending our basic makeup. Yin polar people willmore naturally back away or try to placate the person. Heart Processors will often tryto stay present and open and loving toward the raging person, and sometimes letthemselves be victims because they feel it's the "loving" thing to do. Yang polar  people are more likely to bristle, and rise to fight back. A highly spiritual MentalProcessor may pull themselves up into a calm, superior (controlled) place, and holdthemselves aloof and unaffected. (You can be pretty sure that somewhere inside thereis some other emotional response that they are hiding or suppressing!)
 
But our responses are also highly colored by our soul history and childhoodexperiences. A person who has received a lot of verbal or physical abuse will findthemselves reliving old days and may respond as if the anger in front of them is thesame anger they received at the age of 2. That inner 2-year old may be terrified beyond being able to think. They may see a red bull charging at them, and respond asif their lives are being threatened, when in reality, the NOW may not truly be asfrightening or dangerous as old fears say they are.Whether or not you can allow another person to rage at you verbally is entirely a personal preference and desire. But before you can truly know what you prefer anddesire, you must deal with all your own backlog, and all your old responses will be brought into the present. When you no longer respond to a present raging person fromold pain, then you will know what you want, and you can make a choice to stay,leave, speak, laugh, whatever, from your healed soul, who truly knows what is best inany situation.
My Choice / My responsibility ...
If you blast me with hurtful insults and screaming my heart will feel the stabbingwound. I can cry that hurt, but that does not mean I give you full permission to hurtme again here and now, over and over again, with your blaming rage. I commit tocrying all the hurts that happened to me in the past, but I do not agree to allowsomeone to continue to hurt me in the present. Personally, I believe we should befocusing on healing the old hurts as much as possible, without inflicting new hurts.That is a choice that each person must make, a balance each person must find withinthemselves.There is no rule. There is no right or wrong. There is only choice. And there is noreason to allow another person to rage at you verbally if it doesn't feel good to you.But we must also take responsibility for our own stuff. The first thing we must alwaysdo is cry our own response to the raging. A person raging at you is a wonderfultrigger, and a wonderful opportunity to see where your own stuff still hides. Some of those old fears may never get triggered, except in situations where someone rages atyou. So use each and every situation as an opportunity for healing. However, do notrequire yourself to stay in the situation, or take someone's rage pounding on youemotionally or verbally or physically.What you must know is that if the other person never cries their rage, it will not fullyheal. Their verbal or physical blasts will dissipate the surface energy for a short time,and then the deep backlog will begin to build again and push its way to the surface for another "blast".This does not mean that you make it your job to tell them what to heal or how. It iseach person's responsibility to deal with their own stuff. But knowing that the personis crying their rage means a great deal to me in my dealings with them. If a personcries their rage with me, I will listen, I will hold the space open for them to expresswithin, and I will give that expression full acceptance. As long and as deeply asneeded. But if the person is only verbally bashing or attacking me, I don't requiremyself to sit and hold space for that.
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