Healthy Ways to Express Anger Without Projecting It

Being mad at someone is actually a form of relief for me. By being angry at them, or relishing in feelings of revenge, I do not have to address the underlying emotions of grief and sadness that my anger disguises.

But this projection just exacerbates the problem. It does not offer any healing. I had to learn healthy ways to express anger.

Stuffing It Down

When I first heard about masking emotions like anger, an idea that says anger is always masking a deeper emotion, I thought I needed to stop being angry altogether.

I got really good at stuffing my anger deep down and then congratulated myself on being a good person.

The problem was that deep down I was still angry. I had just gotten good at ignoring that anger without acting on it. This slowly became debilitating because it meant that I was having to ignore a lot of other feelings as well.

Feeling Dead Inside

Over time, this kind of stuffing left me feeling dead inside. Simply going through the motions of good person without feeling any of the natural joy that comes with being authentic.

What I finally recognized about my anger is that I need to feel and safely express my anger instead of thinking anger as an emotion is somehow bad. The anger or expression of it was not the unloving thing. It was my projecting the anger outward onto the people around me that was the unloving action.

Express Without Projecting

So instead of getting angry with people, I started getting angry at the feeling. Finding healthy ways to express anger without projecting it onto others. This allowed me to go deeper into the feeling until I got underneath the mask and was able to start feeling some of the grief there.

Sometimes this looks like me taking a drive, cranking up the music, and screaming at the top of my lungs. Other times I am swinging a tee ball bat at a pile of trash. Or journaling these angry feelings with scribbled vigor.

More Alive Than Ever

The key is making the space to feel and express these feelings, which often means counting to 10 or removing myself from a heated scenario until I have better processed the feelings it is inspiring within me.

It is not easy to address my anger in this way, but as I do it more, a funny thing has started happening. I am feeling more alive. And more and more, the anger just is not there and I can go directly to the deeper emotions the anger was masking.

This is nothing short of a miracle for me.