What You Learnt About Emotions Might Be Working Against You

If I asked you which emotions feel ok for you to experience, what would you say?

And if I then asked you which emotions don’t feel ok, would that feel easier to answer? Would some emotions instantly come to mind?

Anger is often one of those.

Not always consciously, and yet there can be a sense that it’s not an emotion you should really be feeling, or at the very least not one you should be showing (and yes, I know I’ve just used the word ‘should’, which I usually avoid…and it fits here because it’s exactly the kind of message many of us have taken on).

Possibly you’ve learnt somewhere along the way that anger is a ‘bad’ emotion, and if that’s the case, what happens when a part of you feels angry?

In my experience, it doesn’t just disappear because it’s not welcome.

Through my own personal work, I came across a part of me that believed anger wasn’t ok. It had learnt that being angry led to getting in trouble, and from that it made sense that another part stepped in to make sure anger didn’t get expressed. That was its way of protecting what mattered most at the time, love, safety and belonging.

So anger didn’t disappear, I felt it, I just wasn’t willing to let it be seen.

It showed up in other ways, passive aggressiveness, sarcasm, moaning or venting, ways of letting some of it out without really expressing it fully.

I see this a lot with clients as well.

When anger doesn’t feel ok to experience, we’re unlikely to go towards it. We don’t get curious about it, we don’t listen to it, and we don’t get to understand what it’s there for.

And like all emotions, anger is trying to do something. Often, it can be protecting something that feels more vulnerable. Sadness, hurt, grief. So when anger shows up, it’s easy to focus on the anger itself and miss what might be sitting underneath it.

One of the most helpful shifts here is noticing the difference between speaking from that anger and speaking for it.

When you’re speaking from it, it’s driving what you say and how you say it. It’s reactive and running the show.

When you speak for it, you’ve noticed and acknowledged the anger. It isn’t ignored. It might sound more like, “a part of me is feeling really angry right now” and you can calmly explain why.

The anger is still there, nothing is being pushed away or ignored, and at the same time you’re not completely in it.

When you speak for the part of you feeling angry, there’s some curiosity there to understand it more. To find out…What is this anger about? What is this part reacting to? What might it be trying to protect?

For some people, anger was the emotion that didn’t feel ok, and it can also be any or many emotions that don’t feel ok or safe to feel.

When I was asked during my IFS Level 1 training to connect with a childhood memory that held joy, I couldn’t find one. There were so many happy memories, and yet joy felt different. It felt too much, too loud, too silly, and that didn’t feel entirely safe either.

So parts of us learn what’s ok and what isn’t, and they continue to shape how we experience our emotions now.

Without any curiosity, parts of us will continue to try and manage which emotions are seen and which are not, and yet all of them will be there. We can change our experience with our emotions and the stories we hold about them, when we’re willing to look inwards.

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A gentle invitation to explore

Where do you notice anger showing up in your life at the moment?

When it does, what usually happens next?

Do you push it away, try to control it, or find it comes out in ways that don’t feel great afterwards?

And what changes if, instead of doing that, you simply acknowledge it…

A part of me is feeling angry.

And get curious about what that part might be trying to show you?