Our loyal friend, Anger.
Ever wondered why therapists love using metaphors?
Julia Cameron, the author of ‘The Artists Way’ (2021), does a beautiful job at conveying the magic of metaphors for emotional regulation by reminding us that separating ourselves from our emotions can make it a whole lot less confronting and that becoming better friends with challenging emotions, like anger, will most likely help them quieten down a bit.
Anger
‘“Anger is meant to be acted on. It is not meant to be acted out. Anger points the direction.
We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us. With a little thought, we can usually translate the message that our anger is sending us.
“Anger is a friend, not a gentle friend but a very loyal friend. It will always tell us when we have been betrayed. It will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves.”
(Julia Cameron, 2021)
(Docter, P. Inside Out. 2015)
A film that creatively represents emotions through the use of metaphors to help us connect with and understand our own emotions a little bit better.
Understandably no one wants to be perceived as this ‘Anger’ character from Inside Out above, so more often than not we tend to block, hide, deny and ignore our anger.
Does anger really have to lead to yelling, aggression and destructiveness or could anger simply be a feeling that is telling us something isn’t quite right? Perhaps a way to avoid these ‘out of control’ or unpredictable outbursts, is to accept that we all feel anger from time to time and that it might be time to listen to what it is trying to say. At the end of the day Anger is a good friend, and a loyal one at that.
Just like we aren’t able to achieve compromise without connection, we also aren’t able to change our discomfort if we don’t understand why it’s there in the first place. So next time we feel our loyal and very protective red friend pop up, it might be a good time to ask ourselves;
What needs aren’t being met?
What boundaries are being crossed?
Ellen Tatchley
Art Therapist
