Next time you’re angry, get in touch with the pain

Anger is a response to a perceived threat that isn’t “supposed” to exist.

I recently shared this comment on a stranger’s facebook post about hating his ex girlfriend, and it resonated with several people:

Hate is a form of anger, which is a response to a perceived threat. Meaning: if you hate your ex, it is because she represents a threat that you feel you can only handle by fighting the threat through the energy of anger. When I have been flooded with hate in the past, I have found that it is beneficial for me to get in touch with the fear underlying the hate. Always, once I get in touch with the fear, I see a way of addressing the fear that does not require anger, and once I do this my hatred disappears.

Ultimately, we fear pain. Sometimes, our anger is simply about the pain of not being understood by someone who was “supposed” to love you. There is no love without understanding.

But the cause of the anger is not so much the other person’s behavior, but rather the attachment to the idea that they are “supposed” to act differently. That word, “supposed”, is where the anger energy comes from. If you remove that word, and simply take people as they are, there is no anger: only sadness that this is where we are.