Take your power back – how to stop being entangled in anger in your relationships

Part of what makes us have difficulties in our relationships, is that we tend to get caught up in being angry, frustrated and upset about the way they behave and what they “do to us”.

Often times, when we tend to be caught up in that kind of anger and resistance, it is the way we try to empower ourselves. To feel right. To be entitled to have our opinions, needs and feelings.

Even though it may feel good to insist on how right we are and how wrong they are…. we end up wasting too much energy that leads to little result for ourselves.

It makes us busy with the same dynamics for far too long. Dynamics where we think we are seeing how the other one is wrong, but we are actually caught up in our need to prove that we are right.

It is an effort to gain back a piece of ourselves, we have somewhere along our lives gave up on. A piece we may have needed to exchange or suppress for the approval, love and the care, of others. Something we had to do, to feel and be safe.

This need to prove that we are right (mostly to ourselves), is rooted in that innocent giving up in our past.

The anger and agitation of today are the futile efforts to gain back our power.

It is our healthy need to get that deep sense of knowing and feeling that we are ok back. It is the way that lost piece of ourselves is trying to find its way “back home”: That who we are and what we are has an unapologetic place in the world. That we are loved. That we are enough.

There is a way to bring that piece back home. To be whole. To use anger in a more efficient and balanced way. To live and let live. To step away or move away without so much fighting.

There is a way to feel your personal power that will enable you to stand on your own, satisfied and happy. A strength that will allow you to navigate in relationships with more ease and clarity.

It is a way to take all of that lost power back. To breathe it in. To agree to meet that old fear without being triggered anymore or feel in danger.

To manage that you will have to take a time in which you train yourself to do so:

Think of the kind of situations, interactions and people in your life, in which and with whom, you tend to get stuck in anger, frustration and agitation. Once you map that, you are ready to start the journey back home.

Choose one situation or a person to start with. Something relevant from today. If something from your past jumps into our mind, you can also use that memory.

Close your eyes and recall that person /situation or/ and subject.

Take time to remember the situation with all of yourself, with your body and all the levels of experiences that emanate for it.

Pay attention to your reaction to this memory/thought.

Feel how you respond with anger, blame and so on.

Pay attention as well to the way you close your body, tighten it and stiffen it.

Feel how it seems important to do so, to create a feeling of being stronger.

It is the fear of the old fear that encourages you to do so.

Now I would ask you to collect all your courage and for a moment dare to move away from the judgmental, righteous part of your experience that tries to “impotently” protect you, and start to focus on breathing in and opening your body each time you do so.

Imagine you pull in all the power the sense of strength and worth you have left with those people.

Each breath it is as if you call it back home.

At the beginning do not try to know what is it you are calling back home. Just start doing it.

There will be a hesitation. And that is ok. It is the moment you need to choose to open up. To undo this old need of defending yourself. To trust that even if you are opening up, you are not giving in. You are not losing your ground.

You are not making yourself weak.

You re simply willing to meet that which was unbearable once on the one hand, but on the other, you are gaining your whole self, back.

Even if your protective mind that is insisting on keeping everything tight and bunkered….you are actually gaining more of your personal power. It was hidden under fear or pain. Under shame and hurt.

You are now able to feel the hurt, pain, longing, and all the rest without it breaking you.

It is safe for you now to do so. When you are with yourself.

Soon after it will transform within you. It will turn into fullness. Into clarity and even into happiness. It will do it in a way that your protective mind, cannot understand yet.

Your protective mind, wants to push away and resist everything once registered as unpleasant or dangerous and hurtful.

It is ok that it cannot understand. Your mind makes conclusions out of experiences. And now you are undoing old experiences and creating new ones. It needs to take the back seat for a moment and let it happen so it can learn something new. Then, it can leave the past and meet the present of who you are.

Go back again and again to the memory of the situation/person and keep on being aware of how you breath in, opening your chest and your belly, feeling how the air opens up your muscles and skin. How you pull something in.

When you stay aware of that for a while, you will start and perceive that you take back your sense of being ok. Stop trying to make the other person see who you are, but take your visibility back. You will take back your dignity, your fear, your hurt, your need. When you take it back you will feel that you do not need them take care of it. Suddenly, you will feel that it is within you. They are simply caught up in their own lack.

When you take it all back and use the anger to call of those neglected pieces back or the ones that you had to give up on, you will be able to stand for your own needs and choices. You will be able to express yourself with so much more ease and clarity. You will believe your No, and suddenly they will too.

You will maybe even have less engagement with them or with specific parts of them.

Keep on breathing in. Calling it all back into your body. Into your bones. Into your muscles. Into your skin.

The fullness of who you are will make it so easy to engage. Your boundaries or the simplicity to follow what you want / do not want, will naturally appear.

When you call all of yourself back, now one has power over you. No one needs to conform you.

No one can trigger your old fearfulness and neediness.

You can walk away as easily as you can let love in. You are free. Your relationships are freed.

Yours,

Anna

Photo by davide ragusa on Unsplash