White. Hot. Rage: A Slightly Different Take on Anger.

In recent months, I’ve felt a lot of rage, which is not a familiar space for me.

I grew up around yellers and people who used righteous anger to get their way. It was unpleasant for me and had a supersized impact on my little-girl nervous system, so at some point in my childhood, I decided: Nope. Not me. I don’t do yelling. In fact, I’m not even going to be a person who gets angry. I’m just gonna be nice.

And over the years, I have, at considerable cost to myself, believed that I am simply not an angry person. Did I repress my anger until all I felt were anxiety and dread? Did I overcompensate with niceness I didn’t feel – and then found myself in a stew of resentment? That’s a big yes. I did a lot of that.

It is wildly uncomfortable for me, this feeling of anger heating up in my body like a volcano. It starts as dread, as the seeping out of something that feels uncontrollable, shadowy, dark – at odds with an identity I’ve long lived in. My instinct is to avoid, to suppress, to sleep or cry or bake instead of feeling it. But there is no stopping it anymore.

It begins to burn white hot in the space just under my lungs, in my solar plexus. And the lava flows, fiery and thick into my chest and my neck. It sears my throat.

But these days, I force myself to stay with it.

Because it turns out that there are many, many downsides of being Only-Nice. Because it turns out that anger is actually the correct response to a substantial list of things.

I am trying to pay attention. When I hold this white-hot feeling and allow it to exist, what can it alchemize?

And when I let it burn, when I stay with it, it leaves powerful shapes in its ash – shapes of clarity and understanding. When I let it inform me, it speaks to me in a crystal-clear voice.

It tells me I have not enforced my boundaries – or I’ve failed to set them in the first place. It sings to me that it is time to be finished: finished with being controlled, bullied, manipulated. It howls that being a good sport does not serve me the way it once did.

It shines a bright light that reveals something toxic that lives in Only-Nice: a mistaken belief and hope that when I am nice, I get to expect something in return: credit, acknowledgement, karma, points to get me into The Good Place. Recognition of my niceness. Gratitude. Some days, I used to even believe it earned me the privilege to be left alone.

It helps me know: I’m done. It can lead to me expressing or to conflict – but actually it doesn’t need to. Its power comes from me just letting it spread into my body and paying attention to the messages it leaves in its wake.

So, may my anger bubble and simmer as long and as hot as it needs to until I continue to see there are always more choices.

May it have me shed a way of behaving that serves no one, least of all me. And may I, from the ashes, find a transformed way to be, to incinerate the fear of conflict and rejection, and to stand in my truth.

Let it burn.

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