Before you can be with someone else’s anger, the feeling of “I’ve done something wrong and I’m not safe” has to go — and the way to dissolve it, Joe says, is to get in touch with your own anger. As long as your own anger is foreign and frightening to you, other people’s anger will frighten you too.
“Until you really understand your own anger and remove your own anger you’re always going to be scared of other people’s anger.”
He gives a concrete example: the woman he coached would yell in her car for ten or fifteen minutes on her commute home, letting all her anger move. Over time the anger stopped being scary. It stopped being a tool for controlling others or a force that controlled her, and became simply “an energy that’s moving” she could accept. And as she learned to love her own anger, she could love the narcissist’s anger too — she could see the out-of-controlness in it rather than be threatened by it.
“As she learned to love her own anger, she could learn to love this man’s anger.”
The whole capacity to stay present with someone else’s rage rests on this inner work first.
Related Concepts
- Anger is an act of vulnerability and a bid for engagement
- Anger unresisted becomes determination and clarity
- Rage can be the gateway to healing
- You can’t love someone you see as your oppressor
- Draw a boundary that includes coming back so they don’t feel abandoned
- What’s vulnerable is personal, not a universal morality
- Drawing boundaries dissolves triggers
- Don’t do emotions at people