Joe borrows an image from Tibetan philosophy and traditional Chinese medicine: an emotion is energy running through a tube. Kink the tube one way and the energy reacts one way; kink it another way and it reacts differently. Most of what we call an emotional “reaction” is actually a kink—a particular distortion of energy that was never allowed to flow.
Take anger. Kinked one way it becomes “I’m not angry.” Kinked another way it becomes self-attacking rumination. Kinked another, passive-aggressive niceness. Kinked another, a tantrum aimed at someone. But let it run unkinked and it transforms entirely.
“But uncinked, fully felt, fully loved, fully welcomed, it looks like Gandhi or it looks like Martin Luther King or it looks like Mother Teresa. It is a clear boundary.”
Unresisted anger isn’t aggression—it’s clarity, determination, and a clean boundary: “I am not accepting this. I am going here.” And every emotion has this hidden virtue. Fully welcomed, fear becomes excitement and activation. The negativity we attribute to an emotion is really the signature of its distortion, not the emotion itself.
“That anger becomes clarity and determination. That fear becomes excitement.”
Related Concepts
- Managing your emotions is the rebel dilemma — either way the emotion controls you
- Fear is a road map, not an enemy to conquer
- When emotions become fluid they give you signals instead of controlling you
- Don’t do emotions at people
- Repressed anger kinks into depression, self-criticism, and rage
- Unresisted anger is love expressing a clear boundary
- Anger at its core is clarity and determination
- Repressed anger manifests in three forms: self-abuse, passive aggression, and explosive anger
- Welcoming emotions is fundamentally different from accepting them