Why Are You Annoyed?

 

“Before I realized that frustration and anger actually are cover-ups for fear, Fear of being unimportant, meaningless, inadequate and unloved, I blamed others for my inability to see my own part.” - Client, The EQ Gym

Anger is one of our ground or base emotions (read more about our ground emotions here).

Emotions linked to anger:

• Frustrated
• Aggressive
• Hateful
• Sarcastic
• Upset
• Irritated
• Humiliated
• Outraged
• Argumentative

Behavior linked to the fact that we cannot handle or channel anger:

• Controlling
• Dominant
• Judgmental
• Troubleshooting
• Misjudgment/Misinterpretation
• Violent
• Reducing
• Offensive
• Bullying
• Vengeful
• Passive Aggressive

Have you ever received a text message, email, or message in your feed and your reaction was: What an idiot! Jesus, I no longer have the time/energy/interest for this person and all their BS? Most of us recognize the feeling and we often treat it with silence. We become passive-aggressive. Passive aggression is a form of violence and a sign of suppressed anger and a low EQ. 

Have you had an argument with someone, your husband, your boss, your girlfriend, your sister or your father and then chosen not to answer their incoming calls? It does not feel so violent, right? It might even feel smart!? It’s a game of power, it’s avoidant and it’s passive anger. AND It’s emotional violence and emotional assault!

Anger is an alarm for fear – every time we are angry we are actually scared. If we can understand this, we can take care of our anger in a whole and healthy way.

Many of us are afraid to feel the feeling of Fear. Which means that we try to escape fear in various forms. to the point that we cannot identify it anymore, let alone be in it. Anger is also a sign that we feel misunderstood. We get further and further away from what is true and we feel extremely vulnerable. We become confused and have difficulty seeing the root and wounds behind the anger.  Instead, we only feel stress and anxiety. Which is a form of different mixed emotions and at the same time resistance to all of these.

Grief, anger and denial are cover-ups-protection for the vulnerable core or rather, a resistance to the vulnerable core of who we are. Because most of us have learned that fear implies weakness: and weak is something that since the time of early man, has been classified as bad because if we are weak, we can be abandoned or ostracised. 

The feeling of anger is more “okay” than fear in terms of society. We can therefore more easily acknowledge and understand that we are angry, rather than understand that we are afraid. Anger therefore becomes a way of presenting our fear as power. It is the way our small self tries to make itself larger to stave off the danger inherent in being fearful. But the way we look at it, anger only becomes the ego’s way to protect itself from appearing vulnerable and “weak” = Fear of being alone, unpopular and therefore, rejected. If we can understand this and share what we are afraid of, rather than being frustrated when we are vulnerable. Another name for vulnerability is: true/human/imperfection. The collective general truth is that we are all imperfect. However, we work very hard individually to lay a perfect façade. We think we will be more loved that way. We cannot be further from the truth.

How do we manage and channel anger in a healthy and sustainable way?

If you know that every time you get annoyed, you are actually scared and afraid of being rejected, being unimportant, being misunderstood, meaningless, “rejected from the herd in any way”; the fear will eventually be addressed and with time, it will resolve. 

You need to see the fear and understand it rather than escaping it 

Different wounds are sometimes activated in us at the same time. These wounds can be in conflict with each other. Meaning: behaviors that the wounds activate are not consistent with each other, which can result in passivity at the same time as explosiveness. We are blaming at the same time as we are people-pleasing. We are everywhere with our emotions and behavior and we lose track. The only way out of the uncomfortable feelings is to finally leave the person/friend/job/situation that activates the emotions. – until we meet the next people who activate them, and so on. Until we cannot escape anymore. Panic appears and we get panic attacks or anxiety. We end up at the bottom. This often becomes our wake-up call to seek self-perspective and positive self-awareness and we begin to see ourselves in a whole new and healthy way.

The wake-up call

The spiritual journey, the conscious journey, often begins when we no longer have a choice. When we have engendered crisis. We need to understand why we end up where we end up again and again. We are finally beginning to understand our part. We get a self-perspective and a deeper self-awareness. We begin to get to know ourselves. Get perspective on how others see us. We learn to understand where we come from and how we are seen from the outside. And maybe we can do this with curiosity, awe and love.

We have created a gym (The EQ GYM) to help you process and release emotions, channel them properly and get in touch with what is beneath these emotions. If you are curious to understand your feelings, how you can handle them and channel them properly you are welcome to our community. Let’s try it out this Sunday. We promise it will be worth it.

You will get a practical view of how to train your self-perspective muscle.

Join The EQ GYM this Sunday for a complimentary session with April Wickström. In this session, April will dig deeper into this topic and take you through a guided meditation for you to start building up your EQ muscles. Sign up for free here! 

No worries if you are reading this article a bit late. Every Sunday, we are discussing a new Self-Muscle, so just jump on whatever Sunday is coming up! 

If you want more inspiration, guided meditation and breathwork exercises, follow us on our brand new Instagram page here!

See you Sunday!