About Anger

"Anger" Private Collection

"A good anger acted upon is beautiful as lightening and swift as power. A good anger swallowed clots the blood with slime." -Marge Piercy, Author

"...because I don't keep a lot of shit bottled up inside me." - Tina Turner, Entertainer

My painting, "Anger" is a depiction of the many faces of that emotion, and was painted as an expression of one part of the grieving process when my mother passed on several years ago. She died in 2002 and it was 2007 when I painted some of the emotions I felt at that time, including anger.

It is an emotion that I allow myself to feel, but which - depending on the anger - am thoughtful about how I express it. Some anger is hot and fast, rising quickly to the surface before you have time to think about it, sometimes causing you to react in ways you might later regret. This is the type of anger we have to step back and think about. It is good to do so because such anger often leaves as quickly as it comes. This is the type of anger that I'm most likely to feel when I'm driving responsibly in traffic and another driver is aggressively tailgating, or when I'm dealing with rude service people in public.

Another type of anger is the kind that stems from having strong emotions about a particular situation, remaining intense over time. Trying to supress it only makes it worse. In order to best handle it, you must admit that it exists. Anger withheld is anger denied, and anger denied is a form being dishonest with yourself. Anger denied can lead to physical illness or make you mentally become a person with "issues," which are often obvious to those around you, but not always obvious to you.

In my lifetime, I've only heard two people say they have never been angry. I'm still wondering how this is possible - how do they do it? Because we are human, it is normal to occasionally feel anger, regardless of whether we show it or not. Rare is the person who never feels anger about something, be it a job promotion that was given to someone else, betrayal by a friend or a reckless driver who cuts you off in traffic. If someone never feels anger , I would wonder if they were out of touch with their feelings or if they were emotionally numb most of the time. Perhaps such a person thinks it is wrong to feel anger.

How do you handle anger? Do you feel it is unhealthy to express anger?