This week’s question from our portal “Ask Us Anything” comes from Elizabeth.
I have a question about anger. I’m so angry right now, and I have been for the last two weeks. It’s self-destructive. I’m doing stupid things because of it. I think somebody has discriminated against me—and this has affected my emotional peace, my upcoming move, and it’s consuming me. I want to do bad things back to this person, and I don’t even know who it is.
How do I get out of this emotion? I don’t know how to be okay with someone being discriminatory against me. Normally, I go into depression. A trick I discovered to get out of depression quickly is to get angry. I’ve been able to do that, but now I’m having a hard time getting out of anger.
First of all, that’s great, because depression is usually caused by repressed anger.
When you’re looking at it from a normal level—when it’s not a chemical imbalance or a hormone situation—depression is basically repressed anger.
The fact that you’re bringing it up and allowing yourself to be angry is fantastic.
The next thing to understand is that anger is a defense mechanism.
Get clear on what it is that you’re defending against. What is the meaning you’re giving to whatever is going on, that’s causing you to be so enraged?
Then work on changing that meaning, so that it no longer has a hold over you whatsoever.
As far as someone discriminating against you… you have to be okay with it, because that’s life.
There’s no way we can control other people and what they do. The problem is that it’s controlling you. That’s the real sin of it.
You can only control your reaction to it.
Based on the world we live in now, if you let yourself be controlled by it, then it’s got a grip around your emotional throat in the worst way.
The idea is to bring awareness to the situation. Realize that this person is living in ignorance. It doesn’t matter how they got there.
By the way—most discrimination, prejudice, and bias is handed down from one generation to another.
It’s not like somebody says, “Oh, I’m going to start discriminating against the person out of nowhere.” It doesn’t happen that way. These are beliefs that get handed down over a period of time.
Be aware that the person simply doesn’t understand, and they’re coming from ignorance and pain in their own life. The only thing they can do is hurt other people because hurt people, hurt people.
It has nothing to do with you as a person.
In fact, the more you recognize it, the more you can detach from it and choose to take your business and life in a different direction.
This sets you free.
Essentially, you want to have compassion for them and forgive them. That doesn’t mean you make them right.
It’s about understanding how unconsciously locked in they are to some kind of bias that’s controlling their life, to the extent that they would discriminate against another individual because of it.
