A Month of Mays: May Anger Guide Us To Serenity

Posted On May 4, 2022

You might have noticed from my previous posts that there’s one emotion that I rely on as a tool to help me identify areas where there’s still room for personal growth: My anger.

Anger is not subtle.  When it strikes, I can’t pretend like I didn’t notice.  So, when I feel angry, I know it’s a compass pointing me in the right direction, guiding me through the darkest parts of my soul.  It’s letting me know that there’s an old wound or a preconceived notion that I need to re-examine and challenge.  I’ve gained so much freedom both mentally and physically since I built a positive relationship with my anger.

My Early Relationship with Anger

But it didn’t happen overnight. For at least the first 30 years of my life, anger was an absolute taboo.  The culture that I grew up in discouraged anger, especially in girls, so I don’t think I really learned to identify the feeling within myself.  Without an outlet to express itself, anger finds a different way to release the pent up steam.  For me, it came out as tears, and also as eczema. And because of those tears, I think I used to misidentify the emotion as sadness.  

Moving to a new country where I couldn’t speak the language just as I hit puberty was also not helpful.  I suddenly found myself very dependent on others when I was supposed to begin building my own separate identity.  Anger was a luxury that I couldn’t afford.  I needed to be as agreeable as possible so that people would be willing to help when I needed it. I remember crying a lot during those years, especially in the shower so my parents wouldn’t notice.

Going off to college and being exposed to different people allowed me to see things in a slightly different light, but I still felt extreme guilt for feeling angry. So rather than acknowledging it, I let it fester and turn into resentment. I was in complete denial. If someone had asked me if I was angry, I would’ve looked straight into their eyes and said “No! Not at all!” with all honesty. I really had no idea I was lying to myself.

The Turning Point

This went on until I had my third child. At that point, I decided to stop using my steroid creams for my eczema because I was breastfeeding. This brought on one of the hardest periods of my life. I went into steroid withdrawal. All those years, I had used medication off and on to suppress the rage that had tried to express itself on my skin. By the time I had my youngest, I had so much anger and resentment built up within me, my skin absolutely exploded when I stopped using medication. I couldn’t fall asleep from the itchiness even though I was exhausted from the nighttime feedings. My skin was flaking off so much I could make a mound every morning. It was an absolute torture all day, every day.

The reason why I can talk about all of this in the past tense, though, is because I finally, FINALLY, acknowledged my anger. I wrote down every anger, every resentment, every painful memory that I could think of into notebooks after notebooks. For years, I saw my inner child as a whiny brat. I finally gave her a chance to speak. I couldn’t believe how much rage poured out of me. For the first time in my life, I realized I was an angry person. And I mean REALLY angry to the level of being toxic. 

Anger and Eczema

I came to understand that my eczema was trying to help me detoxify myself because I wouldn’t give my rage a voice. By suppressing the eczema with medication, I had hindered my skin from doing its job. To be honest, I’m still detoxing, nearly 8 years after the birth of my youngest. It’s definitely not as intense as the first few years, though, for sure. It’s mostly mental detox of beliefs that no longer serve me now, rather than physical detox. 

I’m an extreme example, so if you have eczema, please don’t let the length and the intensity of my recovery discourage you!  I believe you can wean off medications if you make an honest effort into acknowledging your suppressed anger and resentments. I just didn’t know that at the time. I’d rather you take my story as something that could happen if you deny yourself the right to feel negative emotions for three decades.  And I also hope you’ll take away the reassurance that it’s never too late to start befriending your anger. It has been waiting so long for you to acknowledge it, and it has so much it wants to tell you.