Welcome to Connected From Within's Alleviate Feelings of Anger and Resentment Through Mindfulness Meditation.
In this meditation,
I'm going to share a mindfulness exercise that you can use anytime to help alleviate feelings of anger and resentment.
Mindfulness has been shown to help reduce anxiety,
Depression,
Pain and fatigue,
Improve self-esteem and energy,
Increase self-mastery and motivation,
Support healing and relaxation.
For all of these reasons,
It's an amazing tool for managing anger,
Resentment,
And setting the stage for forgiveness,
Which is different from reconciliation.
Forgiveness lets you move forward,
And reconciliation lets the relationship move forward.
Sometimes it's easy to forget that anger can be a healthy emotion.
It can come from a place of wishing things to be better,
From an intent to protect ourselves or others,
Being angry about the suffering of a group,
A family,
A friend,
Or yourself.
Expressing it in healthy ways is useful,
Because bottling up anger not only numbs your anger,
But your other feelings too.
Some describe emotion as energy in motion,
So when you numb,
That energy loses its ability to move and becomes trapped inside of our bodies,
Eventually impacting our health as the stagnation and blockages build on each other.
Too little expression has a harmful effect on our health and well-being,
And pretending that you're not mad or affected is inauthentic.
When it's bottled up inside,
We submerge it under the surface and over time,
Lose touch with what's making us irritable and reactive,
Even if we get good at acting like we've moved on.
On the other hand,
Too much expression of anger is just as stressful on the body,
And it can feel destructive,
Explosive,
Scary,
And dangerous for yourself or others.
Staying in anger moves us into a place where we feel like we're victims,
We feel like we've been taken from,
And when left unchecked,
That gets used as justification to take back what we feel we're entitled to,
Without ever seeing our part in why things unfolded the way they did.
And without seeing that,
We're really justifying victimizing others.
There's a better way.
It's important that as you begin to experience anger,
You find a way to diffuse it before there's a big blow-up.
In the micro-moments,
Remember to take deep breaths in and deep breaths out,
Until you can label the emotion you're experiencing.
In the moments after,
Try venting about it to a friend,
And if it still persists,
Try breaking a sweat.
In the macro-moments,
I suggest using Marshall Rosenberg's needs and feelings list from his book,
Nonviolent Communication,
To identify the need that went unmet,
The feelings that you subsequently experienced,
And the thoughts that were experienced by your brain as a result of that emotional state.
The quicker we can become at identifying our needs,
The better able we are to find creative ways to meet them,
Even if our first idea for accomplishing this is rejected.
In other words,
Try not to accumulate a build-up of irritation as your day progresses.
It's also helpful to bring mindfulness to learning more about your situation before jumping to conclusions.
Sometimes asking questions or bringing curiosity to what you're angry about can lead to the realization that you may have assumed something different than how it actually is,
Or that maybe it wasn't as black and white as you thought it was.
And finally,
When the emotion of anger is present,
See if you can sense internally into the softer emotions beneath the anger,
Like hurt or fear.
Can you sense the underlying emotions anywhere in your body?
If so,
Simply and gently acknowledge them with a sense of kindness,
And remember that these emotions are absolutely normal.
Stay with the sensations and share compassion for yourself.
Wish yourself well.
So with that in mind,
Let's practice a mindfulness exercise together that you can do anytime whenever you're feeling anger.
So to begin,
Just allow your body to become nice and settled.
If you need to move around or maybe rub your shoulder a bit,
Just something to allow you to relax just a little bit more comfortably,
Go ahead and do that now.
As you're doing that,
Notice if you have any tension or resistance anywhere in your body.
Bring your attention to whatever is going on for you right now,
And begin to surrender the weight of your body to gravity.
Feeling it carrying you at the places where your body meets the surface.
What sensations are there right now for you?
If you not only feel tension or resistance in your body,
But tension or resistance towards painful or unpleasant sensations,
Gently turn towards them.
Accept them as best as you can.
If you begin to feel tense around the breath,
Then let go a little bit with each out breath.
Soften into gravity.
Just be easy on yourself right now.
Notice any thoughts as they arise and pass through the mind.
See if you can let them come and go without needing to fully understand them or follow them.
You can imagine them as clouds floating by,
Passing you in the sky.
Or for something a little quicker,
Water moving down a creek.
Notice any feelings and emotions as they arise.
Can you also let these come and go?
Allowing yourself to experience them without holding on to them.
As you observe all of this,
Hold everything in your awareness with a validating perspective that you can see how hard it is for this being to be experiencing this right now.
Now allow your awareness to gather around the experience of the breath deep in the body.
Drop your awareness inside of this breath and feel the different sensations in the front,
Back,
And sides of your torso.
Can you feel your awareness within the flow and movement of breath?
Use the breath to anchor your awareness in the present moment,
Breathing in the body,
Noticing each inhale and exhale again and again.
Each time you notice your mind has wandered,
Gently guide the mind back to the breath deep in the body.
Now gently expand your awareness to include all sensations from the body.
Feel the weight and the shape of the body as it sits,
Stands,
Or lies.
If you've experienced any discomfort,
Make sure your awareness stays open.
Cultivate acceptance or acknowledgement from all of your experience.
Thank you for your courage to do this exercise with me.
The more you practice this,
The more you'll be able to diffuse anger and sense the softer emotions underneath.
The more you practice this,
The less you'll jump to conclusions and the less you'll dismiss your own neutral intuition.
So to recap,
Sometimes it's easy to forget that anger is a useful emotion that gives us energy to make the journey from disempowered back to the state of healthy empowerment.
Although sometimes the anger starts with blame or judgment,
If you move through it,
There is much wisdom,
Compassion,
And resilience waiting on the other side of this experience of anger and resentment.
By our thoughts telling us they don't respect me,
They don't see me,
They don't consider me,
We are given the opportunity to not only turn it around to see when we don't respect ourselves when we go along with something that isn't good for us,
That we don't see ourselves when we push through a task,
And we don't honor ourselves when we dismiss our needs,
But we're also given the opportunity to become more aware of how we may be unintentionally doing the same thing to others too.
We have this experience of anger,
This belief that something has been taken from us,
So that we can return to the knowing that we are full,
Complete,
And perfect beings from which nothing can ever truly be taken.
The challenge is to find that knowing within ourselves,
Without the conditions needing to be a certain way,
So we can return to our place of empowerment.
Only once you're standing again in your power,
In your fullness,
In your love and compassion,
Can you peacefully decide what to do next,
And turn this anger into healthy action and decision making.
Sometimes this means letting go,
And sometimes this means using your voice as an agent of change.
Only you can know what feels right in the moment.
This marks the completion of the Mindfulness for Anger and Resentment meditation.
