You can listen to the full episode here: Listen to Ep 21: Spring Anger

Anger is often treated as a problem.

Many of us were taught to suppress frustration, stay polite, and avoid expressing anger. Especially in situations where someone else holds power. Over time, that pressure can build into resentment, irritability, or impulsive reactions.

In this episode of Anchored & Alive, Blaze explores how anger and frustration can actually be useful signals. Especially in the Spring season, rising energy often brings our boundaries into sharper focus.

Instead of treating anger as something to hide or eliminate, this conversation invites you to listen to what it might be trying to protect.

Hello everybody, welcome back.

This week, I want to talk about anger and frustration and impulsivity and all of the things that when you go out in the world, you see popping up around you constantly.

Everything and everybody is a little bit pushy and a little bit short.

And maybe you're feeling it too. And it's like you just never get the chance to work on what you want to work on. People are trying to talk to you, and you don't want to hear what they have to say because you've got your own stuff going on.

And everybody's wrong and everybody's stupid and it sucks and we don't want to deal with it anymore and can't we just be left alone? And simultaneously why doesn't everyone want to hang out and why can't we go do fun things?

All of that is completely and utterly normal, even though it's frustrating. And I want to talk about anger and frustration and irritability and all of those things and put them into context and help us understand what's going on and how to use all of that as information because it's excellent information.

It's really great energy. And when it's used properly, it can help us really set ourselves up to have a much more pleasant and enjoyable experience. Many of us haven't been taught that.

I know when I grew up, it was very much taught that it was inappropriate for me to be angry or to express frustration, particularly with anyone who is in charge or older than me.

I was supposed to be nice and polite and also to my younger brothers and treat them well and be the steward and guide them and do all of these things and all of it just felt like...

The only acceptable thing for me was to be pleasant and happy and smiling about everything.

But what it actually cultivated was like this deep inner rage about never getting to do what I want or the way that I wanted, and what I wanted to do stuff, having to share it when I didn't want to share it.

And all of this... all of this frustrated energy.

And I know that so many women feel the same way. We feel that way in our jobs. We feel that way just out in the world.

Like the expectation is we need to be pleasant about it even when we're pissed.

So, the energy of Spring, I know I've been learning a lot about acupuncture and the five elements in Chinese medicine, and I find it all extremely fascinating.

And when I first started reading about it, it blew my mind because it just made so much sense to me.

That there are seasons that are associated with certain emotions and that there are certain expressions that are associated with these elements.

And the element in the Spring is Wood and the feeling and energy associated with it is anger and shouting and pushiness. Just like a sprout pushing up through the soil that has a ton of energy, but it's frustrated and it's like, "Woo!" comes up and the sound of like the wind through trees and branches hitting each other and it's crackling, and it's loud.

And I went, "Oh, yeah, sometimes I really, really feel that in the spring or just in general in my life."

So we're all going to cycle through and have seasons of that.

But right now you can see it and feel it in the air. It's part of... boundaries, and people wanting to express themselves and feeling repressed.

So how do we use that energy and understand the use of it?

And use it well in ways that don't blow up our lives; in ways that help us really get through whatever season we're in. So let's talk about it.

Now I can say when I have anger and frustration, it's all about a boundary being pushed.

It's also about fear of being crammed into a role that I don't want to have, or having to do something that I don't want to do, or that I want help for, but I'm afraid to ask for. Every single time, anger is usually directing me to say,

"There's something happening here that doesn't feel comfortable, that I'm not comfortable with or that I don't want at all."

And it's either going to turn into me needing to say something and create that boundary and enforce it.

Or it's saying that if you don't do that, it then collapses in on itself.

And now it becomes sadness at myself, frustration with myself, or even fear that now I'm gonna cope with worse things and it can result in me backing away and reducing my presence in my life.

I think that's a pretty normal way of handling things, like when you have a boundary that gets ignored or people just bust right by.

You try to find a way to still cope and manage your life even with that boundary crossed.

Anger is there to help you put up the boundary in the first place so that that doesn't happen, so that you don't reduce your life, so that you don't end up just putting on a smile and faking that you're happy and doing whatever anyway, or just altogether disappearing from whatever situation it is that you don't want to be around.

I know we all go through that and it sucks. So how do we...

I don't know, find our feet in this season and learn how to show up without being so damn frustrated at everybody?

I was thinking about gardens and nature and how, you know, when deer are coming through, we recognize the nature of deer is that they're gonna bite on things and chew on stuff and we can't really change them.

And we don't need to be mad at the deer, but we do put up fencing, right? Like the deer don't hate us, they're just doing what they do, so they come in and they eat our stuff.

If we put up the fence and the boundary now they can't quite get in and they'll go somewhere else. And it's also kind of showing that some of the aspects of our lives are things that we grow. They just need some protection and they need some space.

How can we do that for ourselves right now? So start really simple and think about where are you getting frustrated and angry right now? Is it with a certain person? Is it in a certain setting? Is it just a structural thing, like the space isn't set up well enough for me to do what I want to do? Is it that the commute that you have, there's always something that happens that you're not enjoying?

What needs to happen to reduce the friction?

I like thinking of it that way because it becomes less of a "I have to solve the entire world."

It's me thinking, what few adjustments could I do that just reduce the friction a little bit?

So that life gets just a little bit smoother right now. That can help a great deal. Having tough conversations is also something that might be appropriate.

If you find that the same situation keeps happening and something needs to change,

It's figuring out, okay, what is it specifically that I want or need? And how can I convey that to the players so that it can start moving in that direction?

I know that learning how to have tough conversations is absolutely a skill that needs to be taught as well and it's a practice that gets easier over time.

It has a lot to do with being able to trust yourself and what you have to say, but also building up a capacity to trust other people to be able to take what you have to say.

And it's definitely a play between those two things because there's a learning curve for us and how do we say what we need without sparking frustration or upset-ness in other people that shuts them down and they don't hear us.

And then also, how can I trust that they are going to listen and maybe care about me enough to want to change?

There's all, yeah, there's so much going on with that. And I have a lot of heart and sympathy for the feeling of not knowing what to do when you come up against any of that. I feel like everything just seems really hard and I don't want to be angry all the time and I need to figure it out.

So some of the reactions to that...

I've had many over the years. I definitely have had times where I hit a point of frustration in any venture and realize

It's gotten so much in so many ways it's bad that I just need to go and just start over and change.

There have been other times in my life where things get really frustrating and bad and I go, "Okay."

Is it feeling worse potentially than objectively it is because I have all of these other things going on?

And sometimes that's true too and I have to go, "Okay, maybe I don't need to blow up everything in my life right now."

Usually, here's the key, usually, finding the one thing that's the biggest and most irritating aspect of my life and moving in the direction of reducing friction there or correcting whatever boundary needed to be enforced allows me enough time to assess whether the other pieces are also broken or if they were just irritating because the whole machine was out of whack.

So you're thinking like when your alignment gets off on your vehicle and everything starts shaking and you're like afraid that the whole vehicle is bad.

But then if you just tighten up the bolts and adjust some stuff, everything runs smoothly again.

It's easy to be scared and think everything is wrong. And sometimes it's just one thing. So that's kind of comforting at least.

Sometimes it's only one thing. Yes, I think that when there's the anger and the fear and the frustration. A good thing to do is to ask what is the anger trying to protect me from?

Is it that I don't have the energy for this and I'm trying to conserve my energy? Is it trying to protect me from future pain, from sadness, is it from disappointment?

Always, there's a message. And sometimes I find it helpful thinking about if I could have a conversation with the voice of my anger or frustration, what would it say to me?

And I kind of close my eyes and just think like, "Okay, what is it that you want to tell me?"

Sometimes I've had success just taking a piece of paper and just free writing until something comes out that I'm like, "Oh, wow, I didn't even know that was under there. Interesting." But once I see it, I'm like, "Oh, that's the key. That's what I was missing."

And that's what I need to act on right now. I appreciate taking my time sometimes with this, and it's so funny to say that taking my time with it, it still might be just one hour that reveals so much.

But it's giving myself the space to have that hour with myself to say, "Okay, what's really going on here?" If I could completely admit to myself all of the terrible things that I'm upset and angry about, what are they? So that at least they're out in front of me and I can see them for real.

And decide if just saying it out loud somewhere felt better or not.

I want to say something here that I found to be really helpful. It was about journaling practices.

And I know I used to keep a diary when I was younger, and I do write a lot now. But for the purposes of venting and getting things off your chest and allowing that energy to move,

The suggestion was to write it out by hand, write it out on paper, not on a computer, where you can feel completely free that nothing is scanning it. It's not going to be saved. No one's going to find it later. And have a shredder available right with you.

So that as soon as you're done with everything that you've said, like the worst thoughts that you ever could imagine and you just spill them out of yourself.

You just feed them through the shredder and they're gone. And there's something symbolic and beautiful about that to just imagine like, oh, you can just like see and feel the crunch of the paper getting shredded.

Witnessing all of that mental puke coming out of you and just getting destroyed right there.

And the freedom of realizing, like, "Okay, I did that and it's destroyed now." There's no evidence. It's fine. Nothing bad happened here. It was just a real sincere purging of whatever it is that's upsetting.

What's nice about it too is that if you're doing it in that particular way.

It's just you with your feedback, you with your thoughts. You're not actually giving it to another person, so there's no fear of judgment.

You're not giving it to another person, so there's no fear of someone giving you feedback that you don't want about it. So if you say something, like, I don't know, like, I hate birds, I hate whatever, like, I don't know.

Whatever it is that comes out that you feel bad about. No one's going to judge you for it.

And it's gone after that. And then you may find that you feel a little bit giddy and you're really happy that you had this weird moment of privacy and freedom that I think maybe is lacking in our lives these days. Everything seems so public facing.

Everything is searchable. Everything can be found by everyone. And it's weird, and I don't think humans were really meant for that.

And that might be part of us wanting boundaries and privacy as well. So let's talk about privacy because I think that might be part of Spring frustration to you. There's this push and pull between wanting to be out in the world and also simultaneously really needing and craving space for yourself.

I know that in nature, it's a breeding season. Everybody's showing off for everybody else. But you even see it in young people. We're all showing off for each other and trying to be like, "I'm the most awesome person. Come be with me."

Not that guy, this one instead. Like, it's all there. We love watching all of the romance shows and everything that's on.

We're into it. That's cool. That is the season. The energy is high. We need to give it a place to go. And we might not want to have to share what we like with other people.

This is so interesting. This is making me remember when I was talking about wanting to plan my garden. And I already knew even a few months ago that my sincerest desire is that I just don't want to share my garden. I don't want to share it with anybody.

It's mine, keep your hands off of it. That's it. There are some aspects of having the garden that I'm very happy to share, but there's one bed that I just want to be mine.

It's my fantasy garden, nobody else's garden. That seems so petty and ridiculous, and yet it's like a need.

So let's talk about that in terms of boundaries. For me, I'm understanding that it's actually an expression of me wanting to take up space and have some control over something. I don't want interference on it.

And I've had to say and make space saying, "Hey, if I make this, I don't want my daughter in it. I love my daughter to pieces. I want her to have every good thing in the world. I will make her her own garden."

But I want my own. With my husband, he has actually been amazing and given me this incredible wooden box with little glass jars that have the seeds in them and they're labeled and they're beautiful and I can use them year to year, taking the seeds and putting them in and gathering and then growing again.

I'm so thrilled with that. I'm very grateful for that contribution.

I don't need him to be out building the garden or tending the garden. I actually don't really want his input right now on how I construct that.

But I'm open to it. I want it to be on my terms. I think when I get really titchy about people helping with my garden.

It's not even necessarily about the garden. It's me feeling like I have interference everywhere. So I just want one thing that gets to be mine. That might be how you're feeling as well.

So sometimes you will have something in your life that really gets your ire up.

And if you really dig down, you realize, OK, it's not necessarily about this one thing that seems kind of ridiculous and petty.

It's actually about these 15 other things that are happening simultaneously that I just really need support or a break from.

And because I'm not getting it there, I need to express myself over here.

You may start to notice that contrast and I think that's also what anger is trying to give us the energy to do. It gives us the energy to defend. It gives us the energy to speak up and to not feel bad about declaring where we want or need something.

So I'm sure we've all realized, like when we're angry, we can say stuff that we don't necessarily mean, but we say it with a lot of violence or just power behind it and it comes across very strong and it is its boundary-setting energy.

You don't feel bad in that moment necessarily. You might have that overlap. Usually you feel bad after because someone felt bad about how you had to say that you weren't sad about something.

But I think the anger is there so that you can say it without not saying it. Because if you felt bad first, you wouldn't say it at all. And that's where most of us have gotten caught.

So this is a good week to start looking at where am I not saying something that maybe I need to say. Where have I been holding myself back from doing something that I really want to do?

And what are some small ways that I can help myself move in that direction just a little bit more?

Where can I reduce some resistance here? Is there someone that I can enlist for help that's very supportive? Who are the people in my corner?

Is there someone that needs to be told to back off? And how can I do it in a way that they understand or can hear?

I know that I teach in the course lots of ways to be able to communicate with other people in ways that honor where they're at so they actually hear what you have to say without changing what you need to say.

So it's figuring out, how can I say what I need to say in a way that they hear it and go, "Oh yeah, that sounds like a great idea," to you.

It's important that we feel comfortable learning that language and learning how to talk with people about what we need.

Because once you do, it allows your whole body's nervous system to kind of power down and relax a little bit about, oh, okay, I can trust that I did say what I needed to say, and it has been offloaded and it didn't go terribly.

And then you get more and more proof of that. And then as things progress, you trust yourself more and more, and that feels really good.

We also can recognize this week. Where have I been a little bit impulsive and what is that showing me?

So if I keep doing things that I normally wouldn't do,

What's the theme there? What is it that I'm trying to give myself? And again, with the writing, writing it down.

What you want and need and let your little id scream out loud, everything that it wants and everything that it thinks about.

And then just shred it. It can let you start to see yourself and go, "Oh, okay."

I just really felt like I needed to treat (myself) because I feel like I've been denied fun for like four months or I've been working so hard and I just want something that feels like it's mine. Again, it's all going to come back to boundaries.

All of that impulsivity and frustration and anger and spontaneity all comes back to you wanting to express yourself and have people like back off and let you do what you need to do. Hmm, but it can be so, so good.

So my friends, this week, I am hoping for you to be able to speak up or identify somewhere that you're ready to just claim space for yourself and start moving forward in the world.

It doesn't have to be loud. It just needs to be a little clearer in order for it to start happening for you.

And I'm wishing you a lot of fun doing it because I think when you get past the anger push and you actually effectively do something for yourself, it feels so good.

And we all deserve that. Next week we will start talking about how it feels where we have this urge to kind of reinvent ourselves a little bit when we get kind of drunk on the (idea) we get to do anything we want.

So we'll talk about how do we handle that energy? What's appropriate to do?

Versus changing everything in your life. And it's going to be fun. So we'll be creative next week and I will see you then.

Have a wonderful, wonderful week.