You’re Angry – So, What Are You Feeling Guilty About?

“You have learned to bury your guilt with anger.”

~Henri Ducard (played by Liam Neeson) in Batman Begins (2005).

There are times in all our lives when for want of reason or rationale we just cannot seem to help running spare of tolerance. At times we really wonder why this is so; we upset people or are upset by these. Life is just maddening in this space disregarding what side of the anger we’re on—dishing it out or being in receipt of it.

It’s also maddening in another way; there’s no logical way to us for understanding this dilemma, i.e. because of it, and we don’t know how to ‘fix’ it.

Anger, without question, is a failure of patience and of self-control. It is so very often caused because goals are blocked and frustration sets in. Patience is the key to becoming mature and is the absence of visceral guilt, shame or anguish due to the infamous ‘emotional baggage’.

Two Key Reasons for Anger

There is everyday anger and the more subdued anger that the quote at top targets. It would be fair to say that both converge over all of us.

As far as addressing our anger is concerned—and we all have it to deal with—the former is about maturing in patience, warding against the frustrations of life, and the latter is about reconciling the hidden guilt (and shame) from bygone years—forgiving ourselves—so that these nemeses do not cloud issues of truth with apparent lies.

Two Fixes Augmenting Patience

It is no good trying to be more self-controlled by being less angry. It’s only a temporary answer and therefore it’s no solution at all.

It is better for us to develop real patience, especially in those situations that normally frustrate and anger us, whilst coming to grips with the emotional baggage that plagues us. These are both processes along a journey with no overnight fix.

We may find that resolving the latter issue—our guilt, shame and other anguish—might do more to address the former problem also. Peace over deeply latent issues is always going to proffer peace in the here-and-now.

Anger – the Sign We’ve Got Unresolved Issues

It is interesting that anger is so often the sign of acute repression where recent issues perhaps call us to account, again, regarding an old trigger—the dredged up wound we’re hardly even aware of.

In this way our anger is telling us something.

It’s telling us that we have unfinished business with both our distant past and our recent past. If we should choose to accept this mission of exploring our woundedness, truth will be our ally.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.