Now you’ve stopped preaching and gone to meddling. 🧐
For me, the practice of replacing “am” with “feel” helps me home the feeling without surrendering to it. “I feel angry” lands differently than “I am angry.” It’s about agency, I think.
Swapping am for feel sounds small, but it quietly dismantles the whole takeover. Same sensation. Different center. One is weather. The other is identity theft.
Anger needn't always be destructive. It can provide positive motivation ( okay - borrowed that from a Star Trek TNG episode where Data starts feeling anger. Gene Roddenberry's estate can sue me... 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖 ).
What the piece is circling is not “anger bad” versus “anger good,” but the moment when anger quietly becomes who we think we are. That subtle shift from “anger is arising” to “I am angry.” From weather to identity. From signal to steering wheel.
Once anger is identified with, it stops being informative and starts being managerial. It narrates. Justifies. Recruits allies. Builds a small theology. That’s when it runs the house.
When anger is seen rather than inhabited, it can absolutely motivate clarity, boundaries, even necessary action. When it’s worn like a name tag, it tends to outsource our agency and call it righteousness.
So yes. Anger can move things. But presence decides whether it’s a tool… or the one holding the tools.
My youngest son has multiple severe disabilities. One of the profound things I learned by being his mother is the difference between saying he is disabled and he has disabilities. Same thing. When I saw clearly that who he is is separate from his disabilities it changed how I see him, how I see myself as his mother, and how I see my grief over his disabilities. It opened a door into presence I would never have expected but for which I am grateful.
My first thought about the fish story was that the older fish must've been caught and released, or perhaps spit the hook and got away. And experience the two youngsters hadn't (yet?) had.
He knew what water was because he'd known what *out* of water is.
I'm not sure that train of thought is relevant to the larger point, though. I *can* say that these days, I feel angry often enough that I worry about it *becoming* identity. And I suspect I'm not alone.
That reading actually feels connected to the point, at least to me. Sometimes it does seem like you only recognize the water once you’ve had some sense of what it’s like not to be in it.
And the worry about anger turning into identity really lands. I find myself noticing something similar, how often anger shows up, and how easy it is to start mistaking its persistence for who we are rather than what’s moving through us.
I don’t have a clean answer for that. But naming the concern feels like it keeps a little space open, which might matter more than resolving it.
A moment of grace occurs when one realizes what one is...this ground of being. Having been blessed in the midst of chaos and exhaustion years ago to experience this was the beginning of seeing and practicing what you describe here. "Neti, neti" was Nisargadatta's reminder, "Not this" which if one practices this with all that arises leaves one in the field of being. And then, there are the triggers, past traumas stored in the body, attachments to image, opinions, and virtually anything that arises that we identify with that makes us smaller...and how to metabolize them and not numb out, spiritually bypass. There's the rub! That's the path!
I appreciate how you named that tension without trying to resolve it.
Yes. Neti, neti clears the field. And then the body speaks anyway. The triggers, the old grooves, the places where “not this” suddenly feels very personal again.
Thank you for this talk. I will now look at my emotions from a different place. I will not be angry but I will be feeling or experiencing anger from a different vantage point. That way I can understand what I am feeling while still being the core me.
Awesome!!
I have a dissociative disorder and this process will help me "stay" in me rather than "leave" my core self to escape to my safety self.
Now you’ve stopped preaching and gone to meddling. 🧐
For me, the practice of replacing “am” with “feel” helps me home the feeling without surrendering to it. “I feel angry” lands differently than “I am angry.” It’s about agency, I think.
That’s exactly the move.
Swapping am for feel sounds small, but it quietly dismantles the whole takeover. Same sensation. Different center. One is weather. The other is identity theft.
"Anger is a tool. Are you using it, or is it using you?"--Street
I think that line actually fits the article.
The whole point is noticing when anger is something that’s happening… versus when it’s become who’s talking.
Same words, different center.
Anger needn't always be destructive. It can provide positive motivation ( okay - borrowed that from a Star Trek TNG episode where Data starts feeling anger. Gene Roddenberry's estate can sue me... 🖖🖖🖖🖖🖖 ).
What the piece is circling is not “anger bad” versus “anger good,” but the moment when anger quietly becomes who we think we are. That subtle shift from “anger is arising” to “I am angry.” From weather to identity. From signal to steering wheel.
Once anger is identified with, it stops being informative and starts being managerial. It narrates. Justifies. Recruits allies. Builds a small theology. That’s when it runs the house.
When anger is seen rather than inhabited, it can absolutely motivate clarity, boundaries, even necessary action. When it’s worn like a name tag, it tends to outsource our agency and call it righteousness.
So yes. Anger can move things. But presence decides whether it’s a tool… or the one holding the tools.
Love it!
My youngest son has multiple severe disabilities. One of the profound things I learned by being his mother is the difference between saying he is disabled and he has disabilities. Same thing. When I saw clearly that who he is is separate from his disabilities it changed how I see him, how I see myself as his mother, and how I see my grief over his disabilities. It opened a door into presence I would never have expected but for which I am grateful.
You named something most people never slow down enough to notice: when identity stops collapsing into condition, presence suddenly has room to enter.
Your son isn’t his disabilities.
And you aren’t your grief about them.
Thank you for sharing
My first thought about the fish story was that the older fish must've been caught and released, or perhaps spit the hook and got away. And experience the two youngsters hadn't (yet?) had.
He knew what water was because he'd known what *out* of water is.
I'm not sure that train of thought is relevant to the larger point, though. I *can* say that these days, I feel angry often enough that I worry about it *becoming* identity. And I suspect I'm not alone.
That reading actually feels connected to the point, at least to me. Sometimes it does seem like you only recognize the water once you’ve had some sense of what it’s like not to be in it.
And the worry about anger turning into identity really lands. I find myself noticing something similar, how often anger shows up, and how easy it is to start mistaking its persistence for who we are rather than what’s moving through us.
I don’t have a clean answer for that. But naming the concern feels like it keeps a little space open, which might matter more than resolving it.
Thanks for naming that concern, which I also identify (ha!) with.
Wisdom!
Loved reading this.
And impeccable timing, I just finished two podcast episodes about anger and love the parallels between our vantage points
Thank you. That’s good to hear.
Different angles, same distinction. It’s always interesting when separate conversations land on the same fault line at the same time.
A moment of grace occurs when one realizes what one is...this ground of being. Having been blessed in the midst of chaos and exhaustion years ago to experience this was the beginning of seeing and practicing what you describe here. "Neti, neti" was Nisargadatta's reminder, "Not this" which if one practices this with all that arises leaves one in the field of being. And then, there are the triggers, past traumas stored in the body, attachments to image, opinions, and virtually anything that arises that we identify with that makes us smaller...and how to metabolize them and not numb out, spiritually bypass. There's the rub! That's the path!
I appreciate how you named that tension without trying to resolve it.
Yes. Neti, neti clears the field. And then the body speaks anyway. The triggers, the old grooves, the places where “not this” suddenly feels very personal again.
Thank you for this talk. I will now look at my emotions from a different place. I will not be angry but I will be feeling or experiencing anger from a different vantage point. That way I can understand what I am feeling while still being the core me.
Awesome!!
I have a dissociative disorder and this process will help me "stay" in me rather than "leave" my core self to escape to my safety self.
Thank you for this and all of your work.🙏🫶❤️
Mary, thank you for trusting this space with that.
What you’re describing sounds less like distancing and more like staying. Especially when leaving yourself has been a form of protection.
Experiencing anger from a different vantage point, without abandoning the core you, feels like a quiet kind of courage.