Anger gets a bad press.
We’re taught to manage it, suppress it, apologise for it. And if you’re someone who grew up in an environment where anger wasn’t welcome – too loud, too much, too inconvenient – you probably learned to hide it. To smile through it. To wonder, quietly, if feeling it at all made you a bad person.
I used to think that. I really did.
But here’s what I’ve come to understand – through my own experience, through Reiki, and through watching what happens when people finally give themselves permission to feel it: anger is not the problem. Anger is information.
What anger is actually saying
When your boundaries get crossed, when someone drops a calendar invite in your diary without checking if it works for you, when your boss assigns you projects you have no capacity to take on, when you speak your needs clearly and they still get ignored – anger shows up. And it should.
It’s saying: something matters here. A boundary was crossed. A need wasn’t met. Pay attention.
The problem isn’t the anger. The problem is what we’ve been taught to do with it, which is usually nothing, because vocalising it feels too risky, too unprofessional, too much. And so it sits. And builds. And eventually comes out sideways, or turns inward, or shows up as exhaustion or anxiety or that low-level hum of resentment you can’t quite name.
That’s capitalism, by the way. The system requires you to be endlessly available, endlessly accommodating, endlessly productive – and anger at that system is entirely rational. The fact that we’ve been taught to pathologise it rather than listen to it is worth noticing.
Where it comes from
Anger is often our oldest, most reliable alarm system. For many of us, it was the one emotion that still got a reaction when sadness or fear got ignored. If a younger version of you learned that anger was the only feeling that “worked” – that got you noticed, got a need met, kept you safe – it can persist as the default response long after the original situation has changed.
Sudden or disproportionate anger – anger that feels bigger than the moment – is often the tell that an old wound got touched, not just the present situation. A useful question when anger flares: what did I need in this moment that I didn’t get, and does that feeling remind me of anywhere else in my life?
That’s usually where the thread leads back.
How I work with it
In moments of real anger, I struggle to meditate. I need to move – walk, run, be in motion. But there’s also a need for balance, and eventually stillness is required too.
(Pic taken on an evening walk in my local park – movement first, stillness later. Green -or bits of it- helps)
That’s where Reiki comes in for me.
When I turn to Reiki in those moments, something interesting happens. The feeling doesn’t disappear, but space starts to appear between me and it. Memories surface. Often I’ll see a younger version of myself going through something similar, a different situation but the same feeling underneath. And from that space, something shifts. I can observe the feeling rather than be consumed by it. Watch it move through my body like a wave. Allow it to transform.
And then – only then – I can do something I couldn’t do when the anger was at full volume: offer some compassion. To my younger self for being so brave and intuitive. To my current self for feeling it now.
That’s not suppressing the anger. That’s letting it do its job, and then letting it move.
The Reiki principle that helps
As Reiki practitioners, we work with five principles. The first one is particularly useful here:
Just for today, I will meet my anger with compassion.
I deliberately use “meet with compassion” rather than the more common version “I will not be angry.” The “not” makes my brain resist immediately – frankly, it makes me more angry. Compassion softens it. Creates room for the feeling without being ruled by it.
“Just for today” is manageable. Anyone can do just for today.
Anger is there to be felt, accepted, and allowed to transform. It’s not a character flaw. It’s not evidence that you’re a bad person. It’s one of the oldest, most honest signals your nervous system has.
The question isn’t how to stop feeling it.
The question is: what is it trying to tell you?
