The best kind of anger is the anger you trust.

The problem is that we tend to have a complicated relationship with anger and our experience is that it's not something we can trust.

We’re either afraid to feel it or we don’t like who we are when we act on it.

We feel unsafe with it.

We’re at the mercy of it.

We think it’s wrong.

We don’t want other people to think we’re angry (or “emotional,” “irrational,” “hormonal,” etc.).

And so we haven’t learned how to take responsibility for it, and besides, “taking responsibility” often feels like blame and finding fault. "Taking responsibility" often comes with a thick layer of shame, which never helps and which keeps us trying to prove that we aren't doing something "wrong."

I mean, come on, a quick look at history (even recent history) shows us that anger tends not to end well for women.

What happens when you don’t take responsibility for your anger?

You assign or attribute it to someone else…along with your power.

When you think someone else is responsible for your anger, you don’t trust yourself with it.

You can’t.

You outsource something powerful – your anger – and turn it into something powerless. Impotent.

Anger is part of healing. As long as you’re willing to own it and not outsource it.

When you choose anger, when you own your anger, when you decide you want to feel it, it is fast and clean burning and you are responsible with, and for, it.

You know how to wield it.

It is the spark that ignites your healthy boundaries (but not the long-term fuel for maintaining them).

It is the protective fire in your belly.

It is clean and clear and intentional.

You trust yourself and your actions.

You like and respect yourself afterwards.

When you believe she’s making you angry, that you don’t have a choice, it’s unwieldy and becomes something you can’t use intentionally. It becomes passive-aggressive. Manipulative. Unpredictable. Exhausting.

Being able to trust yourself with anger is one of the many results my clients get.

Much, much love,

Karen

P.S. Click here to read about a time I chose anger.​

P.S.S. Usually, by the time my clients come to me, they have spent years (decades even) and thousands of dollars in therapy.

They have also tried joint therapy.

They have tried mediation.

They have tried silence.

They have tried shouting.

They have tried what they think are boundaries.

They have tried estrangement.

They can’t imagine that anything will bring them the peace of mind and body they crave.

That anything anything will work. Ever.

I am here to provide them with the tools that do.

I know they work because I’ve used them myself and my clients have used them.

Does it make everything perfect? Hell no.

Do they now hold hands with their mothers and skip under rainbows? Double hell no!

Are they happy all the time? Nope.

But they are empowered. They respect themselves. They trust themselves.

And it’s from THAT place that they set healthy boundaries actually work, are able to have their own backs through uncomfortable times, and re-mother themselves in ways their mothers never could.

I say with certainty and confidence that working with me is often the last stop someone will need to make when it comes to resolving the troubled or difficult relationship they have with their mother.