Facing Our Anger: An Important Step Toward Forgiveness and Healing

In the first part of this blog, I discussed how understanding forgiveness and its
common misconceptions can offer hope that healing is possible following deep, personal,
and unfair hurt. Another important aspect of forgiveness and healing is recognizing and
acknowledging our anger.

Anger is a Natural and Normal Emotion

As I educate 5th graders on forgiveness, we read books on the topic and discuss how
anger is a natural and normal emotion. How we choose to handle and express our anger is
what is considered good or bad. Anger and resentment are thoroughly justified if someone
experiences a deep, personal, and unfair hurt, meaning they were wronged, and not just
hurt (Smedes, 1996). Forgiveness requires the injured individual to acknowledge and sit
with their anger, pain, and uncomfortable feelings, as well as explore and release these
emotions (Freedman & Chang, 2010). Knowing that one has the strength and courage to
face their pain and move forward is very powerful for the individual. As stated by Cecil Murphey, quoting Gary Roe, “As we allow ourselves to feel the pain, our hearts will begin to heal.” According to Brené Brown (2022), once we identify and name our feelings, we can
more productively express them. If we try to avoid or repress our feelings of anger and hurt,
we will not be able to move beyond them. Unfortunately, society does not often offer
healthy messages about how to express and cope with one’s anger. What we often see and
hear are messages portraying anger as an inappropriate emotion or alternately someone
exploding and acting violent and aggressive due to their anger. Jennifer Kauffman (2022), one of the Boston Marathon bomb survivors, describes how she was raised to believe that anger is unacceptable. She states, “I grew up being told that anger is a bad emotion and something to avoid. I would get a consequence for getting angry. Kauffman goes on to say that she “stuffed her anger until the bomb went off.” As stated by, “Emotional regulation ….As discussed with Melissa Monte in the Mind Love podcast, it is important to be a witness to one’s anger. If we can be with it and let it pass through us, then we can let the other emotions in, such as compassion and empathy.

The Role of Anger in Forgiveness and Healing

One of the most popular and well-known models of forgiveness is Enright’s 20-unit,
four-phase process model of interpersonal forgiveness (Enright & the Human Development
Study Group, 1991; Enright, 2001). The first phase of the process model is Uncovering One’s
Anger. This phase helps the survivor of abuse begin to take control of their healing and feel
hopeful as a result of choosing to face the pain from their trauma. This phase includes
recognizing, accepting, and naming one’s anger and other uncomfortable feelings,
identifying the cause of one’s anger and hurt, and expressing these emotions in a healthy
way. Confronting and feeling one’s uncomfortable emotions is not easy, but is beneficial, as
illustrated in the following quote from a student in my course on Interpersonal Forgiveness:

Enright’s model of forgiveness forces a victim to break their anger down into detail. The
first phase of the model includes questions a victim has to ask themselves about why
they are angry, have they faced their anger yet, how the anger has affected them, etc.
This, for me at least, is probably the most difficult part of the process. This is WHY I
haven’t forgiven yet. It is hard and it is painful. I, like most people, have chosen for a
long time to suppress my anger until it comes out in bursts or waves. I then tell myself
I’m fine and it’s nothing and suppress again until more bursts or waves come up. It has
even affected my personality. I sometimes don’t know who I am anymore (personal
communication, November 2021).

Accepting and honoring one’s anger and other feelings is a first step in healing and leads
to hope that healing is possible. Sharon Salzberg also discusses how individuals mistakenly
believe that anger makes them strong. She states, “And anger is what we pick up—they say
this in Tibetan Buddhism. Anger is what we pick up when we feel weak because we think it’s
going to make us strong” (Daily Good, April 8, 2022).

Individuals who have been abused need to be validated, encouraged, and supported
in expressing their feelings so they can move beyond them. As Maria Shriver states in her
Sunday Paper (February 2022), “I’ve learned in my lifetime that trying to outrun pain is
fruitless. It always, always catches up to you. Trying to numb it also doesn’t work”. As anger
and other negative emotions are expressed, healing begins to take place. Hope results from
the power of knowing that one can deal with their pain, even though it hurts to do so.
Although we work through our anger, some may remain even after one forgives. However,
this anger will most likely be short-lived and not as intense after forgiving. It may reappear
occasionally as one thinks about their injury. As an incest survivor in Freedman & Enright’s
(1996) study reported post-intervention,

And, so now I choose to be angry at times, whereas before it was almost as if the anger
was holding me. And now I can choose to get rid of the anger if I want to. Learning to
forgive my father has told me that I can control my emotions, that I can hold onto a
feeling and make it my own (interview transcript, 1996).

As Smedes (1996) discusses, hope develops when we own our pain and choose to do
something else with it. Acknowledging and honoring our anger and pain is not easy,
especially when we have experienced deep, personal, and unfair hurt. However, recognizing
and expressing these feelings is an important part of healing. Forgiveness does not require
us to deny our anger or pretend that what happened was acceptable. Instead, it encourages
us to face our pain and begin to understand how it has affected our lives. As the incest
survivor quoted earlier explained, forgiveness helped her realize that she could choose
when to be angry rather than allowing her anger to control her.

There is hope in knowing that although we cannot change what happened to us,
we can begin to change how we respond to the hurt and pain we have experienced.
Facing our anger can help us recognize that we are not powerless and that healing is
possible, even when the process is difficult. We may not be ready to forgive, and that is
okay. However, acknowledging our feelings and beginning to work through them can be
an important step toward healing.

In the next part of this blog, I will discuss the decision to forgive and how making
this decision, even before feelings of forgiveness develop, can offer hope for a better
future.

References

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