Moving Through the Anger
You've experienced stuff in church life and now you're angry. Good. The anger is important. For many of us, our church experiences have meant denying or squashing or invalidating our anger. If we've been brave enough to voice our anger, we may have been encouraged to 'let go and let God' (whatever that means).
Many churches cultivate an atmosphere of spiritual bypassing - encouraging people to gloss over their pain and deep feelings by forgiving, having 'faith', and slapping on a happy smile. This means that our anger gets swallowed and allowed to fester in our souls, affecting our mood, health, and ability to live an authentic, integrated life. So, yes. Giving that anger a voice and validating that emotion is really, really, important.
The issue that I see with many in the deconstruction space, myself included at times, is that we stay in the anger. We make a cosy space for it in our psyche, set up camp, and continually stoke the fury to keep it burning. It feels so GOOD to let the anger burn after putting it out for so long. But after a certain point, the fire which once felt so warm will begin to burn us. We're meant to feel and validate our anger, and then move through to it heal what remains.
Anger is called a 'red flag' emotion (which I find vaguely irritating for some reason); this essentially means it's signalling that something deeper is going on. It's a sign that our values have been crossed, and a way to protect our more vulnerable emotions: fear, rejection, loneliness, shame, etc. In order to truly heal, we must move through the anger and process what's really going on.
Addressing our underlying vulnerable emotions is really difficult, so it's understandable that we're tempted to hold onto the powerful armour of our anger. But, if we truly want to be free, and I suspect we all do, we have to be willing to walk through the pain. Don't allow the trauma of past experiences to keep you trapped years after the fact; honour the anger, validate your experiences, then allow yourself to feel the grief, cry the tears, and comfort the hurt.
As always, if I can support you in this journey, please get in touch - it would be my privilege.
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