How I Channeled My Rage into Something Beautiful
And how you can, too.
Anger is such a powerful emotion. So powerful that it acted as the best tool in my activist arsenal. The year I stepped foot into the Chicago animal rights activist scene was the most brutal year of my personal life.
I experienced so much grief in 2019. Grief for my friendships, my profession, my home, and my freedom. I took that grief and applied it to the 92.2 billion animals killed yearly for food. I shaved my head, tattoed “Meat is Murder” on the back of my scalp, and became well-known in the Chicago animal rights activist groups. I was a member of over a dozen different animal rights and vegan activist organizations. While I was in these groups, I felt as though I was making a huge impact and changing lives, but looking back; I’m unsure of how many people I influenced stayed vegan or how many more lives I could’ve changed if I approached my activism differently.
I screamed at people; I was extremely harsh and furious with people who harmed animals, and rightfully so. People were scared of me, and they may have just told me what I wanted to hear so I’d stop “attacking” them for their lack of morals. Reflecting on my attitude, I feel that I made a lot of mistakes in my activism, but at the time, I was just fully taken up by my emotions and passion for saving animals. I couldn’t hold back the pain I had for their suffering, and it worked its way out of my mouth and into the faces of people who would go on to send me death threats.
After years of being so irate, I let the steam cool. I couldn’t live with the chest pain, stress, extra weight, thinning hair, unhealthy nails, and unhealthy aura I had nested inside of for so long. I began to work on my emotions, understanding and controlling them. I have always been a very ‘wear my heart on my sleeve’ type of person, but I came to learn that that was one of my weakest attributes.
Here’s How I Released My Anger but Didn’t Lose My Dedication.
Self-Evaluation
I took a long, hard look in the mirror. I didn’t like the way I looked, the way I acted, or the way my life had been going and would seemingly continue to go. I stopped blaming other people for my situation and started blaming myself, not for what happened to me but for how I reacted and handled the aftermath.
I went to therapy for years and saw over five different specialists to help me with my trauma. They all said I had to stop blaming myself, that it wasn’t my fault, that there was nothing I could do. I contradicted them each time, but eventually, I came around. However, I went from blaming myself for everything to blaming the individual who scarred me.
Sometimes, you are at fault. You are not the victim in every situation. You have to do the work for your own good. It is not your fault that you got hurt, but are you just going to sit there and bleed? Are you going to let your wounds get infected? Are you going to risk your life because you’re moping about being a victim?
I wish I could have grabbed myself by the shoulders and shaken some sense into me. I let my mental wounds become infected, so bad that I developed the psychological equivalent of sepsis. I needed an intervention, but everyone around me was so worried about my mental state that they were afraid to use the tough love that I so desperately needed.
You need to assess your life and situation. You can’t move on, grow, or improve without evaluating what needs to change first.
Game Plan
Now that you’ve assessed your circumstances and found the areas that you’re unhappy with, you can determine where you want to go.
My favorite thing to do is create Pinterest boards to motivate me to work towards my goal. Make your own by saving pictures of your dream house, dream kitchen, dream career, dream relationship, and so on. Make a collage, a vision board, and a motivational screensaver you can look at every time you question why you’re putting this effort into yourself. The current wallpaper on my phone is a motivational quote serious journalists use, and my screensaver on my laptop is that of a cute cottage in the woods I hope to one day call mine.
After years of being quick to anger or irrationality, investing in yourself will feel foreign. You will most likely go through periods of confusion, hopelessness, doubt, and even depression. This is to be expected, although I hope you are fortunate enough to skip them entirely.
Create a five-year plan and break each aspect down into manageable steps. Having realistic goals in place will motivate you to keep your emotions in check. Don’t give up on yourself. A better life is possible; it’s just up to you.
Spirituality
Leaning into my faith has helped tremendously with my anger. I am not a follower of any specific organized religion, but I have created my own rendition. Whatever your beliefs, I encourage you to lean into them and lead a life based on love and peace.
I have rediscovered journaling, yoga, meditation, manifestation, and my relationship with the Universe. I regularly consult my tarot cards and astral chart and have been working on aligning my chakras. Delving into these practices has been highly beneficial to my overall well-being and mental health. Expressing love to yourself through your faith is a beautiful way to reconnect with your character and keep your negative emotions under control.
Address and Remove Triggers
A trigger is something that causes an event or situation to happen, typically negative. A trigger can be a word, location, environment, person, song, movie, object - pretty much anything. Taking time to address all of your triggers and write them down will help you better understand where your anger comes from. Once you have your completed list, you are able to break it down and discover the underlying causes for each trigger.
For the beginning of your anger detox, removing these triggers may be easier than attempting to work through them. However, triggers can vary in difficulty when it comes to omitting them from your life. For example, a lamp that brings back bad memories is a lot easier to put into storage or sell than removing a person who brings out your bad side. It’s up to you to determine how you want to go about your anger triggers, but in my experience, omitting them until I am in a better headspace has worked out best.
For me, I had to move. Literally, I moved 45 minutes away from everyone and everything I knew and started over. I got all new furniture, all new books, all new everything. Once I came into this new environment, the tension in my shoulders relaxed for the first time in years, and I was able to take successful steps toward a more peaceful and healthy life.
Find an Outlet
Just like we tend to channel our pain into anger, we need to channel our anger into something less damaging to ourselves and others. There are a ton of outlets out there to choose from, ranging from creative to athletic and everything in between. The more active, the better.
Take up a painting, ceramics, or dance class. Join a local soccer or golf team. Choose an outlet that keeps your body, or at the very least your hands, moving. Being a part of a team or surrounded by other people will help keep your anger under wraps. As a perfectionist, if I were attempting to spin a pot on the ceramic wheel alone and messed up, my anger would explode. However, if I were surrounded by others, I would have more motivation to diffuse my anger fast and be courteous to myself.
My current outlet is yoga. I try to roll out my mat every day and just see what happens. It has helped tremendously with my anxiety and helps me feel more in tune with my body. My favorite YouTube instructor is Yoga with Adriene. She takes a more comfortable and easygoing approach to the practice and is very inclusive of all people’s abilities and limitations.
Learn Forgiveness
Anger problems generally stem from being hurt by someone you loved or trusted. Potentially a parental figure, domestic partner, or best friend. The pain that we went through is valid. It hurt; it was terrible, and we wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. But we also wouldn’t wish this anger on anyone else, either.
I know you don’t want to forgive them. I don’t either. But forgiveness relieves you from the pain, the grudge, and the memory. You don’t have to tell them that you forgive them to their face, and forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning what that person did. You can forgive them for being so hurt themselves that they felt the necessity to hurt someone else.
If you move on from the pain, if you control your anger - you win.
Personal Outcomes
I have been working on my anger for a few years now. Here are all of the great things that have come from it.
Weight Loss
I have never been overweight, but I was at my heaviest when I was 20 (which is also when I was at my lowest mentally). I was between 125 and 130 lbs and didn’t wear it well. I had chubby cheeks all my life, but it then spread to my stomach and legs.
Before I knew it, I had dropped 30 lbs in a couple of months. I had lost so much weight that I was scared. Thankfully, the doctor ran all the necessary tests, and everything came back perfectly healthy.
I now look and feel so much better in my body. I feel more myself physically, and my confidence has improved so much. My cheeks have slimmed down, and I now have the face of a woman rather than that of a pre-teen.
Better Hair, Skin, and Nails
I still struggle with hormonal acne, but the inflammation and redness have almost completely subsided.
My hair has grown long, thick, and strong. I used to bleach and dye my hair regularly, but now it’s like that never happened. My hair shines and graces my collarbones for the first time in the past decade.
I used to have ridges on my ring and pinky fingernails, but those lines are now gone. My nails also cracked and broke regularly, but now they can grow as long as I want them to without any issues.
Better Relationships
I met my husband when I was sick of being angry. Our relationship has blossomed into the best marriage either of our families have ever heard of. I wasn’t the best girlfriend when I struggled with anger. I had issues with trust, confidence, and expressing my emotions appropriately. Now that I have done the work, I am reaping the benefits of a loving marriage and an amazing and calm life.
I am also able to keep my emotions at bay with the other people in my family. I don’t get along with the majority of my family (not solely for their non-vegan statuses), but I am able to avoid adding more fuel to the fire. I am less focused on revenge and more so concerned with the health and wellness of my own life. This has worked in my favor. Putting in the work to right your wrongs is a mature action; only a few people have the emotional intelligence to attempt it.
More Money
Speaking of better relationships, I have been able to find a career I love and stay at it without any conflicts of interest. Due to my past anger issues, I wouldn’t stay at a job longer than a few months. Now, I have been with my current company for over two years, and I love my team and my job. I have not struggled financially since putting in the work to diffuse my anger, and that was a happily unexpected outcome.
I am also able to spend less money on arbitrary things in the hopes of feeding my ego (which is fueled with anger). I no longer feel the need to look, dress, or seem a certain way that isn’t authentic to my true self or beliefs.
Better Activism
The “angry, crazy vegan” stereotype has been in full swing for at least the past decade. You know the one. “Vegan gets OWNED” videos are everywhere and are often discussed on the anti-vegan subreddit.
I know exactly how you feel. How can we possibly stay calm when we live in a world with so much pain and suffering?
But that anger, that fury that is inside of you and me due to the pain we are attempting to end, doesn’t make sense to the uneducated. When we are enlightened, when we are empathetic and educated, while the majority is not, we have to cool off and be gentle with them. We have to speak to them as friends even when we see them as foes. We have to spread so much love that it overpowers their desire to create hate. We have to show them so much peace that will end their selfish desire for slaughter.
Not a single person in my or my husband’s family is vegan. However, his family has been very accommodating and kind about my husband’s and my lifestyle compared to my family’s reaction.
I would love it if our families would go vegan. I couldn’t think of a better way for me to form better relationships with them, but they won’t go vegan or even consider it if I scream at them to eat my food and call them murderers. Do I believe they are murderers? Absolutely! But they don’t see it that way; their eyes are not open, and they have been brainwashed to believe that eating dead bodies and secretions is okay or even expected. I feel bad for their lack of enlightenment and empathy. I intend to spread my light and love to them through food and pleasant conversation as much as possible.
Takeaways
Anger can take so much away from our lives. The people we love, the career we have worked so hard for, and the impact we wish to have on the world. Advocating for animals in any way is better than sitting idly by. Still, the hostile attitude or delivery in some activism can perpetuate negative stereotypes and turn more people away from the movement.
We have to remember why we fight this good fight—for the animals. We have to do what is in their best interest. The more anger or negativity we feed into a philosophy based on love and equality, the more the outcome will reflect the opposite of our desires.
If you or someone you know is struggling with anger, consider speaking with a mental health professional or looking into the many resources available for anger management.
