I’m having a hard time dealing with my anger lately. It feels like I’m in a constant battle against my conditioning. I’m fighting to allow my anger to be in, and move through, my body, and for it to express itself. My conditioning on the other hand is fighting for me to be a good person which means to push down and reject my anger. There are so many arguments as to why I shouldn’t let myself allow the anger, but despite all the reasons, the truth is:
I hate being put in a position where I’m seen as bad – it makes me really fucking angry. I hate that some people don’t have the awareness to see that my intentions are pure. I hate that, instead, they get caught up in their own INCORRECT meaning-making which they then project onto me, relentlessly. I hate that there’s absolutely nothing I can say or do to change their perception, and that every attempt I make is seen as a confirmation of their misconceptions.
Underneath the anger is desperate frustration and powerlessness. It hurts a lot to not be seen in my reality, and as if that wasn’t enough… The overlay adds to the pain.
People are unwilling, or not yet capable of, seeing the reality of themselves. They are completely and utterly out of touch with the origin of their projection. It happens all the time. Of course, this plays directly into my own shame. It revs up my conditioning, the part of me whose job it is to make sure I’m acting acceptable. She is doing her best work in the face of projections:
“You’re reactive because your ego is fragile.”
“You’re just insecure about yourself, that’s why you feel the need to defend yourself.”
“You can’t stand being bad, that’s how an immature and unhealed person feel” (A good, mature, healed person wouldn’t feel ashamed or even affected by projections because they knew they weren’t true.)
“You shouldn’t feel bad about their projections, the fact that you do means you’re not accepting certain parts of yourself, you should work on that.”
It’s coming full circle as my toxic shame is projecting shame onto feelings and reactions that are in fact normal while judging them as toxic. It’s a proper system I’ve got going… One that kept my feelings hidden from people who couldn’t receive them and thus it kept me from one type of pain, although it inflicted another.
Gunhild Archer, counselor 