What We Learned About Anger, Awareness, and Staying Steady
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Stefanie from Inner Edge Coaching for a live conversation. I highly recommend you subscribe to her substack.
Although we come from different backgrounds, she approaches personal growth through coaching and psychology while I approach it through martial arts and self-defense, we quickly discovered that we were often talking about the same thing from different angles.
The conversation started with martial arts, but it quickly became a discussion about how people respond to pressure.
One idea that kept resurfacing was that repeated exposure changes us.
In martial arts, beginners often experience fear, anxiety, frustration, and anger when they spar. Over time, through repeated practice, they learn to remain calmer and make better decisions under stress.
The same principle applies outside the dojo.
Public speaking becomes easier after enough presentations. Difficult conversations become easier after enough practice. Awareness becomes easier when it becomes a habit rather than an occasional effort.
Anger is often a secondary emotion
We also spent a good deal of time discussing anger.
One perspective that has helped me over the years is the idea that anger is often a secondary emotion. Beneath it there may be disappointment, loneliness, frustration, confusion, grief, or a feeling of not being heard.
The anger is real, but it is often pointing toward something deeper. That is why simply suppressing anger rarely works. Ignoring it, bottling it up, or pretending it isn’t there often causes it to grow until it eventually comes out in unhealthy ways.
Instead, we discussed the importance of acknowledging what we are feeling.
Sometimes that means journaling.
Sometimes that means talking to someone.
Sometimes it simply means saying out loud: “I am angry.”
By naming the emotion, we create a little distance from it. That distance gives us room to think.
What is the difference between reaction and response
Another theme was the difference between reaction and response.
When emotions take over, we react. When we create space, even a few seconds of it, we gain the ability to respond. A deep breath, a quick pause, a walk around the block, quick journal entry.
These small actions can create enough space for better decisions.
Rage is anger without control
Toward the end of the conversation, we explored the difference between anger and rage.
Anger can be information while rage is often what happens when that information goes unexamined for too long. Anger tells us that something matters, rage is what happens when we lose ourselves inside the emotion.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the discussion was that awareness is not automatic.
Awareness begins with intention.
If we want to become steadier, calmer, and more capable under pressure, we must first decide that those qualities matter.
Only then can we begin practicing them.
And like any skill, the practice never really ends.
