For much of my twenties and early thirties, anger was the emotion I accessed most easily. It arrived quickly, spoke loudly, and gave me a sense of control in moments when I felt overwhelmed or threatened. At the time, I did not see it as something learned or inherited. It simply felt like who I was.
What I understand now is that anger was what had been modeled for me. It was the emotional language I grew up hearing, the one that shaped how my nervous system learned to respond to stress, conflict, and fear. When things felt unsafe or uncertain, anger stepped in before anything else had the chance.
I did not choose anger consciously. I absorbed it.
Anger can be clarifying. It can be activating. It can feel powerful, especially when vulnerability feels dangerous or unfamiliar. For a long time, it protected me from emotions that felt harder to hold, such as grief, fear, or helplessness. In many ways, anger was my nervous system doing exactly what it had been trained to do.
The problem was not that anger existed. The problem was that I did not want to live inside it.
Choosing Something Different
The shift did not come from a single moment or realization. It came from a quiet, persistent determination that grew over time. I knew I did not want to be reactive in the way I had seen modeled. I knew I did not want anger to lead my relationships or my parenting. And I knew that simply deciding to “be calmer” was not enough.
Change required education, patience, and repetition.
I began learning about brain development and nervous system regulation, not because I was trying to fix myself, but because I wanted to understand why anger felt so automatic. I learned how early experiences shape emotional responses, how stress narrows our capacity for choice, and how regulation is something the body learns through experience, not willpower.
At the same time, I was navigating single parenting with young children, which added layers of exhaustion, responsibility, and emotional demand. Parenting did not cause my anger, but it certainly revealed it. Children have a way of touching the most tender and unhealed places in us, especially when we are already stretched thin.
What became clear to me was this: I could not teach my children emotional regulation if I had never been taught how to practice it myself.
Understanding What Anger Was Doing
As my understanding deepened, I began to see anger less as a flaw and more as information. Anger was not the problem; it was the signal. It told me when I was overwhelmed, when my boundaries were crossed, when I was scared, or when I felt powerless.
When I stopped trying to suppress anger and instead became curious about it, something shifted. Beneath the anger, there was often anxiety. Beneath that, there was grief. And beneath that, there was a younger version of myself who had learned to stay alert in order to stay safe.
Anger was accessible because it had been practiced. It had been reinforced. It had been normalized.
Learning other ways of responding required unlearning, and that takes time.
A Whole-Body Process
This journey was not purely psychological. As I moved away from rigid belief systems and stepped out of the Christian faith tradition I was raised in, I found myself exploring other ways of understanding the body, health, and healing. Nutrition, herbal knowledge, nervous system regulation, and whole-body care all played a role in softening my internal landscape.
I began to understand that emotional patterns do not live only in the mind. They live in the body. They are influenced by sleep, nourishment, stress, sensory input, and environment. Addressing anger meant addressing the conditions that kept my nervous system in a constant state of readiness.
Over time, my anxiety became more visible too. As anger softened, anxiety emerged as the quieter, underlying experience it had always been. This was not a setback. It was clarity. I was finally able to meet my internal world with more honesty and less judgment.
Where I Am Now
Anger still shows up sometimes. It always will. But it no longer runs the room.
I respond differently now, not because I am calmer by nature, but because my nervous system has learned other options. I have practiced them. I have returned to them again and again. I have chosen regulation, repair, and responsibility over reactivity.
This did not happen quickly. It unfolded over years. It required patience, education, support, and a willingness to be imperfect while learning.
What I know now is this: anger is not a moral failure. It is a learned response. And learned responses can be reshaped with care, consistency, and compassion.
That understanding informs how I parent, how I show up in relationships, and how I work with others. It is not about eliminating anger. It is about creating enough safety inside the body that anger no longer has to do all the work.
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