Anger Archives – Fullness of Life

Three friends approach a pedestrian crossing near a busy intersection. As the traffic lights change, vehicles hurry through the road junction where they are to cross.

One friend rushes anxiously across, beating the oncoming cars.

Out of self-preservation, another stands steadfast on the curb.

The third fearfully steps backwards.

They look at one another and laugh; they know each other so well. The first took ground, the second held ground, and the third gave ground.

The friends can stand for distinctive life stances within us. Do we recognise and befriend these inner stances as the friends did?

While we might have a nodding acquaintance with these life stances, often we default to one approach, particularly in a crisis.

What is your unconscious life preference? Do you

Take ground?
Hold ground?
Give ground?

While we easily default to a preferred stance, freedom involves choosing not to stay stuck in our default position.

This is not a one-off choice; it is a daily struggle. A tussle to keep returning to a place of interior freedom.

Such freedom invites us to embrace our frail humanity instead of assuming we can be free from our humanness.

To learn more about these three life stances, the forthcoming Introduction to the Enneagram workshop will assist. To register, CLICK HERE

“Thank God the bastard’s dead!”, the not-so grieving widow snapped back after I offered my sympathy.

I had assumed she was grieving. I came to her home to arrange the funeral of her deceased 42-year-old husband, the father of her six kids.

“Tell me about him.” I asked.

Her years of pain poured out. He was a violent alcoholic whose drinking resulted in him dying young. To live with him was pure hell. She felt trapped in a marriage, unable to escape.

His death freed her from years of systematic abuse. She did not need my sympathy; the marriage had died years ago. In fact, she felt relieved. Her horror story now ended.

This gave me an insight into how we deal with loss and grief. I expected the not-so grieving widow to grieve according to the recognised five stages of death and dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

While they are tools to help frame and name how we might grieve, not everyone goes through all of them or in a prescribed order.

These five stages can sketch grief‘s terrain, better equipping us to cope with loss.

Often grieving people report more stages. Our grief is as unique as we are.

We can never understand grief only as a five-stage process that arranges mixed emotions into well-ordered packages.

These five stages point to the loss many people journey through but there is no normal response to loss as there is no typical loss.

Three default approaches to life

The not so grieving widow