MINDFULLY TENDING TO ANGER & RESENTMENT Welcome back. I am so happy to have you here with me today to talk about mindfully tending to feelings of anger and resentment.  Sometimes when we have relentless anxiety and intrusive thoughts, anger can feel like the only emotion we can access.   For those of you who don’t know me, well, you might be surprised to hear maybe not to know that I actually have quite a hot temper. I get hot really quick emotionally, and I don’t know if it’s because as a child I didn’t really allow myself to feel anger. I think societally, I was told I shouldn’t be angry. And so, when it comes up inside me, it heats up really quick to a boiling point. And my goal for this year is not—let me be very clear—is not to say I am going to stop being angry because that is actually the problem. It is not to say I can’t feel angry and I shouldn’t feel angry. It’s actually to tend to my anger and start to listen to what anger is trying to communicate to me. My goal with you today is to walk you through how you can do that. And I’d love if you would stay with me for a short meditation where we mindfully tend to anger and resentment.  IS ANGER & RESENTMENT HEALTHY? I think the first thing I want to mention here is that anger and resentment are actually really normal healthy emotions. Nothing to be guilty of, ashamed of, annoyed by, nothing to judge, that the anger and resentment are actually healthy emotions. They come from a place of wishing things could be better or improved, and they usually show up when we experience some kind of injustice in the world or in our daily life. Maybe someone hurt your feelings or they acted in a way that made you feel unsafe. Maybe someone stopped you from succeeding. Maybe somebody judged you and you experienced that as a threat. WHY DO I FEEL SO ANGRY?  Anger can show up for many reasons. Maybe it’s because you’re noticing the injustices in the world and that makes you angry. That political things can really make people show up in anger. And again, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong, but expressing it in a healthy way can be really useful because bottling it up, it usually numbs other feelings, it can wear down your mental health, and it can mean—and I have learnt this the hard way—is that we then explode and end up saying things we don’t mean, or doing things we don’t want to do that don’t align up with our values or showing up the way that we want. And for me, that’s a big part of my goal this year.  Now, the reason I actually am doing this, this is not a scheduled podcast, is yesterday my husband and I were having a disagreement. And sometimes I have to remind myself like, disagreements aren’t a problem. Because in my mind, disagreement is like, “Oh my gosh, terrible things are about to happen and I’m very scared. Please love me forever.” You know what I mean? And my husband has to keep gently saying like it’s okay that we don’t agree on everything.  We were having a disagreement and I could feel the anger showing up in my body. And I was trying to really focus on just being mindful of that experience, because when I don’t do that, my immediate response is, “Fight. Let’s go to war. Let me show you how you are wrong. Let me be very clear in my boundary that you cannot cross,” which is all fine. Again, none of that’s wrong, but I could feel myself heating to a boiling point in a very, very short amount of time. I’ve been really trying to instead of acting on anger in certain situations-- again, there’s nothing wrong if you need to act on anger. WHEN IS ANGER APPROPRIATE?  Sometimes if you’re in a dangerous position, you need to act on anger. But I’m really working on allowing anger, befriending and tending to anger. Anger can be our friend. Like, what’s the problem? Let’s actually have it, Kimberley. Let’s actually feel it. Let’s actually feel it go through my body. Let’s allow it to burn itself off. And let’s do that, not because we got to make our