What My Rage Taught Me

What my rage taught me and why I’m thankful for it.

I’ve been meaning to write this experience for a while and finally have a moment.

It feels appropriate when there is so much violence and conflict in the world. Its hard to understand how some humans can commit such acts of violence on others. Somehow in doing this they must be disconnected from their humanity.

It leads me to reflect on an experience of my own.

Many years back there was a time when I felt rage. Not even hot rage but cold rage. A rage from pain so great that I had to shut down the feelings and disconnect.

For me it came from the experience of others trampling on my already painful wounds and an inability to do anything about it at that time. The details for now don’t matter but lets just say I got a glimpse of what holocaust denial felt like and why that was rightfully made to be a crime.

The consequences were the cold disconnected feeling that if those perpetrators died it would be ok. It wasn’t a rage so strong as to commit an act of violence myself, but it was enough to want to see the others dead and not care in the slightest.

You may find that surprising to hear from me, from one on the path of love and evolution.

So I knew where my rage came from. Behind my cold disconnectedness there was extreme pain.

Thankfully I am blessed to know about healing and that it was possible to heal even this. I remember the EFT/Tapping session that allowed me to bring love and compassion to that pain. It took a lot of tapping to heal the pain until the forgiveness was finally possible. I continued tapping into forgiveness and then arrived at a new healed place where all the feelings for the other to be dead were gone completely.

This new peaceful place allowed the possibility to begin to see and start to understand the other’s point of view, their motivations, their misguided beliefs. I could start to have compassion for the other which had been previously impossible.

Those relationships eventually were restored to the norm of every day life. Though there’s always room for improvement now we can even get along with each other fine.

This experience of where my own rage came from brought me the possibility of understanding the kind of pain that another must have experienced in order that they can also commit such acts on others. Pain even worse than my own, as mine wasn’t enough to motivate me to take action to destroy or harm anyone myself. But I could see that progression in relentless pain and the trampling on our traumas could motivate another to take action from that rage.

I don’t condone the actions of course. However by understanding we bring the possibility of healing and evolution and restoration of peace.

My pain and suffering and my rage held within it a gift. The gift of compassion for others.

The gift of understanding that there is a way for healing and evolution even in such circumstances if the desire is there and that maybe I even can help show the way to get there.

Its ironic of course that the depth of injury and pain we may suffer, that disconnects us from ourselves and each other, our humanity, allows us to commit acts of violence on others in our anger and pain. We become the monster towards others just like the monster that hurt us without realising it.

This cycle unhealed can go on perpetually.

But there is hope. There is a way from here.

With love and compassion we can heal our pain. With mercy and forgiveness we can set ourselves free and make a way for healing of the other. Peace can be restored.

Whether victim or perpetrator first we must heal ourselves.

Compassion is not only to feel for the other’s situation. It’s not only the further desire to understand the why, the what and the how of the other but to also have the desire to help, to solve, to uplift, to ease the pain.

The world needs more compassion.

Our own suffering and pain is our compassion gift to the world waiting to be unwrapped.

Unwrapping is our own healing journey so that we come back to our selves, to our humanity and to each other.

Sandra Hillawi

The Compassion Course

See link for the next course