I was able to spend time with a good friend of mine, George, recently. It’s been a bit of a challenge to get together with George, though, because he and I are both self-employed and our schedules tend to conflict. In addition, George is working a job, one in which he transitioned from being a full-time employee to part-time, so he could eventually transition into his business full-time.

When he came over, I noticed a large bandage and gauze wrapped around his right arm, close to the area of the arm that bends.

“What happened?” I asked, my eyes wide with shock and surprise.

“Oh, this?” George asked, glancing at the injured area. “I burned myself at the job.”

Being the coach that I am, I wanted George to tell me more about it. He began with, “If you ever get a job again, James, don’t go to work angry.”

George then proceeded to tell me that on the day of the injury, right before he left home for the job, he went to his mail box to get the mail. In the mail, there was a letter from the company he works for part-time. Reading the letter, he discovered that he had not worked enough hours on the job to continue receiving health coverage (this was because George was growing his business).

He reacted to the news with anger, and proceeded to get in his car and drive to the job in that state. When he got to the job, which is working in food services, he was met with the news that the manager had left with a situation for George to “figure something out” to fix it, as well as a very large customer order.

This fueled George’s fire, so to speak, and while being in this heightened state of anger, George burned himself: a basket from a deep fryer fell on the spot of his arm that he now had bandaged.

What George said next both surprised and delighted me. Another reason George and I get on so well is that George is working on himself, and by that I mean he is striving to become more conscious. He said, “Burning my arm that way woke me up. I realized that from the moment I read that letter, my reaction was that I was ‘getting burned’ by the company I work for, and that Life set it up for me to get physically burned on the job. I had the thought and created the experience. I also realized that when I’m that angry, the only person being hurt by it is me.”

A Woman Gets Burned by a Dream 

George’s realization made me recall a conversation I had with a young lady not too long ago. The young woman knew of my work as a dream analyst and coach when we happened to run into each other out in public. She pulled me aside to share a dream she had and wanted some insight. The dream she shared was very simple.

She said, “I dreamt that I was in a car and the car blew up.”

I began my interpretation by telling her that the number one rule of dream interpretation is that everything in the dream is the dreamer. In this case, she is the car. I then focused on her words “blew up.” I told her the car blowing up is a commentary that she moves through life (car) exploding—or blowing up—into bursts of anger.

Her mouth dropped open, and she acknowledged this was true for her. I cautioned her, “The dream is a warning to you; it is telling you that you are the one who is harmed by your ‘blow-ups’ because you are in the car when it explodes. Being the driver of the car says that you can control this, if you want to and decide to.”

Being a person who appreciates the synchronicities in life, I paid attention to two people getting the same message about their anger and the harm it causes them, and sharing it with me, a few days apart.

What to Consider If You Are Burned Up

Karla McLaren, in her book, The Language of Emotions, states, “Healthy anger, like any other emotion, comes up, addresses an issue, and then moves on.” But, in the cases of George and the young woman, the anger was lingering on some level, and to their detriment. Each of them had to have an experience that woke them up.

If you find yourself getting burned up with things in life, consider these strategies:

Try a relaxation technique, using imagery. Visualize a relaxing experience from your memory or your imagination. Another relaxation technique could be to slowly repeat a calming word or phrase, like a mantra; you could use words  like “relax” or “take it easy.” Keep repeating it to yourself while breathing deeply.

Think about what’s behind your anger. It’s not about the thing itself that makes you hot, gets you burning, or sets you on fire, but rather something beneath the surface. In the case of my friend George, it wasn’t really about the letter, or about not receiving health coverage from the part-time job any longer. It was something deeper, which George got in touch with when we continued to talk about it. He realized that his transition from employee to entrepreneur, at times, brings up feelings of security (and a lack of it). McLaren says that anger is about protection and restoration and invites us to consider these questions when we are challenged with being angry: What must be protected? What must be restored? George is both trying to protect his sense of security—and also trying to restore it.

Identify possible solutions. Instead of focusing on what made you mad, work on resolving the issue at hand. Remind yourself that anger won’t fix anything, and might only make it worse. I call this being proactive, and not reactive. For my friend, George, in that same letter, the company offered an alternative for coverage which he could use, or that he could begin the process of seeking coverage through other means.

Use affirmations. In her book, Heal Your Body, Louise Hay offers the idea that our mental patterns can show up in our lives as physical experiences. For my friend, George, Hay suggests the probable cause of a burn is anger, burning up, incensed. In the healing process of the burn, an affirmation George could say would be, “I create only peace and harmony within myself and in my environment. I deserve to feel good.”

Know when to seek professional help. I would be remiss as both a coach and a person with a background in psychology if I did not suggest this strategy. Learning to control anger is a challenge for everyone at times. Consider seeking help for anger issues if your anger seems out of control, causes you to do things you regret or hurts those around you—or yourself. You might explore local anger management classes or anger management counseling. Anger management classes and counseling can be done individually, with your partner or other family members, or in a group.

The emotion of anger is neither good nor bad. It’s perfectly healthy and normal to feel angry when you’ve experienced being mistreated or wronged. The feeling isn’t the problem—it’s what we choose to do with it that makes a difference. Remember to allow anger its true purpose: to come, to address the issue in your life, and then to move on. 

Your partner in expressing healthy anger–and not getting “burned up,”