Understanding anger, core beliefs, and the hidden pain that shapes our emotional reactions after 50.
I recently came across a quote in my Pinterest feed that didn’t sit right with me. It said, “Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for other people’s mistakes.”
At first glance, it sounds insightful, maybe even wise. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized how inaccurate it was.
You see, as a former angry person and as a person who has angry people still in my life, I have come to understand the true nature of anger, and what often lies beneath it.
Anger is what we use to protect the inner pain we haven’t healed from.
The phrase “hurt people hurt people” exists for a reason. It is not a cliché; it’s a truth that reveals itself again and again, if we’re willing to look closely.
The Beliefs That Shape What We See
During the years I spent recovering from my Dark Night of the Soul—years of deep healing—I was fortunate to encounter many great teachers whose perspectives helped me understand my inner world in new ways. One of those teachers, Jeffrey Allen, described our core beliefs as “sticky notes” that cling to the outside of our energetic bodies or fields. I talked about this in a previous post called On Becoming An Empty Nester: Identity, Loss, and Labels.
Nothing reaches us without first passing through these “sticky notes”.
And by the time it does, it’s no longer neutral. It has been colored—sometimes so heavily that what arrives bears very little resemblance to what it was in the first place.
If, for example, someone offers to help you because they see you’re struggling and want to be kind, that gesture might not land as kindness at all. If your core beliefs say, “People can’t be trusted,” or “Others are waiting for me to fail,” then that offer may feel like criticism or even quiet humiliation. Instead of a simple act of support, it may seem like proof that you’re not capable of handling things on your own.
In that moment, you are not responding to what actually happened. You are responding to the meaning that your core beliefs have assigned to it.
When Anger Is Not About the Present Moment
I saw this play out very clearly a couple of years ago.
I had a first date with a man I’d met online. Our conversations leading up to that evening had been warm and easy, and although I had hoped to meet for a simple drink, he suggested dinner at an expensive restaurant. I agreed, thinking the connection we had built might be worth exploring.
At some point during the meal, I spoke about my desire to help others with the lessons I had learned on my healing journey. His response was immediate and unexpectedly sharp. He told me I should keep those things to myself because people don’t need to be preached to. When I gently clarified that I was not preaching but sharing, he became increasingly agitated.
What followed had very little to do with me.
He began speaking about a family member who had once tried to get him to “pull himself together,” and as he spoke, it became clear that he had interpreted those actions as a statement of his own inadequacy—that he was incapable, that he could not be trusted to manage his own life. His anger built quickly, feeding on that interpretation, until he stood up, declared the date terrible, and walked out, leaving me sitting there with a big bill and a great deal of alarmed confusion.
Later, with some distance, I could see what had really happened.
His anger hadn’t been created in that moment. It had been waiting there, shaped by old pain and reinforced by the beliefs he carried about himself. What I said simply passed through his core beliefs and emerged as something entirely different from what I intended.
The Illusion Within Anger
For a long time, I wrote the Reiki precepts (as I understood them) in my journal each morning. The first line—“I will not anger, for anger is an illusion”—took a couple of years for me to truly understand.
It’s not that the feeling itself is unreal. Anger can feel incredibly powerful, even overwhelming. What is often illusory is the information we are responding to.
When our core beliefs distort what reaches us, we experience something that feels true but may not be in response to an accurate accounting of fact. We can feel attacked when we are not being attacked. We can feel diminished when no one is diminishing us. We can feel threatened when no real threat exists.
In that sense, anger becomes a response to a reality that has been altered by our own inner landscape.
The illusion is not the emotion.
The illusion is the meaning we have assigned to the moment.
The Prison We Don’t Realize We’re Creating
As I began to examine and replace my old core beliefs, I noticed something that surprised me.
Anger began to lose its familiarity.
For much of my life, it had been a constant presence, so much so that I didn’t question its place. It felt like protection, like strength, like a necessary response to a world that seemed unpredictable and, at times, unsafe. But as I experienced more intentional moments of peace and joy, I started to recognize how constricting anger actually felt.
It no longer felt like protection, like something I needed to carry to ensure my boundaries were respected. It felt like confinement. It felt like willingly putting myself in a straitjacket.
I found myself pausing when it arose and asking simple questions: Is this worth it? Do I really want to feel this way? Will this change anything? The answers were consistent, and over time, those answers changed my relationship with anger entirely.
I began to see that every time I stepped into that feeling, I was stepping into a prison. Not because of what someone else had done, but because of how I was choosing to respond.
And the second room of that prison was the way in which anger kept me from trusting others and from having experiences and relationships that might have been worth having.
Taking Responsibility for What We Feel
This doesn’t mean I never get triggered.
Last summer, I had an experience at a gas station that reminded me just how quickly old patterns can resurface. All of the pumps were occupied, and I watched as an elderly woman circled slowly, waiting for an opening. Ahead of me, two people had finished fueling their cars but remained there, talking casually while others waited.
I suggested, politely, that they might move along so others could access the pumps.
One of them responded with passive-aggressive remarks, implying that I was somehow policing their right to have a conversation. I explained again, calmly at first, that people were waiting, but the comments continued, each one carrying a subtle edge.
And then I allowed something to shift within me.
I allowed an older version of myself to step forward, and before I realized what was happening, we were engaged in a shouting match under the canopy. It ended eventually, as these things do, but I couldn’t let go of the anger after I’d driven away. I allowed it to stay with me, and it colored the hours that followed and even took a portion of the joy from a weekend I had been looking forward to.
Notice how I use the word “allowed”. I take full responsibility for my feelings. No one can make me feel anything unless I allow it.
I could have handled that situation much differently, but I chose to sacrifice my joy in that beautiful day to shout at a stranger.
My anger didn’t help that elderly woman find an open pump, nor did it convince the woman I was arguing with that she was in the wrong.
All it did was cause me discomfort and lasting angst and that’s the prison. A prison I created all on my own.
A Freedom That Is Always Available
These days, anger no longer holds me in the tight grip it once did. It still appears from time to time, particularly when I witness something that feels unjust, but it’s no longer my default emotion when I experience something I don’t like.
Instead, it feels like something I can observe, understand, and, if I choose, release.
Healing has a way of opening space within us—space where we can choose to respond differently, space where we can see more clearly, space where we are no longer bound to repeat on loop old patterns of behavior.
Freedom from anger is not about denying what we feel.
It is about understanding how our core beliefs can distort reality and trigger old wounds if we don’t heal those wounds or clean out old beliefs that no longer serve us.
In any given moment, no matter how charged or uncomfortable, there is a quiet choice available to us.
We can remain where we are, wound tight and ready to fight.
Or we can step out, choosing instead to preserve our own inner sanctuaries of peace.
And in that choice, there is a kind of power that does not come from control or force, but from clarity. A power that allows us, again and again, to set ourselves free.
