FIRE meets METAL: Anger
Gotta be careful with Fire. And sharp objects.
I had originally drafted this as part of the post I wrote about how I use my 5 Elements System when I am being gutted, crushed, and chewed up by the many stages of grief.1
But that post was getting way too long, so I siphoned off a few of the in-depth tangents to give them their own space. This is one of them.
Wait…tangents?! ME?!
Shocking, I know. Let’s go.
Gotta handle Anger with care, yo.
If you’ve been around here for any length of time, then you’re probably aware that I don’t believe in “good or bad” emotions. Neither am I a fan of stifling, stuffing, putting on the Fake Face, or otherwise ignoring them until they start causing damage to my body, my heart, my mind, my life.2
Anger is one of those traditional five grieving stages. In my System, it is one of the primary emotions we work with in Elemental Metal.
In the developmental stages of this System, when I was constantly tinkering around with it and moving elements, shifting components, trying out different flavors, I had originally housed Anger in Fire. I suspect my reasons for this are obvious.
But it was in working with the counterpart aspects of these emotions that I finally settled on Metal. Anger can be one of the most unstable and volatile of all the emotions. To give this one its head, especially if there’s anybody else around, that requires a massive amount of conscientiousness and responsibility. That’s why it’s way down there at the end of the System, after many tools of self-control and management have been acquired through the other Elements.
Hence, Bravery is the counterpart of Anger. Because for many of us, it takes a lot of courage to even feel the full extent of anger, much less learn how to healthily express it, to use it as fuel for setting proper boundaries or pushing past limitations. Once the charge has been blown off, it can sometimes take even more courage to feel into what is beneath it.
For me, my anger is usually covering up fear that I don’t want to face head on and do something about, or grief that is too deep for me to fully feel yet.
Depending on who you are, and where you’re at in your life, any one of these emotions may take more courage to feel and express than others. We all have our comfy emotions, our knee-jerk ones, and the thorns in our emotional sides.
Being a quintessential Fire Sign with extensive frontal and temporal lobe damage from multiple TBIs, plus inborn executive function issues, I have to tackle Anger from a myriad different directions in order to keep a handle on it. If I don’t, I won’t be merely dealing with Anger anymore. If it keeps building and building—if anything keeps building and building without relief, if the stimulus doesn’t stop and it becomes too much and overloads the system?
There’s a reason why they call what happens commonly in autism and TBI “meltdown.”3
But you don’t have to have either of these conditions to have one. You simply have to let an internal pressure-cooker go past the red line. Here are the many ways I attempt to defuse Anger so that it works for me, instead of against me.
🌊 WATER
Can I douse the searing blade of my fury with Water, rapidly quenching myself into a cool-calm-collected cucumber? Absolutely. But this is not how I actually deal with the anger itself, and especially not with whatever caused it. This is an emergency measure when the situation is best served by me NOT blowing my top. NOT speaking my mind right now. NOT confronting the source of my anger in a given moment.
There are many reasons for this.
Sometimes it’s as simple as it’s not the right time or place to have a conversation about it.
I find myself performing a rapid-douse of my anger when I am surrounded by people I don’t trust, and therefore I will not show them the depth of my vulnerable emotions. Sometimes I realize that trying to explain how I feel is not worth the hassle that bringing it up will cause. I simply need to extricate myself from a situation and not put myself back there again so...
Sploosh!
I also do this when I am hacked off in a relationship I care about. When I really, REALLY have a lot to say about something but I am so emotionally compromised that what might come out of my mouth would be something I would regret. I need to calm down before I speak my mind, hence the rapid dousing and the zipped lips. Sometimes this includes my rapid vacating of the premesis.
I also use this technique when I’m not exactly sure what is going on, when my spidey-senses are tingling but I can’t exactly put my finger on why. All I know is that all the sudden I am torqued off about…something.
Psssssh!
Insti-cool. If I’m able to achieve this state, my emotions are temporarily shut down and I am in Spock-mode. Pausing. Watching. Discerning. Analyzing.
Water in my Elements System is the Domain of the Mind, so rest assured, if I’ve jerked the chain to quick-release my mental water-tank? Behind my eyes and between my ears, guaranteed I am burning up the gears of a gazillion thoughts until I can figure out why I am so angry, and what I need to do about it.
⛰️ EARTH
How about smothering my anger under a dump truck of dirt? Yup. I can do that, too. In fact, I can bury that shit so deep down in the dark of myself that I will literally forget what happened.
But this, too, is an emergency measure. Getting back repressed memories from the most traumatic times of my life is not a fun thing, so this isn’t my preferred way of dealing with any emotion, much less anger.
Unfortunately, it was something I did a lot of in my earliest years before anybody had ever taught me that I even had a right to be angry, much less to express it. It took even longer before I learned that my anger was a valuable warning sign that I need to take action.
Usually it’s that I need to adjust my perspective and expectation, or else it’s the sign that somebody has just crossed one of my boundaries. In that case, I either need to explain my do-not-cross lines to somebody who doesn’t know, or I need to defend them. Sometimes both.
Even when the anger is a small thing, I try to only use burying it as a temporary measure to get clear of the situation so that I have a more calm outlook and a better vantage point of what’s going on. If I am in a situation that will not be served by me going insti-cool or walking out of the room, burying it for a little while allows me to access a warmer, more personable side of myself without the brittleness of faking it.
For many, many years, I used to zip it when anger was just a little spark. A mere annoyance, “not worth getting worked up over.” As a people-pleaser, a doormat and a human punching bag, I had been trained over and over that I was too sensitive, took things too seriously, making mountains out of molehills, being mean or disrespectful by saying “no” or voicing my boundaries. Oh, no, something couldn’t possibly be too loud, too hot, too painful.
Yet if I used my voice to assert and defend my boundaries, somehow *I* was simultaneously too loud, too outspoken—forever and ever too much (and yet never enough).
These things were hammered into me by abusers and those who wanted to control me.
Becoming a martial artist changed all that.
I learned that it was much healthier for me and for everybody connected to me if I did not bury my anger and hope it would go away. Instead, I learned to speak about things that bothered me WHEN THEY WERE SMALL. That way, equally small adjustments could be made by us both so that the relationship could continue more smoothly.
And if those small adjustments are considered “too much”?
Those are not my people. That is not my situation. If I can’t get out of it, then I especially need the communicative and self-protective tools of Metal to work within this un-ideal collaboration.
Back when I used to keep muzzling myself, clenching my teeth and bearing it, shoving it down, painting on a smile, trying to forget about it…eventually, if the situation continued, and especially if it escalated (with abusers, predators, and controllers it almost always escalates), I would eventually fracture under the pressure.
Then my anger would come exploding up in volatile rage.
Unfortunately, it still does on occasion because there is no talking it out with government agencies. There is no working out compromises. There is only being stuck in abusive pressure-cookers that I am dependent upon for my survival, and using anger as fuel to try to find a way out.
In this case, dumping mountains of dirt on it is a necessary tool. There are absolutely things I have to bury in order to continue functioning, much less enjoying my life. I just have to let myself forget about it on a frequent basis.
Earth is NOT my ideal Element to deal with anger, but sometimes it’s the only tool that lets me survive this kind of toxic, spirit-eroding, protracted rage-on-constant-low-boil. Like with Water, I try to use this mechanism as a temporary stop-gap, until I am finally free to unearth all those decades of trauma and let them heal.
🌬️ AIR
Many people picture this “airy-fairy” substance as light and fluffy. Weak. Hah. Must not know a lot about Faeries, or the power of Air. But its power doesn’t only come from its most volatile, destructive face. It is also breath, and breath can be as precise as a surgical blade.
Air helps me forge my fury into a weapon, a shield, a vehicle, a key to unlock doors, a portcullis to keep enemies out, a battering ram to bust down barriers.
This is actually something I learned when I was first developing my Elemental Dance System. You remember I’m a Fire Sign, right? There is waaaaay too much energy and heat in this little body. When I got divorced for the second time and got to choose whatever last name I wanted in the breaking of the legal shackles, I chose “Hart” for a reason.
Mostly because I’m a punny girl.
But I mean this most sincerely, for I am all heart. All-consuming passion. Expansive, explosive emotion. True, I also have my Spockly side. Cool, mechanized, spear-straight, and in-your-face direct. But that is work mode. A means to accomplish something in the most efficient, practical, logical manner.
The rest of the time?
When I’m just hanging out in my own skin, I am a constant furnace of creation, passion, and emotion. In softer moments, when I dance to gentler songs, my fire is like a welcoming candle or an inviting hearth. But when that beat really gets going…when the flames are stoked to blazing…heavens help me and anybody in the blast radius when the rocket fuel is ignited!
Just ask my friends. I’m friggin’ Cornholio.
I am not exaggerating here. Like I said. Waaaaay too much energy for this tiny little body. The only way to effectively control this without smothering or dousing it?
BREEEEEEEAATHE…
WOO-SAAAAAH…
When I want to dance those huge, explosive moves without looking all spastic and jerky, I have to inhale and surrender to the relaxation and the natural movement pathways of my body. Tension is used sparingly, instead of it being the driving force.
And I do mean force.
If I try to ram my way through big, explosive stuff, it’s never as beautiful or powerful as when I ground myself, then use the breath to send the energy rocketing through the most tension-free, natural pathways of my body.
This was something else that martial arts gave me. To not grunt and tense and try to power-muscle my strikes. But rather, to use my exhalation or kiai (the concussive vocalization) with every blow into which I want to pump power. To conduct energy through the most relaxed, efficient pathways, only clenching and hardening at the last moment of impact.
Ka-BLAM!
The same is true with controlling anger so that I can effectively wield it. This is the only way I can healthily and conscientiously address whatever is making me angry.
Breathing exercises to regulate my zappy, sparkalicious nervous system.
Taking a deep breath and a pause before responding, in the moment, to someone who’s torqued me off.
Controlling my tone, volume, tension, and the speed at which my words come out.
I think of it like the bellows of a forge controlling the heat, intensity, and size of the fire in order to work metal into whatever tool I require.
Because Anger is absolutely a tool, if I understand how to utilize it as one.
Alas. In so many ways I suuuuuuuck at this. It is one of the greatest banes of my existence, and one I constantly work at. But here’s a magic key about the tool of Anger. Ding-ding-ding!
If I constantly find myself having to:
Douse
Smother
Bury
Do breathing exercises
Put up barricades
Reiterate or defend my boundaries
Walk into a different room before blowing my top
Regulate the way I speak when I’m excited about something—whether I’m all on fire over one of my passions, or I’m frothing and barking my head off over something that cheezed me the fuck OFF…
My need to utilize these tools of anger management over and over tells me I’m not in a situation where I can fully, and truly be myself. It tells me I’m not in a healthy relationship, community, or situation.
And that requires that I DO something about it, at my earliest ability.
Woo-sahhhhhhhhhh…
🔥 FIRE
It’s a rare and precious connection when I can express anger in someone else’s presence, without being rejected and dropped.4
Otherwise?
Well, that’s what the Fire Gods made punching bags for. To control the blast. To blow the pressure-cooker before it melts down.
That’s why we have dancing to heavy metal music. And hard solo hikes. And rage-screaming and ugly-crying. And all the profanity-laden, scribble-ripped pages of my journals. And all the RAWR-laden, keyboard finger-banging gigabytes of my fantastical fiction.5
So I can fully give Anger its head, let it eject like a volcano, let it run through me like rivers of scorching lava and not damage anybody else in the process. Once I learn how to control this emotion, even at its most volatile and explosive, I won’t damage myself in the process either.
Desire, on the other hand…
Desire is a primary emotion of the Fire Element.
And isn’t that why we’re searching for roadmaps through all this stuff? Because of what we want?
An ease to the pain of loss
Something to sooth the destructive face of anger
A release from the shackles of shame or guilt
A breath of inspiration to get us moving out of the depressive morass of apathy
To be able to get through grief and back into joy
I don’t know about you, but that’s my deepest desire during a time of great losses like the ones I’m slogging through right now. I can only do that if I don’t let all this stuff build up inside me until it overloads the circuits and causes damage. I can only do it if I find healthy ways to wield it and to express it.
Better out than in.
Up Next:
© 2025 Hartebeast
My original post on using my Elements System to work through intense mourning:
I don’t believe in “good or bad” emotions:
Meltdown: it’s not merely anger. It’s definitely not a temper tantrum. It’s a short-circuiting system failure caused by overload. “It’s not what someone does. It’s what they’re experiencing.”
There are many reasons why the act of me expressing my anger gets me rejected and dropped. Some of them have to do with me. Some have to do with the societies into which I was born and the ones I migrated into by choice. And some have everything to do with the personal problems of the people doing the rejecting and dropping.
But that’s a very different subject—and a very touchy one. I mostly cover those kinds of topics in my NSFW memoirs. Be warned - there be Beasties over yonder:
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