Krissie McMenamin spent years ignoring her anger until she finally decided to study it. She read multiple books, did a masters in transformational leadership and a coaching program and, more recently, started RAGEher, a multi-sensory activity to help women access and release their anger.
The idea for this project came after Krissie, who has worked in marketing and financial services in the past, felt the need to connect with her creativity. As a child, she spent most of her summers in Finland, where her mother is from, where she learned to sew and fell in love with arts and crafts. Now, at RAGEher, she uses her creative side to help other women put their emotions to good use and find their authentic selves.
“Anger is so many things,” she told host Amy Boyle during the latest episode of the Speaking of Phenomenal podcast. “It's passive aggression, it's stonewalling, it's not saying what you want, it's walking away. It's all these things that don't actually serve us.” For her, understanding our needs and releasing our anger doesn’t mean that we have to be rude or hurt others. On the contrary, by understanding and paying attention to what is happening inside of us, we can choose how to react and turn our anger into a powerful and useful tool.
“Say what I need to say and that doesn't mean it has to be in an angry tone,” she reminds us. Sometimes, it’s a matter of learning to be more direct and communicating difficult messages with seriousness and, at the same time, love.
That’s not an easy task. And like everything else in life, it requires practice. But before thinking about strategies and how to set boundaries, we need first to figure out: what makes me angry in the first place? The answer to that questions won’t come without self-knowledge.
“We need to become conscious of our own pattern. How does anger show up for me? Am I passive aggressive? Do I just like blow up once a month? We got to get conscious to be able to choose to do something differently.” A golden piece of advice that we can start practicing today. When was the last time we felt anger? What would we change in the way we reacted to it?
We also want to hear from you: how do you deal with moments of anger? Any tips you want to share on how to deal with anger in a productive way?
Find Krissie on Instagram
RAGEher: https://instagram.com/rage.her
Carolina Baldin is a freelance journalist from Brazil. Having worked in law, policy and regulation, she is passionate about everyday stories that illustrate larger issues. She graduated from a master's program at Northwestern University in 2023 and became a guest blogger on the "Speaking of Phenomenal" podcast blog in March 2024.
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