Anger, The Banshee and the Empath

An extract from her work, The Banshee Heart Healer and Divine Feminine, Rachael connects you into the beauty of this most primal and useful emotion, and how you can use it to take you forward, in a positive way.

When did you learn to fear anger? When did you begin to think it was something bad? Or wrong?

We are in a space of non–judgement. We are in that space now. Right and wrong do not exist; they never have done. Take solace and strength from that.

Anger is a powerful emotion. And we will all find we react differently to that emotion.

It comes through as irritation, upset and frustration, as well as all out explosions of emotions! It can be external and internal.

We may find it abhorrent. We may find it secretly shameful. We may find that it rules us; even if we hide it under passive actions. Especially for us Empaths and Sensitive souls (to find out how you are an Empath, click here)

And again, some of us maybe thinking that we’ll skip over this section. This section isn’t for us. Maybe we’ll pay it lip service and read through.

Or we maybe feeling fear, trepidation or even anger as we look at this topic.

Reflect on your behaviour for the last few days. Have you been out of sorts as your energy prepares for what is in fact going to be a sensational healing?

As I have been even working up to writing this section, I have had others display behaviour which have helped focus my mind and energy.

And in response I have had to catch my own anger reactions out!

The Universe at it’s most synchronistic and most awe inspiring! So as this article will have triggers for you, writing it has had the same thing for me.

When I was personally working through my anger I hadn’t noticed it was there. For years. Unacknowledged. Festering away.

It took something as raw and primal as my last pregnancy to trigger it’s release in me. Not something I would recommend.

Why do we have anger?

Anger is one of the oldest emotions we have. It forms a fundamental part of our fight and flight reactions. Some of us may be out and out fighters. Some of us maybe various forms of flighters, freezers, floppers and so on. But whether we fight or flop, it is still our primal, temper reaction which kicks in.

Intensity is an important word here. It is the intensity of your reaction which is what often causes us issues. Frustration, annoyance and all the way through to blind rage. All varying stages of the same emotion.

The trigger for that reaction is love and passion. Love and passion are beautiful emotions! So why do we have such an issue with anger? When it is just another aspect of our emotions.

Think about the areas in your life where your passion lies. It maybe family and friends; loved ones. Maybe your work or an aspect of it? It may even be your hobbies or aspects of society you hold dear. But in each of those areas is a love which is totally accepting.

Sometimes we don’t want to acknowledge there are aspects of their personality which aren’t perfect. Or areas of our work which isn’t quite hitting the mark in the eyes of others, despite our love and best efforts.

Think about where your temper is more likely to flare? When someone criticises something you have spent months working on? Or a loved one you have spent years loving and helping? An area of life you are passionate about? Those times when you find yourself shouting at the TV, getting on your soapbox to your partner who looks at you impassively. And that gets on your nerves even more!!

And that’s okay. The first thing to know is it is okay.

But what do we do when that intensity of feeling is too much? Or we find ourselves over reacting?

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on

The Modern Dilema

In this modern age, temper is pretty much useless. Unless we have a real life or death situation where we need our primal instincts to kick in, we rarely get to use our temper in real terms. We rarely get to burn off that adrenalin and cortisol released into our veins, every time we hit varying degrees along the scale of anger.

But it must be released; otherwise it just stays in your system.

And if we take time to relax and choose to live a lifestyle which has little stress, we will do that. We will allow the hormones to ease out of our system.

What if we choose to focus on being part of our community and our family rather than providing for it? What if we choose to live more simply so we don’t need as much money to facilitate it? We often find that by simply changing our focus, the vibration of everything changes. We will still work, we will still need money to live, but by focusing on what we think money will bring us, rather than on the material, what we infact find is that there is less pressure. If you want joy, peace and freedom in your life, focus on that. Not the money that society teaches you it will bring.

But what if we live an average life in the West? What if we have a smart-phone? Use social media? Have a job we work hard at? Have kids or a household to manage? As well as a relationship to keep in balance. When do you get the chance to recover between periods of stress?

Remember that camel who’s back got broke by a straw? That’s you. You are a bucket with a leaky tap above it, and the drip, drip, drip has got to the top and you are starting to overspill.

So many of us are over spilling with the intensity of modern life that dramatic reactions, no matter how passive, are happening day in, day out.

And recognising it is the first step to healing it. The second step is the healing itself! Both have their difficulties and the Banshee is here to help us do both.

How Your Anger Talks to You

What I have come to realise, and what many who I work with have also come to understand, is that anger is just your passion talking to you. In the most basic language we understand; our emotions.

When you are aware of your personal anger traits and what triggers your temper, you can also reflect on how reasonable your reactions are.

And going back to healing the root cause, I want to draw your attention to the first straws dropped on your back; not the most recent one. Old anger is a very heavy burden. And produces far more extreme reactions as a result.

So if you have an imbalanced reaction to a situation, it will be a reflection of an old issue. In some way, it will be linked to the first straw emotionally, if even the current situation is not a mirror image of it.

Listen to your emotions and allow them to guide you; see them as an indicator of where you need to heal.

Passive Aggression and the Empath

Now this section isn’t going to be an easy section for some of us.

Just because we aren’t openly aggressive, doesn’t mean we aren’t being aggressive.

This is the straight talking Banshee within me giving you this. The Crone in all her glory. The Banshee that calls us out on our bunkum and pulls our head out of our backside, because she loves us enough to feel our anger at what she has to say. She can deflect our anger, pain and fear at the reality of what she says, long enough for us to see the truth in her words.

Some of us, and I do include myself in this, learned to fear anger. We saw it in all it’s ugliness at times. It may have been out and out anger. It may have been passive. But it is of no consequence as it is still anger.

At some point we learned it was so ugly that we didn’t want to feel it, or see it. We didn’t want to experience it at all.

So what do we do when we are angry?

We hold onto our passiveness. That’s what we do.

the banshee

Passiveness if Not the Antidote

And in that passiveness, we learn instead to show it in different ways. In not doing a task we maybe were told to do or we messed it up. Ooops!

Or what if we do say something? But it’s not direct. It’s a side comment. Or a look. Or a huff and a puff while doing it.

Or we walk away and say nothing. Maybe cry, or talk and mutter to ourselves. We sit around thinking about what we could have said, or should have said. If only we had the ability to open our mouths and say it.

But as we have not said it; nothing is released. We are still sat there with it. And it grows. And it festers. Why would you want to be sat with that toxicity?

For me personally, I completely understand the emotional impact of someone’s words. As I myself felt twisted by them as child. Not much needed to be said to lay a seed by someone inparticular in my childhood. They invoked guilt in others and they got, and still do get, the emotional reaction that they wanted. I would also see them do this with other family members.

As a child I reacted by not speaking. But as an adult, when I chose to start reclaiming my voice and being heard, I all of a sudden became aware that I was using the techniques I had seen. I knew that all I needed to do was to say the odd thing to get what I wanted. For me that was to invoke guilt in order to get someone to do what I wanted. As that was my own experience. I was horrified at the ability I realised that I had; at the power that I had. I was even more horrified that I had been using that against people I professed to love dearly. An emapth who knew how to emotionally manipulate is a scary prospect. Which is exactly what my family member was.

I soon stepped away from that and found my authentic voice. A voice which spoke from a place of love and wanting the best for the person I was talking. Rather than from a place of what I thought was best; which are two very different things.

Under the passiveness we are still angry. It’s just shrouded under layers. But in reacting passively, we rob ourselves and others of an opportunity of open communication. Open communication which can lead to understanding and growth for both parties.

Our passiveness is not serving anyone. And in fact can become twisted over time. And turn us into something even uglier than the original anger we were looking to avoid.

Passiveness to Manipulation

The reason why many become passive aggressive is by shear accident. Some are such strong Empaths, so emotionally attuned, that we don’t want to feel the anger, or the anger we expect to feel, when we say no. So instead we learn how to get what we need by feeling into a situation.

And what we learn when we feel into a situation is that the odd word, the odd phrase, will infact get us what we need. What will invoke guilt? As we feel guilt so strongly; we know what that feels like. What will invoke sympathy? And we know what that feels like in droves. Blame and accusation; playing the victim. The pain of feeling you have ‘wronged’ someone is like a dagger to many of us.

And we become emotional manipulators. It is manipulation founded in fear based emotions. Fear based emotions that we know the power of first hand.

And my belief and experience is that many who are extremely passive aggressive, and highly emotionally manipulative as a result, started out as some of the most sensitive Empaths initially; before they became so scarred they turned into something else.

For many, this is born from a place of survival. An instinctual reaction to get what they need without upsetting the dominant member of the household.

And our survival instinct is strong! It doesn’t want us to suffer. So it doesn’t want us to undo the years of hard work it has put into developing a system which works really well. It’s an awesome survival system which has allowed us to function in society.

But you’re not here to function. You are here to thrive as a sensitive soul and to stand in the power of everything that makes you the fantastic individual you are.

You are here to find the soft words, and express them from a place of love for yourself and the person in front of you.

You can’t expect is perfection. As we all know that’s not a reality. We are not looking to change our personality. We just become aware of our behaviour. We need to call ourselves out as well as others. Apologise where we need to. And stop situations from becoming toxic.

What we realise is that aggression, whether passive or active, robs us of our ability to communicate.

The Banshee

Communicating Our Disagreement

Outward anger makes our words invisible to those around us. The intensity of the power behind my words, was too much for them to bear.

It didn’t mean that what we have to say is not valid. It simply makes our words impotent.

The Banshee works in drawing us together; drawing your Tribe together. She can only draw others in through communication.

She can only heal rifts in your blood line through communication.

In understanding that anger draws us to our passion, we can accept it outwardly and inwardly better.

In accepting our anger, we learn to work with it.

We learn to work with it by expressing it.

We learn to work with it by allowing it to show us where our passions in life lie.

Conflict draws us to our personal truths and wisdom. We are shown what really matters to us; morally, emotionally, lifestyle.

By expressing our anger we find our ways to our truths easier. We draw others in who understand our truths. Whose wisdom reflects ours.

By expressing our anger we are given the opportunity to question and evaluate our own personal truth; as well as giving others that opportunity.

We truly learn who we and others are.

We create space by those who are not meant to be in our Tribe to move along.

We draw others, like minded souls, in as they hear your expression of your passion.

Your Banshee Voice

This is adapted from my book, Banshee; Heart Healer and Divine Feminine. To take your ability to communicate and understand your anger in a more indepth way, please pick up my book globally, here. Available in both paperback & kindle.

Love As Always

Rachael x