Anger comes with being human. What matters most is how we choose to handle it. Do you repress it, trying to push it away like something shameful? Do you lose yourself in your anger’s perspective and weaponize its passionate fire against others? Are you afraid of your anger, unsure what might happen if you give it expression?

We often carry these patterns into our adult relationships without realizing it. When we feel overwhelmed or upset, we might react in ways that make the situation worse with a romantic partner, a close friend, or a colleague. We might react in ways that lead to more isolation and disconnection.

Approaching our entire relationship as a path of healing and awakening can bring out the best in us. We leave behind our fantasies about how relationships “should” or “are supposed” to be and get real. We become aware of the work we need to do to become ripe enough for truly deep mutual love and genuinely fulfilling relating, instead of settling for crumbs.

This is how spiritual bypassing arises: the use of spirituality to downplay, deny, or avoid the significance of different dimensions of our lives. These include the physical, the social, the emotional and relational, and the deeply personal—everything that could simply be called “the practical.”

Love and hurt, joy and pain, gratitude and loss — these are the domains of heart-anger. And so are an awake, mature sense of healthy shame and responsibility. The more we own our power and anger, and see through the ways we’ve misused them in the past, the more sanely we begin to live and love now.