HBlissHave you ever asked yourself why things in life don’t seem to go your way, leaving you frustrated and angry, and thinking you should quickly cover up this rage with a positive affirmation?
Repressed anger is often deep-seated in our system, impacting our health and well-being.
How can we actually clear old imprints of this emotion? By learning to embody it – feel it, express it – in a safe way.
As one of our primal emotions, anger is a part of our body’s instinctual intelligence and has kept us safe and connected to our tribe for millennia. Its purpose is to express our needs, keep boundaries protected and fight if necessary.
In the West, anger is seen as a negative and destructive emotion, leaving people out of control and endangering others. However, in its essence, anger is pure energy that requires containment, not suppression. When transmuted, it can help us stand our ground and create necessary change.
For many, the repression of anger started in childhood, when it wasn’t acceptable to “be angry”. We weren’t taught to contain this emotional energy and use it constructively. In this way we unconsciously created an “imprint” in our nervous system that defaults to “it’s never ok to feel anger”.
Over time, each moment when anger was shut down reinforced this imprint. The accumulation of repressed anger can lead to serious health issues. Additionally, it consumes our sense of sovereignty and vitality while we feel increasingly powerless to our circumstances.
The key to working with anger is allowing ourselves to feel it within our body while remaining conscious of its intensity. Anger gains momentum as it switches on that older part of the brain that doesn’t know reason. So, we need to slow things down to a point where we can work with it as consciously as possible.
While it can be helpful to remember an “original event”, it is not required, and often not accessible. Staying with the sensation in the body and feeling how it moves is essential. Somatic practices can help us increase our capacity to consciously express the fierceness of the emotion in a safe way. If anger has been deeply suppressed, we may need to address the resistance to feeling anger first.
Once we have released some repressed anger, we may feel a sense of our true power, often as a warm and alive feeling in our solar plexus. Our relationships with others may improve as we become more confident in setting healthy boundaries without the need for aggression or control. We may then feel more comfortable in our own skin without needing approval.
Email Veronika at: hello@highlandvibes.com
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