008. Anger is a Gift
Emotions are a vital part of the human experience. However, we learn to suppress our emotions, especially anger. Yet, underneath our anger is our passion.
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This episode is about anger. Anger is a vital emotion and, as we talked about before, emotions are energy in motion. That energy that is present in our body wants to express. However, emotions are not exactly welcome in our society, especially anger. So, we learn to keep our emotions in.
When we repress emotion, we often develop unhealthy coping strategies, such as numbing by watching TV, working, sex, or shopping, substance abuse, addiction, being strong, staying in our head, blaming others, spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity, being a victim.
When our emotions are not released, they leak. With anger, in particular, it could be feeling irritable, criticising, judging, and even illness.
Maybe you can relate to this yourself, that sometimes you feel irritable without knowing why. It might be suppressed anger. We all suppress our emotions at times. It’s normal. This is not about making it wrong; it is just about bringing awareness to it.
The reason I want to talk about this in the context of anger is that releasing and processing anger is very powerful, especially for females.
I first read about anger a couple of years ago in the book “The Artist Way;” a beautiful process to connect to your creativity. In week three of the book there are a few paragraphs on anger. It says that anger is fuel. Anger shows us where our boundaries are. Anger gives us a sense of direction; it shows us where we want to go.
After reading that, I started noticing anger more. Before I was completely out of touch with that emotion. I took it as a roadmap, pointing me in the direction that I want to go.
Anger is also about boundaries. It comes up when a line is being crossed, a boundary being crossed. We can ask: What's the line? Where do I feel like my boundaries are being trapped on? Where do I feel like I'm being taken advantage of? Where am I not heard, not seen? Where have I given my power away?
Even more important than understanding where the anger comes from is expressing and released it. There are different ways to release anger.
One process that really works for me is to create an anger release ceremony. The ceremony might look like: Setting an intention to release what no longer serves you. Maybe lighting a candle. Connecting to the anger, allowing it to come up, and then grabbing a pillow to hit or your couch, your bed, any kind of soft surface. While hitting the pillow you might want to speak out loud what you’re angry about. Just allowing yourself to go there.
Another powerful tool is breathwork and meditation. There are specific guided breathwork and meditation practices to release anger that you can find on the internet. I enjoy the Breathwork and Meditation album by Christine Hassler and Stefanos Sifandos. It included session to release different emotions including anger. Since this is a guided process it makes it easier to get started, because you don’t have create your own process.
What also works is using a towel and twisting it like you are rinsing it out while really giving all the energy into the towel and, thus, also release it from your body.
The beauty about releasing anger is that underneath the anger is your passion. If you want to feel more passionate in your life, maybe in a specific area in your life, connecting to your anger and releasing that is something that you might want to make a practice to connect to this passion. I also use it to connect to my inner strength and power, for instance, when I have to have a difficult conversation to requires me to speak up for myself.
Lastly, some other tools to release anger are release writing, that is just letting the words flow outside of you onto the page. Stem sentence writing using “I'm angry because…” and keep going until you feel complete. And movement in general.
Ready to release your anger? I am here to support you on your journey. Apply for 1:1 coaching with me and we will jump on a call to see if we feel good with each other.
