This week’s question from our portal “Ask Us Anything” comes from Aaliyah.
My question is regarding anger. I’m becoming more aware that I don’t allow myself to experience anger, and I want to explore what’s behind that. I want to learn how to feel angry in a healthy way.
In the work I’ve done on myself, I’ve also discovered that at some point, I made a decision to NOT be angry. I don’t even let myself experience regular, general anger. I want to let myself at least feel it (not necessarily act on it). I suppress it a lot. How do I undo my previous decision to not be angry?
The idea is to allow yourself to feel the anger, then do something physically to move it through your body.
There are a couple of things I can recommend you do for this:
1) Journal the anger out.
Journal or write your anger out. Don’t be concerned with grammar, spelling, or language — just get it all out of your body, onto the paper.
Keep writing and writing and writing until the anger dissipates from your body.
2) Express the anger physically in a healthy way.
Get something like a whiffle ball bat, pool noodle, or pillow, and just whack the sh*t out of it. Scream as much as you want about whatever you’re angry about. Punch the pillow.
The idea is that you move it through your body. Get it out of yourself, so that it’s not bottled in. These are healthy ways to express it.
You can also write down the thing(s) you’re angry about on a piece of masking tape. Put it on the bottom of your foot, then stomp your feet. Just crush that thing, and continually pound it on the ground, so that you’re moving the anger out of your body.
This is actually what we used to do with our clients in “Date With Your Dark Side.” We would take them through an anger expression exercise that was pretty intense, to allow them to move the anger out of their body.
