Anger is a very powerful emotion that normally has the healthy function to protect you when your borders are crossed or to make you act when you see injustice. But when you absorb it from others, get overpowered and abused or simply learn to suppress it, it can produce various symptoms from depression, shame, guilt, having a powerless attitude or an overpowering attitude, aggressive behavior, violence etc.
Anger and childhood
Anger can be the tip of an iceberg of emotions with the function to move your attention to the outside world in order to keep the rest of the iceberg hidden. A sort of armor which creates a fake protection from fear, vulnerability and emotional pain. In fact, behind each angry person there is often a hurt child that has been neglected and needs to be loved.
You might suppress anger also because you saw how painful it was to grow up in an environment that was full of conflicts with verbal and/or physical violence. But the more you suppress it, the more it accumulates in your depth. You cannot escape the confrontation with your past, sooner or later we all need to face it. It is very important in this process to understand that anger is not negative in itself, it becomes negative in the moment that, after being suppressed, it explodes against other people or objects. In fact, it is not a solution to unconsciously throw your anger or rage outside, like it is not a solution to swallow it.
Here a video of Shaking, one of the techniques we use to help you unblocking emotionally and release intense emotions:
Anger and its characteristics
Anger can have different intensity from mild to very intense: Irritation, nervousness, complaining, frustration, disappointment, anger, rage, fury etc, are all different types of anger. A fire can burn a single match or an entire forest.
When we experience anger, we often feel like we are holding a “boiling potato”, it is uncomfortable and we don’t know where to put it..!
How to deal with anger?
Emotional release workshops and therapy sessions offer an healthy option:
Exercises like boxing therapy and voice liberation or screaming, cathartic sessions like Shaking the body, Gibberish and Osho active meditations. These types of practices offer a valid opportunity to truly deliver the excessive anger in you in a safe way and feel relief. Not only, it helps you to access deeper layers of emotions and to make you feel empowered and grounded.
After practicing for a while, the level of anger naturally decreases and it leaves space to more positive emotions, like peace, love and joy.
We work with English-speaking clients mainly in Amsterdam and online.
The below video shows you some anger release exercises for expressing anger and rage: