In my experience, most people don’t know how to deal with anger.
That’s why there’s typically 2 dysfunctional ways that the average person deals with anger:
The First Way – Suppression 🧘♂️
This person holds their anger in because they believe they shouldn’t express it, that it’s not safe to express it, that anger isn’t spiritual or that there’s something wrong with them for feeling angry.
This can be conscious in the sense that they’re aware of the anger but choose not to express it… but it can also be totally unconscious, like with the person who says “I’m just not an angry person”.
The Second Way – Explosion 💥
This is the extreme opposite of holding it in.
Instead of pretending everything is fine or telling themselves that “they’re just not an angry person”, this person explodes. They might yell, scream, snap, manipulate, abuse, throw things or even physically attack the people around them.
It’s the same energy but it’s just as dysfunctional and even more dangerous than the first way.
While suppression is more socially acceptable, it’s still totally unhealthy 🥴
I know because I used to suppress my anger.
“I’m just not an angry person.”
I remember saying that to one of my ex girlfriends.
I thought it was a good thing too.
I was proud of my lack of anger. I thought it made me a better person. More ethical and moral. More in control. More mature.
How wrong I was 🤦♂️
I eventually discovered that my lack of anger made me extremely vulnerable to manipulation and abuse from other people.
Instead of getting angry when I needed to get angry (and holding certain people accountable), I rationalised it away.
“Oh, it’s not THAT big of a deal. I’ll just take a deep breath and let it go.”
This got me into serious trouble and led to me almost ending up in a cult, losing a relationship with a woman I loved dearly and fleeing a country to find safety.
All because I wasn’t tapped into my anger in a healthy way.
All because I suppressed my anger without realizing it, a survival strategy I’d adopted in childhood to maintain my attachment bond with my parents.
What about you? Do you tend to suppress your anger? Or are you more of an exploder?
Whatever your personal relationship to anger, if it’s suppression or explosion, it’s holding you back.
For example, if our anger and aggression (ie. our fight response) isn’t flowing in a healthy way, we can lose access to motivation and drive because it’s the same energy. That makes it hard to move forward on our goals, hard to get things done and hard to be whoever we want to be. It also leads to anxiety (chronic sympathetic / fight-or-flight activation) and depression (high tone dorsal / shut down / freeze).
The question is…
How to deal with anger in a healthy way? 🤔
This is the topic of Rageheart Podcast Episode #3.
It’s with Seth Lyon on why you need to destroy your abusers first to feel compassion for them later (aka. how to deal with anger from a nervous system healing perspective).
We also talk about when meditation, breathwork, energy work and yoga fail, the dangers of psychedelics, how your sense of who you are changes as you come into your body and more.
If that sounds interesting to you, hit one of the links below and check it out…
I worked with Seth 1-on-1 for more than year and a huge piece of that process was tapping into and discovering new ways to work with my anger, rage and healthy aggression. He’s a solid dude with tons of wisdom to share and I’m stoked to get him on the show this week.
In This Episode Of The Rageheart Podcast On How To Deal With Anger, You’ll Discover:
- What is trauma? (hint: it’s not the event or what happened to you)
- How to heal from trauma without focusing on the story (good news! There’s no need to analyse or figure out what happened in the past. You just need to __ in the present.)
- How and why meditation, psychedelics, breathwork and energy work sometimes fail (and the missing ingredient that unlocks or activates all these different practices)
- How to realize that your “mind” is a lot more than your brain (a common response when getting into nervous system work: “I don’t know who I am anymore”)
- How to destroy someone without actually hurting them (and why this is a CRUCIAL part of nervous system healing)
- A blow-by-blow example from Seth’s life of what to expect with nervous system healing (how something traumatic came up, how he worked with it and how he “renegotiated” his automatic response to heal)
If that sparks your interest, hit one of the links below and check it out…
Enjoy!
John Wood
P.S. Know anyone else who struggles with anger – whether they tend to suppress it or explode?
Send them a link to this episode of The Rageheart Podcast with Seth Lyon and help them find healthier, more effective ways of dealing with their anger.
The world would be a far happier, healthier place if more people did this work with their anger.