How to release repressed anger in a physical way
One of the most common questions I am asked is how to release repressed anger.
Repressed anger is one thing that every person I have worked with is struggling with and for many of them they can’t even truly identify what it is to be angry. They have repressed anger so much that they can’t even get in touch with it. Over the years I’ve come to find that this pattern of suppression isn’t just with anger but with most undesirable emotions and that pattern of suppression leads to the repressed anger from childhood that holds us all back in adulthood.
Since it’s something we all deal with and something that so many people ask me about overcoming I thought it was important to provide a resource for all of you to help you learn to release anger in a healthy way. Before we get started, it’s important to understand why you have repressed anger and where it may have come from.
What is repressed anger?
Repressed anger is anger that we subconsciously and unknowingly shove down and don’t express. This subconscious action of repressing anger is something our brains learned to do over time often for the sake of safety. A pattern of suppressing anger, or not expressing it, can lead to the brain learning to repress the emotion entirely. It’s this pattern of suppressing our emotions that most frequently starts in childhood and almost always continues on throughout adulthood.
Learning to repress not only anger but other emotions as well is common. Children are taught to suppress emotion and depending on the genitals a child has it could be taught that emotions are weak. Even as adults we are taught to suppress our emotions. We learn to do this with our bosses and coworkers. We learn to do this in family systems and with partners.
Our brains learn this pattern when it doesn’t feel safe to express. Often us expressing anger can cause other people to react poorly. Whether it’s our parents or our partner, our brain would rather avoid all possibilities of something unwanted happening so it begins to stop expressing to avoid conflict or feeling hurt.
Anytime you think to yourself that you shouldn’t be angry or that you shouldn’t bring up your anger, you’re likely in a situation that you learned to suppress your anger in before.
If you have a pattern of suppressing your anger then it’s likely you have repressed anger that you need to release.
What happens if you don’t release repressed anger?
Anger is an emotion and since emotions are just energy in motion repressed (and suppressed) anger has nowhere to go. That means it gets stuck. Stuck energy in the body is the root cause of all symptoms, disease, and disorder. When we repressed our anger, that angry energy accumulates in the body and will start to impact how you feel and think.
If you don’t give that anger somewhere to go, it can and will make you sick. Often it can result in you feeling sick and tired of where you are but feeling so stuck you can’t go anywhere. That’s because you are literally stuck and you will be as long as the energy of the repressed anger is also stuck.
How to release repressed anger
There are several ways to release repressed anger. You can journal about it. You can stand in the mirror and pretend you are letting the person or situation you are angry with have it. You can punch a punching bag. You can throw something. You can yell or pull your hair.
While all of those techniques will work to release repressed anger, they sometimes aren’t enough. I know many people who have journaled and cried until they can’t journal and cry anymore but they are still holding onto repressed anger from childhood. Affirmations, journaling and all of the other things they tried did not work for them.
So I wanted to show you the exercise that did work to release repressed anger
This exercise is a solid technique that will help you move out repressed anger. It is the one tool that works for everyone I’ve taught it too and the one tool that I always recommend.
How to move repressed anger out in a physical way
To really get that release of repressed anger you are looking for, you’ll need to integrate movement.
Our nervous system speaks in movement. Simple movement. And so quite often the best way to communicate back to it that it can express anger is through movement.
In the video below, I’ll take you through an exercise that will help you release repressed anger in a physical way.
