4 Practices To Explore Your Anger.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash. Image description: a white woman with black hair is on the floor with her hands covering her face and her legs kicking in the air. She is wearing a brown dress and the background is beige.
“What would it look like if you validated your anger and actually tended to it?” and “what if your anger is actually a natural response to this situation?” are questions I tend to ask my private coaching clients in sessions. The reason I tend to share these questions with my clients if because the majority of us have grown up with the belief that it’s not okay to be angry. Which means that there can be a tendency to invalidate our anger, to feel like it’s not a good response, to ignore it. But so often our anger is actually wise and such important information from our body. Feeling angry because a boundary got violated? That makes so much sense. Are you angry because it took you 20+ years to realize you’re queer due to the impact of compulsory heterosexuality? It’s so natural to be angry. Are you pissed off because that person made that ableist remark? Of course you’re pissed off! Working with our anger and forming a healthy relationship to it can be healing and supportive in our post traumatic growth journey. In this blog I’ll share some simple ways you can explore your anger using somatic tools and practices.
1.) Investigate: “What’s my relationship with anger?”
Image description: over a tan background there is an image of a white piece of paper with it’s edges torn off. On the paper there is black text which reads “my relationship to anger is….” At the bottom of the image there is the website www.tiffany-landry.com
Before you explore your anger using somatic practices it can be so important to identify your current relationship to anger. Some questions you might ask yourself or journal on are:
What’s my current relationship to anger?
Do I feel comfortable being angry or expressing my anger?
What messages did I receive around being angry?
How do I respond when I’m angry? Do I validate it or do I ignore it? Do I feel comfortable expressing my anger?
What are some healthy representations of angry I’ve seen or experienced?
It’s important to identify your current relationship to anger so you can see what next steps might be supportive. For example: if you received the message that it wasn’t okay to be angry, the most healing thing might be to validate your anger and give it permission.
2.) Validate: “What if my anger was important information?”
What would it look like if you viewed you anger as important information from your body? Or saw your anger as deeply wise and an important emotion to pay attention to? Our anger can often point situations that aren’t okay, experiences where our boundaries are violated, moments where we didn’t get to give our consent. Whatever the context it can be so healing to pause and validate our anger. That could look like pausing and telling yourself:
“It makes so much sense that I’m angry about this situation.”
“Of course I’m angry! What happened really wasn’t okay.”
“My anger is really important information from my body.”
It might be supportive to pay attention to what there is to notice at the body level (such as sensations, emotions, body impulses) when you validate your anger. It can also sometimes be really healing for someone else to validate our anger. That could asking a practitioner (such as a therapist or coach), friend, partner or family member to really affirm and validate your anger.
Image description: There is a white background with flowers forming a square shape. Inside the flowers are quotation marks and the quote: “What would it look like if you viewed your anger as important information from your body? Or saw your anger as deeply wise and an important emotion to pay attention to?” At the bottom of the graphic is the website www.tiffany-landry.com
3.) Explore: Tend to your anger.
I can be really supportive to explore your anger in a safe and private container-that way you can express your anger without worrying about the impact of your anger on others. You might prefer to explore your anger by yourself, to be guided by a coach or therapist or to be witnessed in your anger practice by a loved one. Some ways you might explore your anger by yourself are:
Visualize your anger and talk to it. What do you want to tell your anger? What might it want to tell you back?
Hitting a pillow with the option of yelling, screaming or growling.
Throwing something soft such as a hackie sack, small pillow, stuffed animal.
Wringing a towel.
Pushing against a wall and visualizing pushing the thing you’re angry about away.
Do a timed journaling practice to the prompt of “what I’m really angry about is this…” or “what my anger really wants to say is this.”
Making an anger playlist and embodying anger as you dance.
We want to have a safe container to express our anger so we can experience in our bodies that it’s safe to be angry. That could look like doing an anger somatic practice for 10-15 minutes, spending some time integrating that practice and then moving on to the rest of your day.
4.) Permission for anger to be here.
What would it be like to give your anger permission to be here? This can be a really important step in exploring our anger-specifically if it feels challenging to be angry or we’ve receive shameful or harmful messages about being angry. That could be as simple as letting it know that it’s allowed to be here or giving yourself permission to be angry.
Similar to inner child healing it can often be supportive to give anger permission but to let it know that it doesn’t get to run the show. So anger gets to be here and you’re the adult and in charge of placing any boundaries. That could look like telling anger “You are so welcome here. Let’s spend some time connecting and then I’m going to go about my day.” Or saying “I’m so glad you’re here and you’re allowed to be here. I do have a busy workday but I’m going to make sure I tend to you later in the day.”
Permission and boundaries are an important combination when working with emotions that feel challenging.
Image description: Over a beige background there is a wheel graphic divided into four parts. At the top of the graphic the title reads “4 Ways To Connect To Your Anger" in black text. Next to each section of the week there are four graphics that show a dark haired woman with a magnifier glass, a red haired woman hugging herself, a graphic of a brain being angry, a brown haired girl crossing her arms. The text in the wheel reads: 1.) investigate your relationship to anger. 2.) Validate your anger. Ask yourself: “what if my anger is important information.” 3.) Explore your anger through somatic practices, journaling and more. 4.) Give your anger permission to be here. At the bottom of the graphic is the website www.tiffany-landry.com
The power & magic of anger work.
I personally love working with my private clients on exploring their anger because it is so powerful to witness the healing the happens. Sometimes anger work is soft and looks like validating that it’s okay to be angry. While other times it’s fierce and furious and gets to growl "No!” to all the times we didn't get to say no. Sometimes anger work looks like doing somatic boundary work to repair the times when a boundary got violated.
It might be supportive to notice what it feels like when you tend to your anger and validate that your anger makes so much sense. So often our anger has important messages about our boundaries, our healing and our needs.
Thank you for reading!
I hope this blog post was supportive in your own journey of exploring your anger. If you’d like please feel free to share any reflections in the comments.
The information contained in this blog post is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or mental health advice. The information provided is not a substitute for advice from a qualified professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. We expressly recommend that you seek advice from a professional familiar with your specific situation.
Tiffany Landry is a queer autistic coach and trauma resolution practitioner. She works with queer and autistic clients in her program The Autistic Mentorship. Tiffany also writes a newsletter on Substack called The Queer Autistic Newsletter.