@beingbettertoday

5 months ago

Psych student here: From a psychological viewpoint, anger is meant to be an "in the moment" feeling. Here's an example of what I mean: You're standing but your feet are glued to the ground; you cannot move anywhere. A stranger walks towards you, getting closer and closer. you start to feel uneasy and uncomfortable. You ask them to step away, but they don't; they just keep getting closer. So close until now the tips of your noses are touching. What feelings are you experiencing right now? Is your body feeling warm? Are your cheeks are flushed? What about your heart rate? Is it increasing? And you palms? Are they sweaty, or maybe clenched into a fist? - THIS is anger. You ask one last time for the stranger to move away, but again, they say, "No." How do you get them to move if you can't? You decide to firmly push them away from you.

Now that the stranger is no longer in your personal space, how do you feel now? No doubt your heart rate goes down, your body begins to cool, and you can finally take a big cleansing breath. The anger is suddenly gone. Why? Because you took action in the moment to ease it. What would have happened if you didn't act? What if you had allowed for the stranger to stay in such close proximity to you? Those feelings of anger would have intensified the longer you wait to act. If you wait long enough, and those feelings turn into rage. What happens if you decide to act when you feel rage? Those actions become far more aggressive and violent. Perhaps you would have decided to punch the stranger in the head not once, but multiple times, causing severe injury to them. Yes, that also would have achieved the goal of getting them out of your personal space, but at what cost?

You see, when a person doesn't take action in the moment anger bubbles up, this leads to repression, or, pushing that anger down. This can turn into a habit. When we should be naturally expressing our anger when its the appropriate time, we choose not to time and time again. Those forms a build up of layered anger which transform into rage.

Rage is a different beast altogether because it fuels things like resentment and hate. If we don't properly process rage, it will plague us for years, making it difficult to have stable relationships with family, friends and coworkers because we lack adequate skills to resolve conflicts.

In the wild, after a fight or tense moments, animals literally shake off any lingering angry energy and remaining tension from the body as a way to impede these things from being held in to weigh them down in the future. In theory, humans need to do the same, but because we live in a world that's dictated by social norms, physically "shaking off" negative, angry energy would feel silly, or look embarrassing (However, if you can do it, please GO FOR IT!). Holding onto anger only generates stress and tension in the body and keeps it there for years and years if not released - Leading to neck and shoulder pain, headaches, and muscle and joint pain. IT'S JUST NOT WORTH IT!

Somatic therapy is a phenomenal way to process this tension and chip away at accumulated rage. I hope this helps anyone who is struggling with any of the aforementioned feelings discussed in this comment. We all deserve to be set free from anything/everything holding us down from living life to the fullest.

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