Anger's Shadow

By Christine Waddell

My client, called Jane for this article, was terrified to drive on the freeway. Not because of how dangerous freeway traffic has become, but because she herself had become one of the dangers. Powerful, frightening urges to plow into cement embankments, swerve into other cars or oncoming traffic arose out of nowhere. Jane was completely baffled as to where these urges were coming from. She'd always been a safe driver with low insurance rates due to an excellent driving record. She'd never been in an automobile accident but was afraid she was soon going to cause one. She came to me referred by a friend who was a former client. She'd had almost a year of hypnosis and behavioral therapy attempting to master these urges and the fear of fear of driving they caused. Both had helped enough to get her into her car and across town on side streets but whenever she had to venture onto the freeway, the frightening urges returned. She felt helpless and was losing hope that it would ever change. Every time she got in her car and had to travel any distance, it was an exhausting ordeal leaving her shaken and despondent. She was curtailing her social and professional activities whenever possible out of avoidance.

My first question after listening carefully to her and observing her body language, her breathing and facial expressions was "What are you angry about?" She looked at me baffled, as if wondering why I was suddenly changing the subject. "I'm not angry!" she said with subtle force in her voice. "I just want this to stop." This, she said with a plaintive moan. I understood how frightened and out of control she felt. I also understood, as a Reichian, the power of unconscious, unacknowledged - therefore unexpressed - anger could be to project itself unrecognizably into thoughts and urges that could blind-side, seeming disconnected or unrelated to the self. They often also frighten or alienate others. When we're cut off from healthy, appropriate anger, we're also estranged from a core vital energy source. Anger then becomes destructive and enacts itself in inexplicable ways, outside of our volitional control.

I've found women to be at far greater risk from this kind of disconnected anger then men. Males have far more socially acceptable opportunities to discharge anger than females do - in sports and competitive exchanges with other men. Aggression, seen as a male trait, makes anger more 'natural' in men. Sorrow is more socially accepted, 'natural' in women and tends to get them stuck in the more 'tender' emotions, while suppressing their 'unacceptable' anger - even today after all our guided and misguided attempts at 'equalizing' gender roles, pay scales, etc. Although it is true that females and males have a slightly different sized limbic area of the brain (where our mammalian ability to relate, bond, feel emotion lives) we're all human mammals first, and hence all need to feel and express the entire range of human emotion. When men can't feel and express sorrow, it puts their well-being and immune systems at risk. The same is true for women and anger.

My next question for Jane was, "Indulge me for a moment: If you were angry about something, what would it be?" She looked down and away thinking quietly for a moment. Then, said "Well..." and as she began talking about what she'd be angry about IF she were angry, her voice got stronger, her face became more animated, her breathing fuller. Jane was suddenly more alive. Then she visibly collapsed and muttered something like, "what's the point, this has nothing to do with why I keep fantasizing about crashing my car." I asked her if there were a connection would she be willing to explore it? Suddenly she was frustrated with me. "Why wasn't I going to help her? Why was I leading her around in circles? Why had she wasted her time coming to me in the first place?" I asked her if she could feel her anger now and she said no, she just didn't see the point.

"You're frustrated with me, aren't you?" I asked. She said "Well, I guess I'm a little annoyed, but I'm NOT angry and I just don't know what this has to do with anything." I asked if she would just trust me for a moment longer and pause to feel what the annoyance felt like in her body. There was a quick flash of muted exasperation in her eyes, then she closed them tightly. I quietly coached her through sensing into her body. When ready, she reported her chest feeling tight and uncomfortable, like something was trapped there, her throat was tight and her upper back and neck hurt. I noticed she didn't want to look at me. I sensed she felt some embarrassment. Her body sensations were confirming that the fight/flight nervous system was indeed activated. I quietly explained that her sensations were normal as were all her feelings, even the ones she wasn't used to experiencing and acknowledging. That it was safe to feel them here with me in this context and even to explore why they felt so threatening. She began to cry - at first softly, then deeply. Finally, she began talking about her father and his attacks of rage, how terrifying they were to her as a young child. I asked if she remembered ever making a decision not to ever get angry 'like that'. She looked up stunned and said, "Oh my goodness, yes but I haven't thought about it in years. I was probably only 6 or 7. He'd just broken a chair and something glass. My mom was crying while she cleaned it up and I thought: I'll never make her or anyone feel like this. Ever."

She was quiet for a moment and I let the silence deepen to give her room to feel the importance of that decision and how it reverberated forward in time, locking up any angry feelings she would have in her future. When she looked at me with some recognition, I explained that frustration like she'd briefly felt towards me when it seemed I wasn't "helping" is, in Reichian terms, a secondary emotion. The primary is anger. Other secondaries off this primary are resentment, irritation, annoyance, and so on. Sometimes we are far more comfortable with the secondary emotions when we can't admit to the primary. This made sense to Jane. I was then able to explain how anger we've separated ourselves from and refused to feel can leak out in unsuspecting, sometimes frightening ways. This made sense to her as well. From here it wasn't much of a leap to begin explaining how safe it was to work with anger "Out, not At." In other words, no one is targeted and for many people this feels safe - finally - to blow off steam, release the valve on the pressure cooker so to speak. We talked about the various ways to do that, using the mat, safe things to hit, freeing the voice to make angry sounds, etc., and why this is so freeing and healthy for the organism. How it begins to turn direct, in a healthy, safe way, feelings that have been suppressed. Once they are direct, there's no more danger of them leaking or bursting out dangerously. Once they are moving, I further explained, we begin to get in touch with memories that are connected to this suppressed anger so we can finally process those feelings and begin to live more in present time.

Jane sighed with relief, a big, full deep body breath, for the first time in our session. This to me, as a somatic practitioner, is the body's acknowledgment that it's in the presence of the truth and it is safe to proceed. Our first session came to an end with Jane feeling much lighter, some realizations having dawned about what was actually going on with her. She'd made some very useful connections to driving and anger, recalling her father's crazy driving when he was angry and how frozen she'd become in the backseat, terrified that he was going to kill them all by crashing. I explained that we're often compelled to recapitulate experiences where we felt completely out of control in order to regain connection with an abandoned self back in the traumatic experience. It doesn't make logical sense perhaps but it's the psyche's way of regaining some sense of self in the experience. She felt something in her had been compelled to recapitulate her father's angry driving in her own vehicle, but until now it had been completely unconscious. Now she was really looking forward to doing the work that would get her in touch with her own anger in a healthy and safe way. She was a quick study and understood the connection this could have to her vitality and power, and would eventually putting her at ease behind the wheel.

We worked for about six months using breathwork and other techniques that helped her free up her vital energy and many feelings she'd suppressed along with anger before her days of relaxed driving returned. Her frightening urges in the car soon became nothing but a memory. She'd surfaced a number of issues we explored together that all stemmed from her discomfort and suppression of any powerful feelings. Repression has no discernment, and once the lid goes down on one thing - like anger - a lot gets stuffed down with it. She accessed and worked through these issues easily because the source was all the same. This work continued for perhaps another 6 months beyond her ease with driving and she discovered more openness with the whole range of emotions, including her own sexual expression. One of the "side" benefits is that as her vitality and sense of self increased, so did a buoyant self-assertiveness. By the time we brought our sessions to an end, she had applied for the job she wanted in a more creative position than she'd ever allowed herself to dream about having. Part of our completion process was her accepting the new position and a salary that reflected her true abilities!

Someday I'll write the article that delineates the connection between anger release, assertiveness, healthy sexuality and creativity. But for now I'll say one of the things I enjoy most about working somatically and directly with the emotional body is that it is so very simple and direct because the body cannot lie, our human feelings are so universal and sincerely healthy when not thwarted and subjugated that once we access our deeper truth, the yearning to express in a natural, authentic, vibrant, yet safe way takes over. It's like watching knots untie themselves - given the right atmosphere, and a few gentle nudges here and there.

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