Anger is something that’s hard to hide. When we’re internally angry it shows up in many different areas in our lives. In our relationship, in our voice and language, it shows up in other areas we don’t even know about and it most certainly shows up in our health.
The most challenging part is, those that are internally angry have no idea, and push that anger so deep that internal health issues are slowly building which will eventually show up in a nasty way.
I read in a few places there’s a breed of bamboo plant that grows for 7 years under ground, after it breaks the surface it grows significantly in a short amount of time. This is how I see internal anger showing up on our body.
The issue is, we hold in anger for years and years. We don’t deal with it, we don’t find a way to release, we ignore, we push it down and we let that anger build and grow.
When I was doing more one on one work years ago, I asked one of my clients, ‘why are you so angry?’, they said what do you mean? I said, I don’t think your weight issues (that they were unhappy with, not me) has to do with your exercise, I think it has more to do with your anger. Shocked and offended, the conversation ended. A week later they came back to me and asked me what they could do about it.
I suggested they write, don’t think about what it is they should write about, don’t think about releasing anything, just write and keep in mind that anger is deep down hiding in place you haven’t looked in a very long time.
A couple weeks passed and they didn’t want to write, so they didn’t. I kept reminded and offered support. Finally a month or so passed and they came to be with a surprised look on their face when I brought up the writing and anger. They said, I had no idea I’ve been angry at my spouse for this many years!
I’m not going to tell you a miracle story and that, that one writing sessions removed all the anger they’ve been hanging on to for years. Just like it takes time to remove weight we’ve been building on for years, it takes time to remove the anger we’ve been building on as well. It takes time and it takes outlets to release.
In another situation this cyclist rode by us who yelled something at some people that crossed the biked path without looking. The people were hardly in the way, it was almost like the cyclist had so much anger he just had to yell something to release it. It wasn’t just the yelling though, as he sped past it was like this dark, angry cloud of negative energy followed him.
It was very apparent to us, his internal anger needed an outlet and those people are what he used.
One more brief story was with an individual that I had a miscommunication with for a booking. I wrote and apologized explaining how I didn’t exactly understand where the confusion came in. It was a brief message in response but their words jumped out on the screen in anger. The words ‘YOU got the time WRONG’ screamed at me. And you know what, I found out later this individual had many of their own health issues. So maybe they were having a bad day but maybe in that instance anger took over and that’s what came out.
In any of these situations I’d say we don’t know how much anger we hold on to. We don’t meditate or go through breathing exercises to release emotions we push deep down. Sitting with our own thoughts is too scary.
We don’t exercise often enough, even though exercise is the #1 way to reduce the stress in our lives. We think writing about our emotions is ridiculous and that we’re above that or we believe we simply don’t have time.
So what happens, we lash out at our loved ones, we’re miserable in our jobs, home life and or relationships don’t seem to work for us.…
And ultimately without any release of that anger it shows up physically on our bodies which has likely been growing for years and now is a very serious medical condition.
So what I’d like to recommend is understanding we likely all have anger deep down that need to be addressed, it needs to be released and if we don’t make the time we’ll pay the ultimate price at some point in our lives and exchange our health for not taking the time now.
