Perceiving Anger
By Bart Sharp
Anger is one of the easiest emotions to perceive inside of ourselves. If we are a beginner and learning the language of the body through emotions; perceiving your anger is a good place to start. The fact is we have been doing emotions most of our life; the difference now is we wish to experience them where the likely strategy earlier in life was not wanting to perceive what was occurring inside.
While you are in the beginning stages of learning what the sensations of emotions feel like inside; ask your body, “Body everything I have done not to feel my emotions, including anger. I ask you, can you begin to reveal them to me?” When we ask for an awareness to occur the body will do its best to show us. We are opening a Pandora’s Box when asking such a question because the body is an infinite source of consciousness, therefore when we ask the body to show us emotions it has the potential for showing us in a profound way. The most important thing to remember is we are having an awareness and not going back and reliving the emotions. They are simply energies re-experienced. We will begin to experience emotions in the present moments more and repressed memories will begin to emerge.
The blockage we most likely created with negative emotions is the idea, we do not like feeling them and we most likely did not know how to process them in the first place. Fewer of us were taught as children how to understand and communicate her feelings. We have anger put upon us or have experiences that made us angry the naturals response would be a judgment such as; “This is awful. I do not like this anger.”
With the judging point of view we create the path to repression of emotions. The next time anger came, it was likely we did a similar judgment. If we grew up in a family that negative emotions were how parents taught their children; will be likely we developed a pattern with anger. Some of the strategies would be to repress it by not feeling it over we would repress it in a dominating/aggressive way by projecting anger out to others. Either strategy avoids feeling, understanding, and processing the anger in the situation it was created.
As a result we adults have a pattern develop to not feel emotions. Who would blame us, we did the smartest thing with the limited amount of options we had as children. Acknowledgment we did nothing wrong as a child we deserved our own forgiveness is very important. We forgive us we open the door to seeing the past in a more objective way. Forgiveness opens us to seeing the pass beyond judging and not nullifying anyone in the family. No one was wrong, everyone was in a dysfunctional place, and their own pains. The more open to these points of view the mind becomes less reactionary in the body awareness can reveal repressed anger more easily.
Our job is to pay attention to our daily life for when we were upset. Find a quiet place we can focus easily and ask, “What were my feelings like today when _____happened?” “Can my body showed me where I am holding the anger in relation to this situation?” Set and perceive your body especially in the abdominal area as it is the most common place to hold anger. Pay attention and let the process unfold. Even recall the incidence and feel what occurs inside. Placed no fear of judgment upon the situation but simply listen within. You are beginning to see reality in a more real sense in relation to your emotions.
The practice your skills to feel anger will improve, you have the opportunity to relax and to yourself with a new level while being present with your anger. This is the beginning process to be present with your feelings so be relaxed and allowed him to have a place in your mind/body awareness. From this point we can evolve with anger in a new profound way.