Can't Get Angry?

It may be really not your fault

Introduction

Over the quarter century or so that I’ve been around the body-based therapy scene, anger has always been a big part of the work. Actually, one reason I went to an intense neo-Reichian centre for years was not because I couldn’t get angry, but because I could!

I figured, with my low self-esteem, that I’d be “useless” at therapy. But, having been an angry young man, I hoped that at least I would be able to do anger.

As I found out, actually expressing anger, as in full-on screaming face-to-face, was very different from feeling enraged at stuff all day. And after the screaming work in the group room was done, I noticed that I could more easily feel vulnerability and cry.

I could access anger and so this provided my way in to therapy.

But there are a whole class of people who never feel anger. And I want to talk about what is likely a big part of the reason for this.

When I was training to be a therapist, we had to take responsibility for all aspects of our life. It’s a cool idea, and good to work towards. But sometimes I feel that it leaves people beating themselves up because they can’t do something or access a certain feeling. I have had this experience and it is not useful.

If you can’t feel anger, or you just never get angry, it may well not be your fault in the slightest. Let me explain.

The age of two is highly significant in infant development. It’s the age when most of us start to scream and shout. They call it the “terrible twos.”

For a parent already on the edge of overwhelm, dealing with a screaming infant can be massively stressful. There can be a wholly understandable desire to really tell the child that it’s not okay to get angry, to make sure they get it.

But there’s an issue with doing this.

The nervous system of a two-year old child knows that if their parents withdraw their care, then it will die. So if we experience our parents as angry with us, our nervous system may thus interpret this as life-threatening. Their anger could be perceived internally as a threat of ostracism - of being thrown out of the home. Throughout our evolutionary history, ostracism would usually mean death for an infant.

Our nervous system will literally shut us down emotionally if it believes that this is necessary to keep us alive. And it will learn to correlate us getting angry with the threat of death.

Can you see where this is heading?

If your nervous system learned to correlate “getting angry” with “death” as an infant, it will likely still be carrying that configuration around now, even though you are an adult.

For such a person, the possibility of getting angry is terrifying. They will develop all sorts of behaviours to avoid any form of social confrontation. They will think over potentially tricky situations for hours, mentally rehearsing who they need to be to not get into a confrontation. They may learn to please others, and accept the role of a “doormat” to avoid having to get angry.

Yes, this is all crazy. But it is what I have seen in people throughout my time as a therapist. And it is absolutely not their fault. It is simply that their nervous system developed a correlation between getting angry and dying when they were a little kid. And it is still operating to that protocol now.

What to do about it?

The person is an adult now. But their nervous system is still behaving as though getting angry, or in some cases any form of outward self-expression, is life-threateningly dangerous. What can we do about this?

Ideally, we need a twofold approach.

Firstly, we need to try and communicate with our nervous system and ask it to stand down on this particular way of trying to keep us safe.

Secondly, we need to affirm to ourselves that we want to now start to experience anger and to find a safe way to do that.

Let’s look at these two in turn.

I am actually not a huge fan of affirmations. I think people often go to far with them and end up giving even more unhealthy control over their personality to their thinking mind. Nevertheless, I think affirmations can be really useful in certain specific cases. And this is one of those.

Shortly after rising, look at your face in the mirror and say out loud “I want to thank you, nervous system, for keeping me safe for all these years. I appreciate you for all your hard work. But now I want you to allow me to feel anger.” Say this slowly five times over, looking yourself in the eyes.

You don’t need to use these exact words if they feel too clunky, or if English is not your first language. But it’s important to first appreciate your nervous system before asking it to relax on this issue.

If you’re skeptical about affirmations, I get it. But consider giving it a try and see if it does something.

When it comes to consciously aligning ourselves with being capable of getting angry, part of that we can also achieve through affirmation. Once again, look at your face in the mirror close-up and repeat slowly five times, “I am ready to experience anger.” Feel your body as you do this, so that you ground the words more deeply within.

The other part is to take some steps towards actually being angry in a safe environment. There are actually some meditations you can do where expressing anger is an element of the process. You may find these in some cities.

Look for Osho Dynamic Meditation. Or the absolute best is the Humaniversity AUM Meditation. The latter allows you to practice face-to-face anger in a safely held environment. You may find them going on in a place near to you.

Otherwise, you can take steps to practice getting angry in your own home. You will need to find a space or time when you can make sound without upsetting others. What’s important when we practice anger alone is to make sound and to move our body, in the manner the exercise requires. The body is vital because anger is rooted in the belly and this is the area we wish to get into.

I have a couple of videos of suitable exercises that you can try online here and online here.

Remember that, when we work with the body, it is better to keep going gently over a longer period of time, than to charge in and try to create a huge change straight away. Your body takes time to open up and we want to go at a pace such that we can process what we dig up without it getting to uncomfortable.

Good luck!