Healing Hate and Rage

[Michelle]

I've come to the point in my development where feelings of hate, rage and anger are surfacing. My strategy during the last days and weeks has been to acknowledge my feelings, feel them, and release them through crying, yelling and moaning, doing sports, and beating up my bed.

This is definitely a big step in a big new bright direction for me. This I know.

Still, I find myself in the midst of the darkness, where, it seems to me many people choose not to go.

I would love to hear from anyone who has been through this. If you have any ideas on how to facilitate the emotional integration process or ideas on what I can expect once the storm is over, I would appreciate it.

[C33]

I don t know if there is a particular circumstance or a person that did you wrong that triggered those feelings.

There is a lot of pressure to be proper,polite and lovey dovey at all times, while repressing dark feelings.

When I take the elevator down to the dark side of life, I love to surround myself with books and movies that can help me release my anger and frustration. I watch movies and cheer on all the baddies, I listen to loud music and dance as inappropriately as possible, I read books that deal with dark,manipulative characters. It's like being bad by proxy, at the same time, noone is being hurt! Yet, in 1 hour and a half, I can be the vengeful bride in Kill Bill, or the sadistic Hannibal Lecter, and dump all my ugly feelings on fictional characters.

[Pegasus]

I’ve experienced some of what you’re describing, about a year ago. It takes a while to pass. It might be helpful to read Harriet Lerner’s The Dance of Anger. Anger is your body and mind’s way of telling you that something is not right in your life. It often occurs when you experience a conflict in values or when you’ve been deeply hurt. Go ahead and make some changes and see if your energy shifts too.

[ReallyGoodIdeas]

Hi Michelle,

I used EFT, (use it for everything) but I vividly remember standing in the shower screaming, and tapping away! It works the best I know.

I grew up learning that expressing anger was not something that nice girls did! So expressing anger was hard for me. It turned into sadness very quickly and I'd be in tears before I knew it. Very common.

When I do EFT with people who find themselves feeling angry, it moves to sadness as soon as you get the anger down. So sadness will be in behind it. Anger is you understanding that someone has trespassed. Someone has hurt you in fact, and recognising that is good.

Go for it Michelle!!

hazel

[Michelle]

Thanks all for your replies.

Yes, this is a rage which has been buried and held in for far too long - since childhood. I know it is healthy to express it now (am doing it in the shower a lot, too :-), and yet it is so uncomfortable and painful.

That's all. It is nice to know that others have been through it.

[Dharma]

Keep doing what you're doing. Expression opens space.

The only tips I can think are to blame people you want to blame and use ease in your process.

When I'm in a rage I blame God a lot and also Vywamus, my teacher. I know it's a load of crap to blame them for my current situation, but it's inside me and I let it out. After that passes I let go of the denial and tell myself that, yes, I do create all my experience....

Ease. Ease is one of those primary building blocks of everything. Its vibration is everywhere throughout creation. You can always tune into it and resonate with it. This may help your process to be just as effective but less uncomfortable and painful. You'll have to hold space open (1) for the ease itself and (2) for the unknown to come in and move you in a different way. You may get the feeling to do something weird right before or during a fit of rage. Something you wouldn't normally do. If you can trust yourself at that moment, follow your instinct and do what you need to do.

For instance, you might be in a rage and suddenly feel you should have your boyfriend hold you like you are his child, running his fingers through your hair. You may have to give him direction to how you need it done.

If you want to say something to yourself in meditation or whenever you forget that ease is available, say "I choose to experience ease now". Find that vibration. Its always there, you are always vibrating it.

Hope this helps.

[Michelle]

Hey Pete,

This "ease" thing is new to me. I will try it ...

I think you makes good points. I, too, get so angry at my teacher and the world while at the same time knowing I am responsible. It is helpful to hear that you just let yourself feel what you feel since my mind always wants to "correct" what I am feeling.

The "weird" has never been a problem though :-).

[DivaLion]

Hi Michelle,

I went through very much the same thing you are going through...after a childhood and adolescence spent turning rage inwards on myself and denying its existence, I began to let myself feel and explore and accept anger.

One of my most useful tools was my journal. The key was ensuring that it was totally private so that I could say *anything* in it, even ugly and hateful things. It felt like telling someone even though no one would ever see it but me. I usually wrote every day, three pages (sides of a page) a sitting.

Another was a CD I made for myself of "mad music". It was full of the rawest, screamiest, angriest, loudest music I could find. (Tip: Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff" is GREAT for a mix like this!) I played it in the car when I was alone, and I would blast the volume and scream along with the lyrics and pound on the steering wheel at stoplights. Sometimes I'd just sit in the car parked away from people and play it. (Windows always up, of course!) It always burned up the most consuming feelings of rage and let me get enough equilibrium to function normally afterward. Back then, I played it sometimes every day. I haven't played it at all now in a few years, haven't needed to.

I'm Pagan, so another approach I took was to create a catharsis ritual for myself and some of my spiritual community who felt they also needed it. We literally borrowed a cabin in the middle of a hundred acres of nothingness and led people on a guided meditation based on the Descent of Inanna to an open field with a huge bonfire. Using "mad music" and loud chants and stomping and provocations I worked everyone up to an intense emotional state and then everyone went into their own space to scream and vent and cry and beat the ground and let it all hang out with no inhibitions at all. Afterwards we had a grounding altar where everyone sat and had a little food and water and soothing music and hugs and got a chance to come down and reconnect with each other in a loving way. It was a pretty profound experience for everyone, but of course we did this with a couple of experienced people staying outside and ready to intervene if anyone needed help, and with stringent rules established to prevent anyone from getting into a conflict with anyone else there. It was actually that experience that made me discover that I no longer needed a catharsis, ironically, and that I could work with that kind of dark furious energy safely and without being consumed by it anymore.

I really found that on a day to day level, I needed to learn to allow myself to be angry and to believe that I had a right to be angry regardless of what the situation warranted. As someone else here mentioned, I also found it helpful to understand anger as a signal pointing to something that needed attention, and learning to deal with the root cause. But I also came to understand anger as energy, as power. It was evidence of my boundaries, of my protectiveness of myself. Appreciating its role and its value really helped me to learn to experience it, accept it, act appropriately on it, and then let it go.

It definitely took a while and a lot of regular purging-- it was like lancing a particularly stubborn boil. Another thing that helped was pouring that energy into creative pursuits. Dancing and writing seemed to be especially good ones for me. Alchemizing that "bad" stuff into art or exercise or something else that benefitted me helped me to appreciate the role anger played in my life and helped me stop avoiding it.

Anyway, long answer, but I hope some of that is helpful to you! Good luck and congratulations on being willing to tap into and deal with that stuff!