Navigating Anger and Disgust
Working with anger and disgust will forever change your relationships and your relationship with yourself.
Repression of these emotions is what kills our relationships, and our sense of safety in our own bodies.
Repression of these emotions leads to depression and the oppression of our life force energy.
Living a life where we feel like we have agency, choice, and sovereignty is a side effect of being intimate with our anger and disgust.
Living a life full of pleasure, deep restoration and purpose may seem contrary to tapping into rage and disgust but it is actually one of the most necessary steps towards freedom in our bodies.
Living a life full of belonging and the intimacy we crave is a direct result of integrating these parts of ourselves.
A lack of connection to our anger bleeds into everything that we do.
If you identify as a people pleaser I can guarantee you have repressed anger that seethes under the surface.
If you feel needy for having needs, say yes when you mean no…
If you live in the land of perfectionism, always trying to get it right just so you don’t have to deal with the shame of not knowing the answer or needing help…
Stew in frustration or rage, never really doing anything with it (unless it’s passive-aggressive), and secretly hold it in, trying not to explode.
Feel like you can’t access your anger or feel like you are not an “angry person”…
Or you feel quite volatile, that anger is scary and uncontrollable, and you lash out at people inappropriately (sorry customer service people and pardon the road rage!) …
If you will do anything and everything to avoid conflict…
If you have a strong inner critic that bleeds you dry of your sanity…
Find yourself picking fights when everything is calm…
Have a list of resentments as long as your to-do list…
Then it is very likely there is a bubbling lava river of repressed anger flowing through your veins.
Disgust on the other hand is really confusing, hard to identify, and can spiral us into shame.
We can feel disgusted towards people we love and feel confused about what that means about our relationship.
We can feel disgusted with our own behaviour, body or feelings.
Disconnection from disgust makes it nearly impossible to know what we need, like or want.
Disgust conveys something REALLY important about how our environment is or was affecting us.
What many people don’t realize is that this emotion is a powerful ally when we’re violated, oppressed, and abused.
It comes up in response to people we perceive as being toxic to our wellbeing, in situations where deep trust and love have been betrayed or where we sense that something that is happening could be potentially threatening to our wellbeing.
Repressed disgust stemming from trauma or abuse often shows up as anxiety and depression rather than the emotion itself but processing the emotion allows our nervous system to return to a more regulated way of being and digests the shame that can accompany it.
Disgust and Anger are primal, innate impulses, here to liberate us from living a life that isn’t our own.
They are tools of discernment and provide an internal compass of safety, preference, and choice.
When disgust and anger are not processed we internalize those emotions and carry around feelings of disgust and rage towards ourselves or act them out in our relationships.
These internalized feelings affect our self-esteem, sense of self, and dictate the ways we treat ourselves or how we allow people to treat us.
When we have only been shown examples of these emotions as dangerous, and manipulative, or that they result in being punished or rejected, naturally we do everything we can to avoid them because we have developed an association that these are harmful emotions that bring danger.
What’s actually true is that these were harmful expressions of emotions.
Learning healthy expressions of anger and disgust are game-changers for all of your relationships — be it your boss, your partner, or your Mother and most importantly, to yourself.
On February 9th I am hosting a 2-hour (free) online Masterclass that will teach you how to work with anger and disgust and as a result it will forever change your relationships and your relationship to yourself.
This workshop will teach you how to get in touch with your HEALTHY aggression and disgust and disentangle the beliefs you have about what it means to express these emotions.
https://mailchi.mp/davinamackenzie/boundaries
We will explore these emotions through the lens of the nervous system and play with the somatics of what anger and disgust can tell you about your needs, values, and preferences to gently guide you to areas of healing and recovery.
Reading this after February 9th? Get in touch at davina@davinamackenzie.com and I will send you the link to the workshop!
