The fact that this is even a question we adults ask is proof of some essential flaw in our education. Every healthy child is able to navigate the different emotions, even before they can name them. I’m not suggesting we should all be crying and screaming our lungs out at any sign of pain or anger or discomfort... But somewhere on the path, rather than learning how to deal with our feelings (better then shooting them off every time), we are conditioned to repress them.

In the past it used to happen in obvious ways... “good girls don’t get angry”, “boys don’t cry” and some other forms of repression that could go as far as physical violence from the parents or adult caretakers. These old ways still happen today, but there are also some modern forms of repression coated in nice well-meant packages, which often create some subtle information in the child’s eager-to-learn system about the wrongness of certain emotions. It’s not my intention here to discuss parenting and child upbringing, I’m more interested in focusing on the results of such programming in our adult lives.

It goes something like this: as a child, I feel anger and express it. By my adult carer’s reaction (which can range from violent physical repression to a simple withdrawal of affection, which is equally hard for a child to bear) I understand that it is not appropriate to express anger. Since it is a feeling that keeps happening and taking me over, I go through this experience again and again, of feeling, expressing and being repressed until I learn to do the repressing job myself, which keeps me safe from the threat of rejection by the adults on whom I depend. I keep repeating this self-repression consistently until it becomes a habit and I will automatically repress my anger in any situation – that became a pattern.

The flaw in this equation is that anger will not stop happening for me, so, every time I feel it and repress it, where does it go? According to the Reichian theory, from which many schools of body-oriented therapy such as Bioenergetics sprang, this energy is kept in the body in form of chronicle tension. This contracted places in our bodies will not allow the natural flow of fluids, energy and feelings to happen. The very tap which was closed to anger now closes to joy, love, pleasure as well. One tap fits all emotions. And closing the tap, life gets really dry.

How do we notice these chronicle tensions? Check for yourself how you notice them in your body. Most commonly we all will have some direct pain or sensation of tension on our shoulders, lower back, legs, etc. Tension hidden on more internal areas will lead to various diseases (have you ever stopped to notice the origin of the word dis-ease? It’s self-explaining...) and on a social level, we will be subject to plenty of distortions in our relationships as we are feeling one thing and expressing another, creating misunderstanding, miscommunication and dis-connection.

Another element in this equation of repressing feelings is that life force (blessed be!) is always trying to manifest in us, so it keeps pushing stronger and stronger for the tap to open again and the flow of life to be freed. In reaction to that we develop stronger ways to “control” our feelings. One of the favourite modern ways is disconnecting. Like in a non-sensical childish peak-a-boo, we will use whatever method to “close our eyes” to what we are feeling: drugs (licit and illicit), internet, food, compulsive shopping, sex, exercise, you name it...

Fact is that every feeling we have gives us some information about what is happening with us, mostly of something we need. If we grew up learning to, instead of repressing our feelings, listen to what they are trying to communicate, we would have the maturity to address that energy of our anger, our sadness, and even our fear to navigate the situation in coherence to our needs. And, since that didn’t happen back then, we need to fix that flaw in the curriculum.

Fixing the flaw

To start that precious path of recovering our capacity to feel and learn to deal with our feelings, we first need to address all the feeling energy stuck in our systems. It’s like a whole basement that has been filled with repressed anger, pain and fear during our entire lifetime. Moving this energy means bringing the stuckness to an end, allowing not only the flow of emotions but of energy, of life itself. There are many techniques so called emotional release to help that movement to happen. Just to name a few: Active Meditations from Osho (especially Dynamic Meditation, No Mind Meditation, Kundalini Meditation, The Mystic Rose Meditation, The Inner Child Meditation), Flushing, Humanivesrity AUM Meditation and other cathartic forms of expression such as punching pillows, cathartic dance, etc.

There are also some schools of therapy that work with emotional release, adding then the processing and integration of the information that came through (Bioenergetics, Five Rhythms, TRE, Primal Therapy, Biodanza, to name a few).

But emotional release is the beginning of the journey, not the answer to the question “what to do with my feelings”. Remember, that part belongs to recovering the capacity we had as children, to access our emotions and express them, allowing our bodies to self-regulate through the free flow of fluids, energy, life. The idea is not that we become children concerning what we feel... As I mentioned, the feelings are communicating something to us, so we must learn to listen and understand the information. A second step is needed to welcome and integrate the feelings. We don’t need to rush to a pillow every time we feel anger and, in fact, once we got back into a flow with our feelings and our energy, that becomes counter-productive.

So, the feeling is there. Rather than wanting to get rid of it, we welcome it and sit with it for a cup of tea, like a wanted guest. At this point slowing down is a major necessity. To be still enough so that our minds get quiet and we can listen to the feeling, without any action, any movement from our part. If we manage to be quiet enough, precious information will come up and that’s when the energy of the feelings become fuel for connected action. Because then you are aware of the need/situation that feeling was pointing to.

Very often anger tells us about something that needs change in our lives, or even in a wider scale of experience, such as social, political, global. Rather than avoiding the anger or throwing it away so that we feel relief (which won’t last long, since the situation that caused it didn’t change), we listen to it and let it lead us to coherent action, which will be fuelled by the energy of the feeling, accessing Potency. There is a major difference in action coming from anger and action coming from the Potency that arises from integrating the energy of anger. The first one contributes to the problem (creates karma) and the second one connects to the flow of life, love and wisdom, form where solution and miracles are available.