How to release rage safely?

When your life has been filled with disappointment and loss, a significant amount of rage can be built up inside. Rage at missing out, rage at being hurt so deeply. Rage at feeling unable to enjoy life. Rage at those people and events that hurt you, held you back or stopped you in some way from living life how you thought it should be.

AngerThe truth is everyone will experience loss and challenge. Life does contain ups and downs, good times and sad times, joyful and painful times. The rage is just blocked emotion. You have deep grief and sadness inside and you are stopping yourself from feeling it, it builds, it becomes a pressure, a weight, a burden on your shoulders pushing for your attention, asking you to feel it, to give in to it, to grieve what you lost and let go of the pain.

The more you resist it, the stronger the rage gets and the more easily you are triggered by day to day events. If your reaction is over the top, you know it is the pain underneath toppling out. The day to day events provides you with an opportunity to diffuse your bomb, to let out a little bit of steam so you don’t self destruct and explode.

When rage is felt at these extremes, it is dangerous and has the potential for harm to occur to others. It could be random strangers or people you love. When the top comes off the bottle it can be volatile and venomous. The challenge then becomes how to release this rage with as little damage to self or others as possible.

There are many ways to release the rage. Some people like to yell or punch a punching bag. You can run and stomp it out as you go. You can draw how you feel and let the energy move from within you out onto the paper.

You need to titrate it, to let it out bit by bit. Another powerful way to do it is to use Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to help release the stress, tension and trauma out of your body. You may have noticed that when you are enraged you start to shake. Your hands might shake with rage wanting to let it out, express it.

This is a sign that your autonomic nervous system is overloaded. It is highly activated and locked in fight/flight mode. You need to help it calm back down into a relaxed state. That’s what TRE does. It helps the nervous system to release that built-up tension. It unwinds the wound up tight muscles so that you can breathe more deeply and relax back down.

Whatever has triggered you on the outside may have been quite small. It’s the built-up energy and unexpressed emotion within you that leads to the overreaction, to blowing your top.

TRE is just a set of simple exercises to activate your body’s natural stress release mechanism. Just as your body automatically tenses up when a threat is sensed, it also has a process for it to relax back down. It’s just that most of us don’t know about it, so we don’t allow our body to naturally balance back up.

It does so through tremoring. Your muscles will tremor and move to use up the cortisol and adrenaline released in your body to prepare you to fight or run away. So your legs and arms may move, shake to use up this energy as if you were running or fighting. Your torso will twist and contort as well as shake mirroring defensive movements to avoid being hit.

When threat occurs we automatically contract. We hunch over to protect our self. We might stiffen and stand tall to show our strength resisting the urge to run away. All of this contraction, stiffness and hypervigilant energy stays in the body if we don’t actually fight or run. It’s this that leads to our stiff muscles, aching shoulders and backs. TRE is a natural process that you can use to help your body release this tension and calm back down.

If you’d like to learn more about TRE visit the TRE page of my website. There you will see what it looks like to allow your body to tremor and discharge the energy. You can learn TRE in a session or two, then you can use it as a self-care tool at home whenever you like for the rest of your life. It’s well worth doing for the sake of those you love and who hate to see you in pain or bare witness to your rage when it comes out in destructive ways. Give yourself and those you love freedom from that. TRE can help.

You can also use visualisation and ritual. Visualise a burial ceremony for the rage and acknowledge the grief underneath it. See a tombstone and grave in front of you, fall to your knees and allow yourself to cry. Cry for what you have lost, for what you missed out on, for what you haven’t been able to do. Weep for those you loved who left you or died when you were young. Release the pain to Mother Earth, she can take it.

Surrender to the process and let yourself grieve. You truly are mourning the aspects of life that hurt you. Be gentle with yourself over coming days and honour that grave and what it represents. Visualise yourself visiting each day and putting fresh flowers on it, caring for it, pulling up weeds and tidying up. Each day you go your pain will be less, you will find a sense of peace and belonging, a feeling of coming home to yourself.

Be humble and quiet and let yourself be strengthened. Love and light will fill the space in you that had been suffocating in pain. With that released you can now stand strong, welcome in the happier parts of you – your inner child – and you can start to explore life anew from this place of greater peace and freedom from the past.

You are not really angry at life, you are just hurting and need to release the grief. You can do so safely with little damage to self or others. Love and honour yourself and those you interact with. No one deserves your rage, your judgement or blame. Each has done the best they could. Each is coping with their own internal struggles. If they could have done better they would have. Let it go and accept what is. Choose love and peace in all you do and you will find happiness. It is inevitable and it will happen. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (30 June 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

What is the healthiest response to loss of a loved one?

Peaceful-Radio-slider-1The healthiest response to loss of a loved one is to allow whatever emotions you are feeling to flow through you and be released. Death is not annihilation of the person. It is the liberation and expansion of the spirit back to its fullness.

We can only access a small portion of our true self while in the body. We are limited due to our minds, egos, and the distractions of the flesh, which stop us connecting with God, our higher self and innate wisdom. All of that comes back together at the point of death. It is freedom from suffering and re-immersion into bliss and peace, knowing with full certainty that you are loved, accepted and complete, because love is all there really is on the other side. That is what you are immersed in, the vibration of God which is love, so it is a peaceful and joyous occurrence.

For those left behind when someone dies there is temptation to be angry at God for letting it happen; there can be guilt for not seeing the person enough; shame over any resentments you still hold towards the person and of course sadness at your loss. The sadness really is about those who stay, not those who go. It is saying “I will miss having you here to talk to and see, I love you and didn’t want you to go. I am sad for my loss, not yours. You are at peace, with God and your family. You are in a better place than I. I wish you well and I will soldier on in this place, till I too join you in that place”.

The sadness can also be tinged with fear of your own death or others you love. Know we will all die, but we only do so when it is our time – it is planned, pre-set before we are birthed. We have a destiny to fulfil and we cannot avoid it. No one dies before their allotted time. No one goes unexpectedly – they know intuitively, deep within, when it is to occur.

Our time on Earth serves a purpose for our evolution and growth. We come to learn / master certain lessons or experiences, to round out our soul’s knowing of all that is. In each lifetime we experience certain events or aspects of the whole. We keep doing this until we have experienced it all. In one lifetime we may be the villain, in another the hero, and yet another the victim. We get to experience it all. This can only occur if we can end each lifetime once the mission is completed, so we can go on to the next. There is no oblivion or nothingness. Life goes on in a different form and then a different body. So there is no real death. Life continues.

Your loved ones watch you from the other side. They send you love, they cheer you on, they sit beside you when you cry and despair. They are not gone and you are not alone. Know they continue to exist and they want you to enjoy your life as much as possible, to make the most of the gift of life on Earth. So do not wallow in pain and grief for too long. Let the emotions flow.

Talk to your loved ones still here about how you feel or a counsellor if necessary. Spend time in nature and let it soothe your soul. Meditate and connect in with the silence and your heart. Feel your heart and its messages. Let yourself rest and recuperate. Look after yourself well with nourishing food, time for sleep and exercise. Remember to live, it’s okay for you to live on. You don’t have to die too. Don’t shut down or numb out, out of loyalty or longing to join your loved one. They don’t want this. They don’t want their death to harm you. They want you to live fully, to embrace life in honour of them. They want their influence in your life to have led you on to greater things, not hindered you or slowed you down. It helps to say “I will live fully and honour your memory. I will live a while longer, then I will join you at the right time. It is not up to me and I surrender to God’s plan”.

Most of all it is important to honour your needs and emotional reactions. Don’t suppress your feelings or deny them. This just buries them in your body which can eventually lead to illness.

Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) can help you to release the tension, stress and trauma out of your body. It can help you to stay calm or to calm back down after emotional releases. Don’t let yourself tighten up, shut off and deaden within. No need for you to become numb. No need to push away your emotions, your true feelings. Feel them. Honour them. Support yourself as you move through layer upon layer of buried tension and emotion.

The grieving process empties out of you a lot of old grief, anger, rage and hurt from experiences that have devastated you throughout your life. That’s why it can feel so intense. It is like the flood gates open enabling it all to rise to the surface to be seen, felt and released, to be laid to rest so you can have peace.

If you fight against all of the tension and emotion rising you create frozen trauma energy in your body. You lock the pain into your muscles and cells, hence our muscles tighten, contracting around the trauma to hold it down. This results in dis-ease and physical pain. Our muscles hurt being clenched tight. Better to use TRE to help you to naturally release, to shake out all of this tension, so that your body can relax, be calm and it is easier for you to move through all that arises when you have lost someone you love.

If you have to go to work or care for young children, then make sure you do take some time each day for yourself, to sit with your feelings and honour your needs. You can’t give constantly to others and not burn out. You need to also receive – let other’s assist you. Let go of your perfectionistic tendencies – it is okay for the house to be a little dirtier than normal; it’s okay to eat take-away food for a while, rather than cooking yourself.

Honour yourself and your needs. Be kind to and comfort yourself, like you would if it was a good friend going through the experience. Be that friend to yourself and let people in. Don’t isolate yourself thinking people won’t understand. They will. Everyone goes through this at times – be it the death of a pet; a close friendship or relationship; or death of a loved one. It is all similar – a dying of what was known and a moving into the unknown. That is what people fear, the unknown. They worry what will occur and whether or not they will be able to handle it. Know that you will. Whatever comes you will handle it. You are strong enough. Otherwise it would not be occurring.

It is through adversity we learn to accept, surrender, let go of control, to open up to God and the mysteries of the Universe. It is through challenge that we see how strong we can be, when we need to be or events force us to be. It all leads to our spiritual growth and evolution and that is what we are here for. Life on Earth continues until we have learned what we wanted to learn, what we chose as our focus, prior to incarnation. When the learning is complete, so are we, and we let go of the body and return home to God, to our fullness and to those who came before us. It is a celebration and graduation all at once. A time of joy and love, so choose peace when someone you love crosses over. Know they have gone home and they are okay. Honour yourself and your needs and know it is all happening as it is meant to. There are no accidents or mistakes. Trust in life and keep living. It is not your time to go yet. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (12 Aug 2015).

Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.