Feeling the heat of anger simmering through the veins of your post-divorce life? In this episode, we're going to step into a space where we confront the anger that bubbles up during and after divorce, an emotion too often dismissed or suppressed due to social stigmas. I'm going to teach you more than just how to 'vent', since we all know venting isn't really about allowing or releasing the feeling of anger inside your body.
I'll teach you how to harness your anger and allow it in ways that will empower and transform, as you follow a path for healthy expression and constructive release. But we don't stop there. You're going to leave this episode knowing specific ways to allow and release your anger in a safe way, followed by supporting your emotional wellbeing by knowing how to integrate yourself back into the hear and now.
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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it shows up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.
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Full Episode Transcript:
If you're struggling to get through your divorce because you feel mentally and emotionally completely depleted, then I promise you this podcast is exactly what you need. You are listening to Becoming you Again and I am your host, Karin Nelson, and this is episode number 151. Welcome to Becoming you Again, the podcast to help you with your mental and emotional well-being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the grief and trauma of your divorce. We're going to do that by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life so that your life can be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so happy you're here. Today. I'm going to be talking about anger. I like that. I just paused after the word because I think it's kind of a taboo word for many, many, many, many women in today's world. We are not allowed to say that we're angry, that we feel anger, that something has angered us or made us upset or mad in that way. I think it's kind of important that we talk about this, because I just don't think that there's any emotion that should be off limits for us to feel as humans. We're going to talk about it today on the episode. I'm also going to give you some ideas about how you can release some anger that you might be feeling once you've kind of stepped into the area where you are actually going to allow it. If that sounds like something that you might need or want to do, then I'm just going to give you some ideas on how you could release it safely without needing to react on it, because I think that's where the problem lies and we'll talk about it. Let me just dive in. As a woman going through divorce, it is very possible very probable actually that you have some unreleased or pent up anger. There's many, many different reasons why you could even have anger that you have been holding on to for years. I know I was coached last year it was quite a while ago, but it was sometime middle of last year-ish, I think. I was getting coached by my coach and we were talking about a situation in my marriage years and years and years ago. She asked me how do you feel about that, or something. I don't even specifically remember what she asked me and I was like it's just so frustrating. She goes are you frustrated or are you angry? First of all, nobody has ever asked me that question with regards to is it just frustration? Because frustration is a mild form a very, very, very mild form, in my opinion, of anger. We can be frustrated about many, many things that are going on in our lives on a day-to-day basis, but anger is so much stronger than that and I really had to think about it when my coach asked me that question, and decide for myself was what I was feeling, what was what I was holding onto? Was this emotion that I had pushed so deep down inside of me for years? Was it just frustration or was there something more? And I came to the realization, through my own inner searching and my own self-trust, that what I had been pushing down for so, so long was deep-seated anger that I was not allowing myself to even feel, to even be present inside of me for many, many different reasons, one of those being fear around the judgment of allowing myself to feel angry, to be angry. So you may have some unreleased, pent up anger for many, many different reasons. Right, it could be because of what you've gone through with your ex. It could be something that happened in your marriage, it could be because you were treated poorly or unfairly or because of any kind of emotional, financial, physical or otherwise abuse. It could be because of infidelity. It could be because of being lied to. It could be for something that has happened to you during your divorce, something that happened to you when you were a child, something that happened to you at school like. There are so many, so many different reasons why you may have some anger that you're holding onto, some anger that you have ignored, like I did, for many, many years. But I want you to know that, no matter what the reason, you may have some unresolved anger, one majorly big factor in you not allowing yourself to release safely the anger that you feel is most likely due to the socialization of you as a woman. Women in Western society are not allowed to be angry. We are not allowed to be angry. We are judged very harshly for it. Just think about how many angry Karen videos or angry black woman videos we have seen being shared all over the internet. Now, I'm not saying that these women who are in these videos should be acting the way they're acting or like whatever. I don't even wanna judge that idea. I just want you to think about how harshly these women are judged. These women are being judged as crazy, as idiotic, as out of control, as too emotional, and, as women, the scariest part of that, the scariest part of feeling anger and allowing anger, is knowing, is knowing that if we allow ourselves to feel that anger, that judgment that we feel for those angry Karens and that other people feel for those angry Karens or any other angry woman you've ever seen in a movie or on TV or read about in a book or anything like that, we are afraid that we will be judged just as harshly as we are judging them and as society is judging them. We will be outcast and we will be cancelled, because the outcasting and the canceling is relentless to women who are angry. And so, because of this idea and lots of other reasons, but this is a main one, right? This is one of the main reasons why we, as women, don't allow ourselves to feel anger is because of this idea that is so fundamentally scary. And so, instead of feeling the anger, instead of releasing it in a very safe way some people like to call it, you know, sacred rage release or something like that but instead of allowing ourselves to feel the anger, we just pretend like we're not angry at all, like I did. Oh, I'm just so frustrated over this thing that was going on. That is so angering and so maddening, and yet I was diminishing how I was feeling and calling it frustrated, which is just so classic of a woman in today's society. Right, okay, so we push the anger down into our darkest depths of ourselves because we don't want that anger to surface. We don't want to feel that judgment to be cancelled, to feel that relentless humiliation that may possibly come with feeling and releasing the anger. But what I want you to know is that anger is just an emotion, and I say just because we, as humans, feel a vast and wide array of emotions at any given time in our lives, and anger happens to be a part of that. Think about how often men get angry and how it is so like just okay for them to be angry about things, and they aren't judged harshly for it. They're being powerful, they're stepping into their masculinity, they are being a leader for using it or whatever like other narrative is placed on a man when he feels anger, and then it's like the opposite is given to a woman. So anger is just an emotion. Yes, it's an intense emotion, but so are many other emotions that we feel. Now I'm not talking about any kind of thoughts that you might be having about the anger or leading up to feeling anger, and I am not talking about the actions that you might take because of the anger that you feel. Those are different than anger. Those are thoughts and those are actions. The anger itself, that is an emotion that you feel inside your body. You know me, I talk about emotions, so so much on this podcast. I talk about how to process through them, how to feel them, allow them, recognize them, figure out what they are, how to feel them in your body, how to allow them to be there, release them. So anger again is just that. It is an emotion inside your body that you feel, and so it's okay to feel anger, it's okay to have it. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you if you feel anger, if you have it. The problem with anger comes when we react to the anger, that, instead of releasing it in a safe, controlled space, we react to it in a way that endangers maybe yourself, maybe other people. You maybe say things that you didn't want to say. You maybe show up in a way that isn't who you want to be or how you want to be or something else right? So I want to give you a few ideas on how you can feel the anger inside your body, open yourself up to it, but also, in a very safe and controlled space, you allow yourself to process through and release that anger as often as you need to, so that, instead of pushing it down and holding on to it, we are opening up to it and allowing it like we would any other emotion in our life. There's a quote by Harriet Lerner which I think is really amazing, and she says and a quote Most of us have received a little help in learning to use our anger to clarify and strengthen ourselves in our relationships. Instead, lessons have encouraged us to fear anger excessively, to deny it, to displace it onto inappropriate targets and to use it against ourselves, especially as women. And I think that is so true and so poignant and powerful to really understand that we are not taught to open up to it, to allow it to clarify us and to allow it to clarify and strengthen those relationships that we do have with ourselves and with other people, and instead we pretend it's not there. The reacting is where we displace it onto inappropriate targets. Right, harriet Lerner so beautifully encapsulates everything that I'm talking about in this podcast. I probably actually should have read that at the beginning of the podcast, but I didn't think about it. I'm saying it now. It's important. Use this as the guide as to why it's so important for us, as women especially, to safely open up, to allow and process through our anger. Okay, so I don't want you to get too overwhelmed, because sometimes feeling anger, like I said, is an intense emotion sometimes and this can be overwhelming. And so just know, if you're going to go through any kind of safe allowance of the anger, do it in short bursts. Make sure that you are fully supported, like afterwards, have a friend that you can talk to, be in a safe, controlled environment like your home, or you have a coach that you can rely on, or you can call your therapist, or have a good friend that you trust that you can call to if you need extra support. After you, allow yourself to kind of open up to this anger, and do it for a very short burst, especially if this is your first time. Please just do it for like one or two minutes, set a timer and just do one of these activities that I'm going to talk about to kind of open yourself up for a brief moment to the anger that you might be feeling. So one safe way to do this is to kind of drum your hands in a rhythmic pattern on your body somewhere, like on your thighs. You could do it on your stomach. You could do it on a pillow if you don't want to like do it on your body somewhere. If you have a tambourine or some kind of drum, you could drum out the rhythm of what you think that anger might sound like were it a rhythm, and that can be very healing if you're able to open up to it in that way. Another way to safely release and open up to some anger is to imagine that you are like some kind of protective animal. I like to imagine myself as like a protective mama lion to my cubs, because I'm obsessed with cats and so of course I would choose a lion right and I'm going to protect my cubs and I get down Like almost like I'm on all fours, like a cat would be, and what would protecting that my children look like? Growling, lunging, being in a very powerful, strong stance and feeling the power in my body and emoting the sounds of that power and that anger and that protection coming out of me. Allow yourself to do that in a short amount of time, to allow that anger to process through you. Another way to release some anger in a very safe way is, if you've seen Ted Lasso think of Rebecca when she does her like, getting into her powerful pose and she kind of raises her arms above her head and growls at herself in the mirror. She's a very strong, larger than life presence To her. That is powerful. That is like anger being released out into the world, but in a very safe, controlled manner. She's allowing the anger to be there, feeling the power that it can represent, but controlling it in a safe way. You can ask yourself what do I need to do to release and allow and process through this anger? Do I need to scream? Do I need to growl? Do I need to emote into a pillow? Do I need to punch the pillows? Or what movements do I possibly need to be doing with my body that is going to allow this anger to flow freely through me? These are questions that you can ask yourself. Allow that for the brief stint and then we want to bring you back down and ground you after you have done this, because we don't wanna just leave you in this heightened state. Right, of course, your body is going to get into a heightened state. Your nervous system is going to be heightened because of what you've been feeling and allowing and releasing and processing through. We wanna get you back down to grounding and integrating yourself back into reality as it is right now. So ground yourself, do any of the grounding techniques that I have taught you in any of the other podcasts. You can do a scan of your body, the five senses, look around. Even just looking around the room and naming things as you see them through the room really can orient you to the here and now. So do that, after you work through some of this anger processing that you've done, and then just remind yourself that you are safe in the here and now. I like to do it by placing a hand on my chest hand like palm to chest, skin to skin and just reminding myself I am safe here in this moment. I hope that this podcast I know it's a very brief introduction to this idea of opening yourself up to anger and allowing it to be present in a safe, controlled space, but I hope that you will think about this as something that might be really important for your healing process, because you might be like me and have some unprocessed, hidden anger that you've just been pretending isn't there or hiding from for a very long time, and it may feel right to you, like it did to me, to allow the anger to come forth and you can use some of these techniques to help you open up to and process through the anger in a very safe way. All right, my friends, I hope that this helps you continue on your healing journey through your divorce. Thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you next week. Hi, friend, I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one on one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life, with weekly coaching, real life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one on one, go to Karin Nelson coaching dot com. That's www. Karin N-E-L-S-O-N. Coaching dot com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating wherever you listen to podcasts and for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married. Make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.