you to experiment with taking at least a half a day to be by yourself, examining your feelings about your life, and see what comes up. Remember, anything that may surface is actually there all the time buzzing around in the back of your mind, adding to your stress.
Using the addictions and behaviors just discussed to avoid the deeper issues may help you hold it together and keep up appearances for a while. However, it is as unwise as letting termites eat away at your home. After a while there will be nothing but a shell, and eventually the whole thing will come crashing down around you. Turning to these distractions is like feeling safe only when your head is under the covers. Anger work provides a means by which you can confront that boogie man lurking in the corner of your mind, and eventually vanquish it.
If you have examined yourself and decided that you do not have any of the addictions listed above, then look a little farther and ask yourself if you suffer from depression or stress-related illnesses. These are different from addictions, but they still fall under the category of “Things People Do Instead Of Doing Anger Work.” Like addictions they serve the roll of distracting you from your true feelings. They are evidence of suppressed emotions.
If you struggle with depression, stress-related illness, or find that you need to use constant activity, alcohol, or other drugs to keep disturbing fears, worries, or self-doubts at bay, these are indicators that you have unresolved issues. They are not going to go away until you find a way to deal with them directly. Applying the skills explained in this book to your daily lifestyle can start you on a journey of healing that will lead you to a place of emotional freedom you’ve never known before.
Learning From Children
I am a clinical psychologist licensed to work with adults and children who have emotional problems. In the course of my training and work, I have specialized in working with children who are emotionally traumatized, even those as young as two years old. When I work with young children, I allow as much freedom and self-direction in the session as possible. This unstructured environment allows the child to explore his or her emotional pain, express it in play, and be healed.
Many of my insights into the benefits of Anger Work have come from working with children. Children, on the whole, take much less time in therapy to heal from their emotional wounds than adults do. This gives us reason to take a closer look at what children do to heal, and to learn from their intuitive wisdom. Children have much to teach us about the natural course of healing. Here are some of the lessons I have learned from kids.
In the fifteen years that I have been working with clients, I have seen children who have experienced a wide range of traumas like sexual abuse, death of a loved one, divorce, moving to a new neighborhood, or being teased at daycare. As surprising as it may be, I have observed that there are only two emotions which children express to help themselves heal. These two emotions are ANGER and SADNESS.
In affirmation of the wisdom of this natural choice by my young clients, I have noted a similar pattern among my adult clients. Those who make the most progress are those who get in touch with these primary emotions of sadness and anger. As adults we develop other defenses such as depression, anxiety, phobias, worry, stress-induced illnesses, and a myriad of other non-healing ways of trying to cope with emotional pain. Most adults are willing to try just about anything before grappling with their own raw feelings of anger and sadness. But these two emotions are the true, underlying, instinctual responses we all have to victimization and loss. Lesson number one from the children: in order to heal we need to go back to the simple pure emotions of anger and sadness.
When children are traumatized, they heal from it naturally as long as they are in an environment where it is safe to do so, by expressing their anger or sadness about the pain. Children tend to express and not repress their emotions. Babies, of course, are the prime example of this, crying freely whenever they feel like it. Repression is a learned response. It is only as we grow older that we learn to suppress our feelings.
Now occasionally the ability to repress your feelings can be helpful. For instance, it sometimes comes in handy to repress your response of disappointment to a situation long enough to be able to get home and have a good cry or do Anger Work in a safe environment. However, most adults take repression too far. In contrast to children, some adults never cry or display anger. This is unhealthy and we need to learn lesson number two from the children: Express your feelings, don’t repress them.
The following cases of Shawn and Jaime are good examples of how children use their sadness and anger to heal themselves. (Please note, throughout this book client names and details have been changed in order to protect the confidentiality of my clients).
While I was in graduate school I directed a child care center. A two year old girl named Shawn was left in my care by her parents. It was the first time in her life she had ever been separated from them. The childcare center was open for only three hours a day, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, to give graduate students with young children a respite. As I took Shawn from her anxious parents she immediately started crying. I held her, switching her back and forth between my arms so that I could work with the other children. Shawn cried off and on for the entire three hours. She never did let go of me though I tried to set her down a couple of times. By the time her parents returned my shirt was soaked.
The next week, Shawn returned and of course started crying the second her parents left. I held Shawn for about five minutes, and then she stopped crying. After watching the other children playing all around us, she slowly made her way out of my arms. Though she kept a watchful eye out for me for a few minutes to make sure that I would rescue her, Shawn began to play. She never cried again when her parents left her at childcare with me. Shawn’s tears of sadness helped her heal from the emotional trauma of leaving her parents for the first time in her life.
As the case of Shawn demonstrates, experiencing and expressing your sadness through tears can be an effective tool for healing. However, I find that children between the ages of two and seven primarily express one feeling during their treatment: that is anger. They rarely cry about their trauma, they just get angry, sometimes very angry. Afterward they leave the session feeling better, and over time the symptoms which brought them into therapy go away. Children like Jaime in the following story have taught me that anger heals.
Jamie was a two-and-a-half year old girl with whom I worked for a year. She was brought to therapy because she had been sexually abused by a man and woman at a daycare center where she was being watched for a few hours. Evidence of this crime was her radical behavior change after the incident. She regressed to soiling her panties, began playing with her private parts, started pinching and biting her younger brother, and did not want to return to the daycare. When I saw her, she appeared to be a sweet little girl who just wanted to play. During all the sessions with Jamie, her mom or dad stayed with us in the same room, reading magazines or books, so that Jamie would give me her full attention.
Quickly Jaime began displaying intense anger towards toys as she played with them. She would growl at them, hit them, throw them, and even try to destroy them. Jamie had told her parents what happened at the daycare, but she never verbalized anything about the abuse during therapy. Her play clearly displayed that she was angry at the abusers who had fondled her private parts. The parents were instructed not to let Jamie aim her anger at them or her younger brother. Gradually during the year, Jamie’s behavior improved until she was back to her old self. Therapy was terminated and Jamie has never returned. She is reported to be doing fine.
Jamie had a severe trauma, came into therapy where she could freely express her anger, and got well (went back to her normal developmental process). She was never anxious, depressed, worried, or any of the myriad of other pseudo-emotions that adults experience. (By pseudo, I mean emotions that we often layer on top to suppress either sadness or anger.) She was simply angry.
Another observation I have made while
