Many women have been raised to be nicer to others than to themselves. Often we weren’t raised to say how we feel about that. Let alone express anger about it! But at what price to you and your wellbeing? Perhaps you’ve started to feel fed up with how others treat you. But you feel you aren’t allowed to respond. Or maybe you’ve never paused to consider that some or much of your stress could come from suppressed anger.

“I’m not an angry person!” you might say. But perhaps the anger group of emotions aren’t ones that you’re used to expressing. Or you grew up seeing angry people who looked out of control. They even made you feel unsafe. And so you learned to hide your own anger. Or were never taught to express it appropriately then, so you struggle to stand up for yourself today.

The Sleeping Warrior of Suppressed Anger

You might wonder what you would have suppressed anger about. Perhaps you think you only get irritated or mildly frustrated? But think again – go through this list and speak each phrase out loud. Could any apply to you? Or similar thoughts?

Chief targets for suppressed anger are your mother, father and siblings. You might think it’s your partner, friends or your boss. Yet with tapping we often discover that these people are only triggering deeper unresolved family issues:

• They never support/supported me
• They really betrayed me
• I have to do everything
• It feels as if no one-cares about me!
• I have to keep everyone happy
• Mum/dad always treats (treated) me like I was unimportant
• I’m fed up with them criticising me
• Nothing I do is ever good enough for them
• They shouldn’t have died on me
• I do everything and get nothing in return.

Your reaction to these may be on a sliding scale. Do you feel slightly irritated about it? Frustrated? Resentful? Angry? Perhaps actually Furious? Maybe even Enraged?!

Often when we really tune in to how we feel, we may discover that what started as mild irritation, which we are expressing while we tap without feeling much conviction, actually starts to surface as intense rage!

It is not uncommon that tapping on suppressed anger about a particular issue takes 1-2hrs to work through. The intensity may not fall for quite a while, because it takes time to get comfortable with it. It’s been frozen for a long time, so it may need time to thaw. We may also need to do some tapping before we even start, to address fears about expressing anger. Because some women feel very uncomfortable about expressing strong emotion. Their nervous system and body may have frozen it away, to keep them safe from feeling it.

Nice Women Don’t Show Anger

There can be a number of blocks to women expressing suppressed anger. For a start, others may tell you to “just get over it, let it go” or to forgive and move on. However, you can’t truly move on until you have voiced your hurt or what was missing for you.

You may also feel guilty for feeling angry about something, as if you shouldn’t feel that. Or you may want to hold on to anger. We can feel that releasing it would be letting the other person or people off the hook for what they did or said.

Then there’s your inner voice. Perhaps it reminds you that people told you as a child not to get angry. Perhaps you were told or picked up the message that nice people don’t get angry. Or they responded with disapproving looks, even punishment, if you showed any irritation. Your parents might have been emotionally cold or had too much else going on. So they couldn’t teach you how to handle anger appropriately.

Other women grew up in families with a lot of anger and violence. So they rightly became fearful of anger. Maybe they had to play small and quiet to try and stay safe. They certainly don’t feel comfortable expressing it, even today. Or they may feel they have so much suppressed anger that they’ll explode like a never-ending volcano. Or a raging fire-breathing dragon!

Tapping to feel more comfortable about emotions – such as anger – can be an important part of the EFT Tapping process. Before we even tap to reduce the anger around how we feel about an issue or past trauma.    

Your Body Keeps The Score

If you suppress anger, fury and rage, where is the anger you didn’t express? Perhaps you’ve read the book by Bessel Van Der Kolk “The Body Keeps The Score“. Or you’ve read hormone specialist Dr Deepak Chopra say that everything that ever happened to us that’s unresolved lies as blocked energy in our body. Until we release it with a process such as EFT Tapping. You can’t just put unresolved emotion behind you. And it’s hard to talk your way through it, unless you get physical or strongly verbal. It has to be processed through and out of your body, either at the time or later.

Some of the most common mind-body links are listed in Louise Hay’s book “Heal Your Body”. You can use her symptoms as indicators to reflect on what suppressed anger you might have about different issues. See also the 2017 article “Understanding Mind-Body Interaction from the Perspective of East Asian Medicine” (see link at end). It reports connections such as anger with the liver, happiness with the heart, sadness with the heart and lungs, and fear with the kidneys and heart.

You might also like to follow up with the increasingly popular German New Medicine. It was developed several decades ago by a German medical specialist and details how different shocks and conflicts get stored as disease (link below). Or look up Dr Kelly Turner’s book “Radical Hope”. In it, she details her research on suppressed emotion as one of ten key healing factors in recovery from chronic diseases and cancer. 

EFT Tapping Releases Suppressed Anger

It’s great to hear real-life stories of how EFT has cleared anger stored in the body. Here are some experiences. Doctors had checked first that there was no medical cause. Hence, unresolved emotion was explored with various EFT techniques. At the start, the client was not aware that suppressed anger was the cause of the physical symptoms:

• Frozen shoulder pain gone in one hour after tapping on anger about workplace sexual harrassment
• Bell’s Palsy (frozen face muscles on one-side) gone after intense tapping through extreme rage at mother
• Stomach discomfort gone after tapping on suppressed anger at family
• Skin irritation/eczema disappeared after tapping on rage at father continually crossing boundaries
• Migraines reduced after tapping on anger about feeling powerless
• Eye sty gone after tapping on frustration with work colleagues
• Apathy and low motivation gone after 90mins and energy returned
• And more! 

Releasing the Warrior Woman Within

Margaret Lynch, well-known EFT Tapper, says that anger and rage are essential parts of our emotional repertoire. When suppressed, we are missing out on the activating energy of passion, drive and aliveness:

I can tell you exactly why you have been angry every time in your life. It was because something seemed UNFAIR to either you or someone you love. Anger is always a sense of unfairness… Releasing anger frees you from being stuck.

Maybe you’re near or at the end of your tether with unresolved anger. Or you suspect you may have emotions you’d like to acknowledge, process and release. Well, do get in touch with me! I love tapping with women who have decided something really has to change in their life-direction, and who are fed up of not saying how they really feel.

Standing Up For Me

It seems more common around mid-life that women start to reflect on why they are the way they are. Why they react the way they do. And to reflect on the things they are tired of. We are getting ready to activate our warrior within – our authentic self! She has come to the time and place where she will no longer take it lying down like a sleeping dragon. 

She wants to start standing up for us. She wants to shout: “Hear me now!”, “Look at me – don’t ignore me any more!”, “I want to be heard and valued!”, “I AM worthy, I AM special, I AM taking back my power right now!”. As psychotherapist and stress management expert Dr Brad Blanton (PhD) explains:

It is common for people to ruin their lives and kill themselves by not telling the truth [about how they really feel]. 

The great thing with EFT Tapping is that you don’t have to say any of these things directly to the people involved. You can tell the truth of how you really feel in a private tapping session, or just say it in your head as you tap. The most important thing is that you’re acknowledging and releasing it. It can feel amazing. EFT isn’t called Emotional Freedom Techniques for nothing! 

Links to follow up

Heal from Emotionally Cold Parents – Blog article

Research article – Lee et al (2017). Understanding Mind-Body Interaction from the Perspective of East Asian Medicine, Journal of Evidence Based Complementary &  Alternative Medicine. 

Global GNM website (German New Medicine) 

Louise Hay (1988). Heal Your Body: The mental causes for physical illness and the metaphysical way to overcome them. Hay House Publishing.

Kelly Turner (2020). Radical Hope: 10 Key Healing Factors from Exceptional Survivors of Cancer & Other Diseases. Hay House Publishing.

Brad Blandon (2003). Radical Honesty: How to transform your life by telling the truth. Sparrowhawk Publications, Virginia.

Image credits:

Broody Brunette (feature image): Raamin Ka, Unsplash.com

Tongue Out: Maria Lysenko, Unsplash.com

Pulling My Hair Out: Julien L, Unsplash.com

Bright Lady: Gabrielle Henderson, Unsplash.com

Silver Warrior: Antonio Friedemann, Unsplash.com