Suppressing anger leads to dysregulation. Your nervous system is wired for fight in response to a threat. Mobilising energy is released, and this surge of survival force compels you to take important actions.
If you're unable to follow through with that instinct, complete the stress response, and return to baseline your nervous system remains "tuned" to excess fight energy.
Suppression of anger can lead to apathy, flatness, and even burnout: when you close the window on feeling anger, you’re also closing off to the inner resources that bring you strength, purpose, agency, and mastery.
Exercising and training your nervous system to not take automatic responses like shut-down, freeze, dissociating, or automatically internalising that you’ve done something wrong or bad, is how you can restore wellbeing in your nervous system.
Over time repressed stress activation in the body and nervous system can be re-directed, helping you set personal boundaries with confidence.
Learning the skills to be present with sensations will lead to deactivation, and you can learn to see what memories or old triggers are keeping you stuck in dysregulation. Tapping into your body’s messages early by cultivating autonomic awareness helps you to use these sensations and emotions to guide your decisions.
Personal reflection
The below questions can help you to connect to your own body's wisdom:
Bring to mind a recent time when you got angry. Consider how you relate to this anger. What do you notice happens in your body? What postures do you take on?
Notice what the sensations inside your body feel like. You might place a hand where the sensations are and imagine that you're keeping them company, just like you would a friend. What is it like to allow this feeling to be here?
Shift your body to an open posture and allow your breath to be deep and full. Try using these statements to address the feeling and notice how your body responds:
• I allow my feelings to be here
• I lovingly accept these feelings
• This is how it is
• I surrender to the truth of how I feel
Reflect on your experience.
Regulation involves recalibrating your nervous system in a way that teaches the survival brain new ways to respond. It can stop responding as it did from times of chronic and traumatic stress from your past, it can learn and adapt and respond to what’s happening today.
The Vagus Nerve Program is a profoundly transformative methodology of nervous system repair, that empowers you to step into the driver’s seat of your own health and wellbeing. Our next intake is opening for registrations soon. Ready to join? Keep your eye on our socials for registration details. We can't wait to have you join us!