It’s okay to feel anger.

Over the past few years, I’ve been exploring my repressed anger, rage, and frustration.

This emotional energy has shown up in different ways. Sometimes, in my mind’s eye, it appears as a fierce, red dragon or a raging Wolverine-like character. Other times, I find myself in a repressed or depressed state where everything feels meaningless and hopeless. In these moments, I feel stuck, like an abandoned child lost in the wilderness.

Recently, during an Emotional Clearing Circle, I worked on a recurring pattern: when my friends are joyful, expressive, and taking up space, I often feel smaller, like I don’t belong. I shrink inward, like a turtle retreating into its shell. Yet, when my friends are experiencing emotional turmoil, I find it easy to show up and hold space for them. In my personal life, it seems I can only be “big” when others are “small.”

Reflecting on my childhood, I see how this pattern took root. Everyone in my family was going through intense suffering, and I made a silent pact with God to absorb the pain and avoid adding to the collective burden. I learned to “turtle” through difficult experiences, whether it was being bullied daily on the school bus or witnessing my parents fighting over finances. I coped by cutting myself off from my body and escaping into books, TV shows, the internet, and video games.

Over the years, I’ve engaged in numerous practices to reconnect with myself: Tai Chi Quan, yoga, meditation, unfolding, and emotional processing methods like Internal Family Systems (IFS), the Bio-Emotive Framework, Focusing, and Somatic Experiencing. I’ve also participated in relational practices like authentic relating and circling. Yet, despite this extensive work, I’ve noticed lingering limits on my emotional expression, particularly in relationships with others.

Despite years of community living and training, it was challenging to integrate the deep depths of repressed anger and insecure attachment with others. At MAPLE, I held top leadership positions as a Teacher and Director (aka Boss). Often, I used my existing pattern of taking ever greater responsibility and developing ever more competence to handle with frustrating situations. If some consultant or hired expert proved unreliable, well I’d just take over and do an even better job. I learned how to do nearly everything. But, I didn’t learn how to express my disappointment and hurt when I felt that others had let me down.

As the teacher and boss, I increasingly felt like I didn’t have room to maneuver or make mistakes. Most people seemed to view me either with idealistic eyes, as though I were fully enlightened, or with critical eyes, distrustful of me in a position of power. My system didn’t feel safe enough to bring forth my anger or deepest relational patterns to unfold. Living in the Dharma House this past year and working one-on-one with a very skilled healer provided the safe container I needed to explore these aspects of myself without feeling like my entire life was at stake.

The process of recognizing and working with my anger has been gradual. I’ve learned to identify the psycho-somatic markers that signal repressed anger, such as tension in my hips and pelvis. I’m discovering how to release this stuck energy through sound and movement. I’ve also begun to feel into the underlying sadness beneath the anger and to relate to it with patience, kindness, and love—qualities my younger self didn’t receive growing up.

I’m learning to advocate for myself by naming my fears and upsets to others. I’m also working on holding more energy throughout my entire body, cultivating a sense of power and self-worth that is independent of my competence, my ability to help others, or even my spirituality.


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