In this podcast episode, we delve into the essential role of acknowledging and expressing anger, and the broader spectrum of our emotions, in maintaining mental and physical health.

Anger is a natural and healthy emotion when approached constructively. By allowing ourselves to feel and express anger, we open the door to understanding our needs and setting necessary boundaries. This process is critical for personal growth and relationships.

You’ll hear some expert insights explaining how repressing emotions, particularly anger, can lead to adverse effects.

Suppressing these feelings doesn't eliminate them; instead, they can surface as physical symptoms or illness. Chronic stress, linked to unexpressed anger, can manifest as headaches, high blood pressure, and even more severe health issues.

Psychologically, it can lead to anxiety, depression, and a diminished sense of self-worth.

The key takeaway is that embracing and expressing all our emotions, including anger, is not only liberally empowering but also essential for our overall well-being.

Referred to in this episode:

Work with Laura

Books

When the Body Says No

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Read the full transcript:

You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started.

0:33
Hello, friends, welcome to episode 340. I am your host, Laura Lummer. I'm really pissed off today. Just kidding. No, not really pissed off. But what did you think when you heard that? Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Did you feel a sensation in your body that kind of withdrew went like Oh, yikes. Why are you angry? Or did you feel like why are you angry? Right? Give me the scoop. Tell me the dirt. What's up? I want to talk about this today because of Gosh, several situations that have happened over the last couple of weeks. But something I see often as a pattern in the coaching that I do. And also, this whole idea was kind of brought back to mind by a book that I'm rereading, called when the body says no by Gabor Ma Tei. I'll link to that book in the show notes for this episode. But if you haven't read that book, it's an amazing book really. And I have I'm a I'm a highlighter, a bookmarker, a dogeared, corner stars, all that kind of stuff when I read a book. And there are some books that I just keep, there are some books I read, and I donate to the library. And then there are some books that I read and reread and highlight more and more and go back to again and again to remind myself of ideas and of patterns. And the book when the body says no is definitely one of those. And what it got me to thinking about and what's happened. Let me let me share some insights with you. So there are a couple of discussions that I've had recently one of them with is with two women who are close to me in my life, both at different stages of their life, one in her early 30s, and one more towards her mid 50s. Both dealing with very similar issues. And the issue is I don't like what's happening in my relationship. He's really pissing me off. He should know better. And by the way, I've never said anything about it. Right? Can you resonate? Does that resonate with you? Can you think about times, when you've done something, and you did it, to keep the peace to keep someone else happy? You did it because you didn't want to rock the boat. You did it because you didn't want to upset somebody, but you didn't want to do it. It could be something as simple as he always wants Italian food. And I frickin hate Italian food. I wish he realized that I loved Mexican food. But he just doesn't. He's so insensitive. But he has no idea that you don't like Italian food because you've never said I don't like Italian food. He has no idea that you love Mexican food because you've never said I prefer Mexican food. And then you resent him or her for what they think you'd like. And for not understanding and knowing you. But you've never said anything about it. You repress your emotions. You don't speak up for yourself. And then you start getting bitter. You start resenting you start getting angry. And the story in your mind is he makes me angry, she makes me angry, that makes me angry. And the truth is, you never spoken up for yourself. You've never allowed your authentic self to be seen. You've never talked about what you love. You never talked about what you need. You've never talked about what you want. You expect other people to know it, which they never will because most of them are not Swamis and then you're mad at them for not knowing. But I think that the truth of that is more that you're mad at yourself. For not knowing yourself. You're mad at yourself, for not speaking up for yourself. But it's way easier for us to be mad at someone else than it is to be mad at ourselves. Right? It's a lot easier to earn. They made me feel that way. They were insensitive. They didn't know they should have known that it is that I never said anything. I never did anything And I remember this specifically because I was married very young. My first marriage I was 17 years old when I got married. Few days later turned 18. But the point is, I had no idea about how to navigate a relationship. None. I mean, I had seen the example of my parents, which, although my parents were devoted people and, and good parents, and you know, wanted to do the best that they could. It was pretty dysfunctional relationship, right? They fought, they yelled, my dad demanded and ruled the roost and my mom cried and back down and demeaned herself. And, and when that's all, you know, you see these patterns growing up, and you think this is the way a wife is supposed to be. This is the way a daughter supposed to be a woman is supposed to be a sister is supposed to be an even if they don't align with what you feel is right? You believe because you've been conditioned to believe that that's the way it's supposed to be. And one of those things that we're conditioned to believe, is that we shouldn't be angry. Right, negative emotions are bad. We shouldn't feel them. In fact, we judge ourselves, when we feel the anger, when we feel resentment, when we feel incensed by something we go straight to I'm a bad person for feeling that we judge our own feeling, instead of listening to our own feeling. We judge our own feelings say I shouldn't be angry. And in fact, I see this a lot. It's, it's, I don't even know really the right words to describe it. It's like the difference between doing something externally, maybe and, and then just actually experiencing and being something and here's what I mean by that. I will coach a lot of women. And when I'm speaking to them, I see, I feel even if it's on Zoom, I feel the anger. I see it bubbling up, I see the resentment, I see the anger. And as soon as it gets, like I said about to their neckline, they shut it down.

7:11
And they'll say, but I do breathwork do yoga, do meditation. But I am above that, but I move past the anger. But it's not true. Because I see the anger, I see it bubbling up and then I see them stop it and stuff it because they have a belief that it's not okay to be angry. Something's wrong with you if you're angry. But what if anger was a teacher? What if anger was a lesson for us? Why is anger part of the natural spectrum of human emotions? I mean, it doesn't make sense to me, we're not supposed to feel it. Why do we feel it? We feel it right? It's there. It's real. It's true. Why do we push it away? Why do we judge ourselves for experiencing a natural human emotion. And I think about this in the same terms, as I think about a relationship where you are in a relationship with someone, and you never say what you want, what you need, what you feel what you think, right? You never say this is me. But you go along with, I'll do whatever you want. I'm here to make you happy. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to make sure everybody's pleased. I want to make sure there's no conflict and anytime, anywhere. And I will do that at the cost of my own needs. I'll do that at the cost of my authentic self. And then what starts to happen is that not only do you resent people around you that you never spoke up to, but you start resenting yourself. And we see this in our bodies, too. I see this a lot in cancer survivors. And whether or not you like that word, survivor, people who are experiencing cancer or people who've been through cancer in process. They feel alone, like my body has betrayed me. And I think sometimes, if we dig down deep enough, we can see that we never listened to our body to begin with. And I love that about this book when the body says no, because basically it is saying, like your body is showing you signs, something's wrong, something's off. I need attention. I need care. I need love something, and we won't listen to it. And I see this all the time. And I did this I'm totally guilty of this right? My body is tired and fatigued. But dang it. I got a strength training class today. Push it work harder. And then I'm done. And there have literally been times in my life. As I say this there. There was a time when I went to a gym that was just a couple of blocks from my house. And so I would walk to the gym. And I went or this one time, and I remember I was feeling tired. And I went to the gym and I did this workout. It was a high intensity interval. All kind of workout. And when I left that workout, I was walking home, and I got outside the gym, and I thought, I am gonna pass out. I feel horrible. And I walked around the corner of the gym and just sat down on the sidewalk and leaned against the wall, to just get my bearings straight. You know, I was feeling dizzy, I was feeling out of it, I was feeling exhausted. And I waited there for a little while until I had the energy to walk home. And then when I walked home, which wasn't far at all, I got home and I thought I need to lay down. I'm so tired. But instead of thinking, I didn't honor what my body was telling me. My thinking was, why the hell isn't my body responding the way it's supposed to? Right? Come on, I'm supposed to be stronger than this. Come on. And I wasn't listening to what my body was saying, I'm tired. I need rest. And so we're in this relationship with this body. But we don't listen to it, we don't allow our own expression. And then even when our body we're feeling in ourselves, like an anger or resentment, we're feeling a physical sensation that's caused by this emotion. And we don't even pay attention to that we don't listen to it. We don't connect to ourselves, we don't love ourselves, we fight it, we refuse it, we resist it. So I want to read something to you that really struck me in this book, when the body says no, and I don't know, this is like maybe the third time I've read this book, it's so good. And I'll link to it in the show notes, because it's amazing. But I want to read this to you because I think it's really important to think about, it says while we cannot say that any personality type causes cancer, certain personality features definitely increase the risk, because they're so likely to generate physiological stress, repression, the inability to say no, and a lack of awareness of one's anger, make it much more likely that a person will find herself in situations where her emotions are an expressed, her needs are ignored. And her gentleness is exploited. Just pause there for a second because does that resonate with you? Because I see this so much. I see women holding back who they are. And a lot of times they hold it back because there's this thought that if I say this out loud, someone will be angry with me. If I say this out loud. For instance, if it's a, if it's a close relationship, if I express how I feel, they might be mad at me. And if they're mad at me, they might not want to be with me. They may not want to be in my life, whether it's a spouse or significant other, or a child or a friend, whatever it is. But I think that this is a thought error, right? We get the story in our head that if I'm myself, they won't like me. But the truth is, and I think there's always this kernel of truth. When we create a story about what someone else thinks of us. It's really, because that's what we think of us. It's really because we haven't made peace with ourselves. It's really because we do not love ourselves fully. We look at ourselves and judge ourselves. And we don't like something that we see within ourselves. Therefore we think other people won't like it either. And we kind of forecast our story on them. We don't like the way that our body is. We don't like the feelings or the desires that we have. If we judge them for whatever reason, we're conditioned to judge them. And we assume other people judge them as well. We're not in a healthy relationship with ourself. loving ourselves knowing that we're good knowing that we're worthy, knowing that we're doing the best we can do at any given time at any given period, knowing that we have desires and that those desires are okay to have to do more to do less, to be more productive to be less productive. Whatever it is that you're desiring is okay. Because that's what you need. But then we go back to some conditioning thinking and we just think like, I shouldn't need that. I shouldn't want that. Why do we do that to ourselves? Let me read you this other excerpt from the when the body says no. As I think this is also very profound. So Gabor monta is talking about how people have these habitual tendencies and they think this is just me, right? This, isn't it. This is an indelible trait. This is who I am. And I hear this all the time. This is who I am. This is what I do. I am this, think about the labels we give to ourselves? I am the rock, I am strong, I am the fixer. I am this and I am the one who orchestrates everything. Right, I'm in control. So he says that people often identify with these habituated patterns, believing them to be an indispensable part of the self. They may even harbor self loathing for certain traits. For example, when a person describes herself as a control freak, in reality, there's no innate human inclination to be controlling. That's pretty fascinating, right? What there is in a controlling personality is deep anxiety. The infant and child who perceives that his needs are unmet, may develop an obsessive coping style anxious about each detail. When such a person fears that he is unable to control events, he experiences great stress. Unconsciously he believes that only by controlling every aspect of his life and environment, will he be able to ensure the satisfaction of his needs. As he grows older, others will resent him and he will come to dislike himself for what was originally a desperate response to emotional deprivation. The drive to control is not an innate trait, but a coping style. Emotional repression is also a coping style, rather than a personality trait set in stone.

16:40
I think that is so powerful. Like we just think that's who I am. I'm a people pleaser. But the truth is where we turn to people pleasing, is because we're in fear. We're functioning from a place of scarcity, fear, self doubt, and anxiety, that if I don't do things, I think will please that person, that person may react in a way that I'm afraid of. Maybe that person will judge me, maybe that person will push me away. Maybe that person won't like what I revealed to be my true self. And so we never reveal our true self. And we repair repress, and repress, and repress. And then one day we wake up, and maybe we wake up because we got a cancer diagnosis. And maybe we wake up because of that diagnosis, we realize like, What the hell, how did I get here? Who am I? What have I done to myself? How did I lose myself? How did I lose that person who was creative and inspirational and loving and sparkly? And how did I shut myself down? Right? How did I start to ignore what my body was telling me when I was suppressing who I actually am? And then when the anger came up from it, and I realized, like, I'm a normal person with normal emotions, and I don't like these things that are going on and I feel anger. And then the judgment came in and said, No, no, I shouldn't feel anger. Anger is not good. I'm not allowed to be angry. Anger is not a good girl. Good girls. Don't get mad. Let me take a breath. Let me be a good yogi. And let me find peace. And there's nothing wrong with finding peace. But there is something healing about holding space for what you feel about allowing yourself to become very curious. Like, anger, okay, I'm angry that I got cancer. Why? What does that mean to you? What are your thoughts about it? Like, allow yourself to feel the anger, right? I'm angry at my spouse, I'm angry at my kids. Oh, God, I shouldn't be angry with my kids. They're just kids. Oh, God, I shouldn't be angry with my boss. I just need to be a better employee. I shouldn't be angry with my spouse. He's a good person. But I am angry. Right? And there's something to be said for that. Like, I am angry. What is there? And there's a very big difference about like being in anger, and just being like an old curmudgeon, you know, and biting off people's heads. That's very different than what I'm speaking of here. What I'm speaking of is allowing yourself to hold space for yourself. Allowing yourself to hold space for the fact that I feel anger. I feel suppressed, I feel oppressed. What does that feel like? What is happening there? What are my thoughts? And what is my responsibility? Because it's really hard sometimes to step into your responsibility when it comes to your role in what you've created in your life. That's the hardest thing like as a coach for breast cancer, people going through breast cancer process or healing from breast cancer. process or trying to live with breast cancer. I see this all the time, like the responsibility piece, the the the ability to stand up and say, This is my role in my life. This is how I created the life I'm living. It's hard, right? It doesn't feel good. I can remember doing this work after my first marriage years after because I was pissed for a really long time after that one that I remember when I finally came around to doing the work on myself and having to ask myself the question, what was my role? What did I do? What did I not do? And I was very conditioned, again, I was married very young. And I was very conditioned as to what a good wife should be and what we should tolerate, and what we should not speak out against and what we should allow our husbands I was raised in this very traditional Roman Catholic family where the man was the king of the house. And that's what I was taught to believe was the right thing to do. So no matter how angry I was, it was my fault for being angry. Like, I wasn't a good enough wife, I wasn't a good enough partner, because I shouldn't be angry. Right? Does that resonate with you? Do you shut yourself down? When you start to notice I feel angry? Do you say I shouldn't feel angry? Instead of just allowing it to be? Right. And again, there's a difference between holding space for anger and saying, Wow, I'm angry. Let me explore this emotion. Let me see where this coming from. Let me see what my thoughts are about the circumstances in my life, that are creating this emotion of anger. And how is this emotion of anger affecting me? And what do I want to do about it? And what is my role here? What have I done to be my show up for me from my authentic self? And what have I not done? Right? I think it's so important for us to realize that anger is a natural emotion, part of the normal spectrum of human emotions, that anger can be a teacher. If we get too angry, and I've talked about this on the show before, that was one of my defense mechanisms going straight to anger, because when we get angry, we put off anger vibes. And if you want someone to stay away from you just put off anger vibes, because that's what's going to work. Right? You show up angry, people are really going to get too close, they feel that energy coming off of you, you walk into a room, you know, someone's angry, you're like, Whoa, that energy in this room is really heavy. And then you see the person and you notice the look on their face. And I I'll be back. I'm just gonna go kind of coffee right now. Right? So when we are in anger, what is that same? What kind of a teacher is that for you? What can you learn from that, about yourself and your role, and about what you think other people are doing, where you're giving away your emotional power, where you have an idea that somebody should behave a certain way, and they're not. And so you attach your emotion to it. Right? So there can be a point where anger is a defense mechanism, and it's over the top and we want to explore it and say, Why do I go there? Why am I afraid of being vulnerable? Am I afraid of allowing my heart to show and if so why? And that's why I go to anger as a defense mechanism. And then there's the opposite side of I don't allow myself to be angry. Alright, I think I should be a peaceful yogi. If I'm, if I'm an elevated soul, if I'm an enlightened being, I don't experience anger. And I think we have to question that too. Like, really? Are there not things in the world we're angry about? And sometimes do we want to be angry? Because I know sometimes I do. Sometimes I see injustice. I'm like, I want to be angry about this. Because that anger fuels the action that I want to take in this situation. Right? So anger is not always a bad thing. And when we think it's a bad thing, and we tell ourselves, it's a bad thing, and we tell ourselves, we're bad people for feeling it, we miss an opportunity to learn about ourselves, we miss an opportunity to see what we're doing and where we are being our authentic selves, versus where we're just aligning ourselves with condition, beliefs, or suppressing our emotions. And in doing so, we're making ourselves sick. So what I'd love for you to take away from this podcast episode is, can you let yourself be angry? Can you hold space for anger? And that doesn't mean blowing up on everybody in your house. But taking a moment for yourself and noticing and saying, I'm angry. Can you be there and be comfortable with your anger and explore it and get to know it? Or do you find yourself jumping immediately to something else. As soon as it starts to bubble up, do you see yourself going? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Let me take a deep breath. Let me count to 10. Let me move on anger is bad. And are you missing a lesson there? Are you missing a lesson of maybe you're suppressing and repressing your emotions and your need to be heard. And as a result of that, anger is building up. And it's knocking at the door. And your body's saying to you, do you feel this? Do you feel this? This is saying something, will you please listen. And if you listen, maybe you've learned. And maybe you can find the courage in that learning, to find your voice, and express yourself. Because you deserve to be hurt. You deserve to feel the way you want to feel. And you deserve to speak up for yourself and be cared for and treated in the way you want to be cared for, and treated.

26:01
So I want you to take up more space, hold more space for yourself, take up more space in your life, fill the space, fill it up, fill it up with you and your energy and all the things that come with your energy. Because this is how we heal by allowing ourselves to be the authentic version of ourselves. And sometimes, that means we need to express what's considered a negative emotion. And we need to explore it. And we need to allow it. Right, allow everything. Allow yourself to be free to be you. And allow yourself to be in the discomfort that that can bring. All right friends. If you need help with that, you want support with that. You want to learn more about that. You can find me at the breast cancer recovery coach.com You can join my life coaching membership better than before breast cancer, where we delve into all things every area of life you could possibly imagine. And access to coaching and individual coaching and lessons and community and all kinds of knowledge base that's found inside that membership that can serve you and help you to learn how to love yourself for everything that comes with you. All right. I will talk to you very soon and until then, be good to yourself and just be yourself. I'll talk to you soon.

27:36
Use courage to the test laid all your doubts. You Your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures even you know has you been waiting on yours this is your