New Level, New Devil: Learning to Embrace My Anger 😡

Allowing myself to experience anger and the unexpected benefits of spitting it out, literally.

This has become the year I welcomed anger into my life. It started off rocky, but I think if you ask my poor, defenseless pillow it would say it’s going a lot better now.

I started this journey 7 years ago (cycles often come in 7 years) when I made it a priority to learn how to identify and welcome my feelings and start sharing them with others.

I remember the moment I chose to focus on this. I just started my morning walking routine at sunrise. One specific morning, while walking around Venice, I had a really clear moment of awareness come over me— I didn’t know how to locate my feelings. Days prior, someone asked how I was feeling and my answer went something like this:

Yea, things are great, I feel like things are really taking shape with my new company and I’m liking Los Angeles. Such an interesting place. I think it’s going to be good for me here.

At the time, I was a big fan of using words like things and interesting, and answering a question about my feelings by sharing my circumstances and thoughts. Not to mention I can be incredibly awkward when I’m engaged in small talk, so I feel like I’m impersonating someone else I’ve heard answer that same question along the way. 🥸

On this walk, I remember realizing that somewhere along the way, when it was time to feel, I decided it was safer to think instead. In this moment I knew that without a healthy relationship with my feelings, I wouldn’t have a healthy relationship with myself or others.

Months later, I launched my second startup, Quilt. A community-based platform that inspired women to open their homes for gatherings. Gatherings varied depending on the host and the topic, but every gathering opened with one simple question: What’s one word to describe how you’re feeling right now?

Suddenly, thousands of women were answering this question every week and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I belonged. During this time, I learned that belonging and authenticity go hand in hand and I was lucky enough to create a safe place where I was able to start the journey of discovering who I am with the support of others doing the same.

As years went by, I started seeing myself as a feelings first kind of person. I felt really proud of how far I’d come. I even had moments where I had thoughts like “my work here is done,” “whats next on Ashley’s personal growth agenda?”

I’ve learned now that those are the thoughts you have right before you’re about to dive head first into the work that feels really uncomfortable. 🕳️

One of my favorite sayings feels highly appropriate to share here: every level there’s a new devil. I guess in this instance my new devil is anger.

The new level began last year when I started working with a new therapist. In our sessions, she would ask me to describe my feelings using primary colors (in the beginning I felt annoyed by this, which is always the sign it’s exactly what I need).

Yellow is joy.

Blue is sadness.

Red is anger.

Turns out I like yellow and blue a lot more than red.

So, almost 7 years into this work and I’ve strategically (unconsciously of course) avoided anger this whole time. Masterful if you ask me. Somewhere along the way I adopted a “what’s the point” mentality when it came to anger. This whole time I thought it was because I wasn’t actually feeling it, but it never crossed my mind it was because I wasn’t allowing myself to. pats self on head. ☺️

As it came up in session, I felt shame that I wasn’t “evolved enough” yet to be on the other side of a petty feeling like anger. I’ve been an advocate for feelings for many years and here I am— without a relationship to one of the primary ones.

I noticed the judgment in my thoughts and took the first step of softening towards myself (inner child lesson I learned in therapy in my 20s really paying off). In January, I worked up the courage to tell my therapist everything that was currently making me angry. I remember the session well — I was bashful when I told her, like I was letting her in on a dirty little secret I’d been harboring for decades. Which I guess I kinda had been.

We were on Zoom and she had me stand up and start shaking my arms around while feeding me “I am angry at you because….” statements. I felt completely ridiculous. But the A+ student in me really wanted to get that gold star of approval from her so I committed. 10 minutes later, sweating from shaking my arms, she told me to finish by going over to the sink and spitting.

You read that right. Spitting. She told me to spit the anger out of my system. Somehow this made more sense to me than the arm shaking and I quite enjoyed it. So I did it.

I spat once, she said again.

I spat twice, she said again.

I spat three times and she said to just keep going until I couldn’t spit anymore.

Somewhere around my 10th spit my mouth dried up and I started to cry. I felt a strange wave of peace rush through my system as I released tension that had been building in my body.

It turns out, for people like me who internalize anger, we end up holding it in our bodies and our psyche. We direct the anger towards ourselves and learn to blame ourselves instead of others.

My therapist isn’t one to offer homework but for the past few months she lovingly pointed out every moment where I avoided the opportunity to be angry at someone else. She told me that no matter where I am in my day or what I’m doing, when anger surfaces, I need to spit.

So I started spitting everywhere. I even created a little spittoon in my home. I rinse it often. I’ve thought a lot about this spitting exercise now.

We spit out things that feel or taste toxic. When we eat something thats gone bad, we don’t swallow it, we spit it out. Trapping anger in our system is toxic and if we don’t spit it out our bodies ache, just like it would if we ate spoiled food and chose to swallow it.

Getting my anger out, in any form, is new for me. And, for something so basic as experiencing a new feeling in my mid-30’s is surprising to say the least. But, since I started this new practice, the traveling body pain I’ve felt for years - back aches, shoulder aches, elbow pain, foot pain, stomach pain— has dissipated.

I’m embracing my anger because I’ve realized it’s not only a natural part of being human, but a necessary tool my body uses to help me reject internalizing the “rot” and to instead feel it and spit it out.

Awareness

Feelings exist outside of the realm of good or bad, right or wrong. They are not black and white. But, we aren’t taught that growing up. As babies, we are shushed when we cry 🤫, we are reprimanded and put in time-outs when we hit, kick or scream, and we are hugged and celebrated when we’re happy, or doing something cute. This translates as “good” emotions lead to love and acceptance and “bad” emotions lead to rejection and neglect.

Scientists started studying tantrums in kids and what they found is that is that in order for a child to get over the peak of anger that surfaces during a tantrum, you need to do nothing. That even intervening to ask what was wrong appeared to prolong the process.

Whether we are kids or adults having tantrums, the goal isn’t to feel certain feelings less than others, it’s to welcome all of them without judgment and allow them to move through us at the same speed they surfaced, otherwise it wreaks havoc on our bodies.

Rumi said it best in his poem The Guest House:

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Integration

Talking is great, but if there’s one takeaway I've learned about processing anger this year, it’s that you really need to move it through your body and get it out of your system. Otherwise, it gets trapped and shows up as pain or anxiety. As many of my guides have taught me, emotions are “energy in motion” and our only job is to allow them to move through us without our minds getting in the way.

1. Spitting

   • Please, please, please try this. Every time you have an angry thought where you realize your mind is going off on someone or something, spit. Spit in your sink, on the street, out your car window, I don’t care. Spit until your mouth is dry. Don’t let the anger live inside of you. This hurts you, not them and it’s not worth it. And maybe, just to get things in motion, try it right now.

2. Shake it out

   • Any time you’re feeling aggravated, frustrated, angry, or even just a little off, I want you to pick a song you can dance and shake it out to. You can shake your whole body like you have ants in your pants, or you’re on a football team doing drills (I’m not up to speed on my sports stuff but I’m sure there’s a name for this), and then just go body part by body part and shake it out. There is literally no wrong way to do this, just get lost in the music and allow your body to shimmy and shake.

     

3. Breathing

   • Anger activates our fight or flight response and all of a sudden, like with anxiety and fear, we stop breathing. When you’re angry, trying closing your eyes and box breathing (breathe in for 4, hold for 4, breathe out for 4, hold for 4). We have some wonderful simple breath work programs on Liminal, too, if you’re down to try a 3 or 5 day program out. The videos are around 5-15 minutes a day.

   • If you’re not on Liminal yet, learn more about it here. Or, schedule your free consultation to be matched with a coach here.

I'll end with inviting you to ask the people in your life how they’re feeling, but before they answer, honestly let them know how you are feeling. I’ve learned now that when I honestly answer this question, they do too, and the outcome is authentic friendship and intimacy.

Ashley