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Hi, thanks for the question.

I get this question often. It's very easy for people to conflate feeling an emotion with the discharge that can often accompany strong emotions. In other words, feeling anger can't be separated from say punching a door or some other kind of acting out. In fact, the two are distinct. You can experience an emotion fully without having to act out the impulse.

It's important to understand that acting out the impulse, or discharge, is not actually a response to anger but rather a response to anxiety. An interaction will give rise to anger, which in turn will generate anxiety (anger being unacceptable and uncomfortable hence the repression). When this anxiety reaches critical mass, the only way your mind can get rid of it is to discharge. What happens after you smash a plate or punch a hole in a wall? Almost instantly the anger and anxiety dissipates. So in a way this discharge accomplishes it's goal, but at a very high price. Furthermore, this process reinforces the fear of anger, as you further associate the feeling with the negative consequences of discharge.

Our goal is to help you get in touch with and tolerate the feeling so that it doesn't have the capacity to generate so much anxiety. You can do this by accurately identifying the feeling ("When she said that I felt anger towards her"), identifying how you experience it in your body ("I feel heat/energy/explosivity" etc. people ask me all the time what anger feels like, and it can be any of these and more. We all have the capacity to feel anger, we know it from birth. We learn how to send it away) and finally by getting in touch with what the impulse would drive you towards. Perhaps it's something like "punch her in the face". We want to identify that if it's there, understanding that you don't need to go do it, but that you feel it, and that it's ok for you to feel it.

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