Expressing Anger and Frustration Without Shame

Ever felt like a volcano waiting to erupt? I've been there, and it's not a pleasant place to be. In this candid episode, I take you on my personal journey through a storm of anger and frustration. I peel back the layers and expose my vulnerabilities, expressing these intense emotions without suppressing them. You'll see that it's not about denying the storm, it's about weathering it in a controlled environment.

Today, I'm sharing the tools I've curated to navigate through the turbulence of such feelings. Techniques like angry journaling and rage dancing might sound unconventional, but trust me, they're game-changers. In a society that often encourages us to bottle up our emotions, I want to show you that it's okay to express your anger and frustration, without guilt or shame, and in a way that doesn't hurt others. So, come along on this journey of self-discovery and emotional expression, and let's brave the storm together.

______________________________________

[FREE TRAINING]
How high-achieving women can
DITCH anxiety in as little as five minutes a day
www.brave-method.com/anxiety

Which of these results do you want and inspire you the most?
www.brave-method.com/testimonials

💗 Dr. Steph
@DrStephanieLopez
www.brave-method.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hi, I'm Dr Steph and I'm here to guide you on your journey to healing from a difficult relationship with your mother, whether she was narcissistic, emotionally immature or just plain toxic. I want you to know that you are in fact, not broken and you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out. You can break the cycle. You are a strong, capable woman who can handle any challenge that comes your way, and I'm going to show you how to have the ultimate control over your reactions so that you are unstoppable. Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast. Welcome back. I do have to sing to you every single time. That's just what I'm going to do, so hopefully that doesn't annoy you too much and if it does, I trust that you will do the work to move on from it. Okay, I am sitting here on a chilly day, feeling so grateful that it is not blazing hot outside. Last time I checked it was in the low 60s and for Florida, you know, we don't get that all too often and I am simultaneously really freaking, frustrated and angry. So I'm going to talk to you about that today, and it's totally normal and okay to hold space for conflicting and different emotions, so I want to share that.

Speaker 1: 1:47

I had a Zoom call earlier and the woman that I was on the call with asked how are you doing? And I shared openly which you know. Obviously, you've got to make a choice if you want to be open with people or not, but I find that openness is the grand simplifier, and so I talked to her about how angry I am and I clarified that this is not directed at her, but this is where I'm at and I raised my voice. And a lot of other things happened on the call and I'm going to share more about that in a few minutes, but first I want to talk about how she showed up for me, so that you can think about how often am I giving this to other people. At the end of the call, what she shared with me was a thought that she had, and she's like oh, maybe I shouldn't have asked, like she had this thought of maybe she shouldn't have asked me how I was doing, which I think is normal, because many times there's this belief. Well, I don't want to upset them, so I just won't ask about it, but think about you as a human being and when people haven't asked about something that you're going through. Did you feel connected or did you feel alone? Probably alone. So I'm glad that she asked and I'm glad that she shared that thought what she did while I was emoting and expressing my frustration and my anger and allowing myself to give her my shitty first draft to show up in a way that how can I put this?

Speaker 1: 3:38

I was defensive, I was not showing up as my best self. She didn't try to stop me, she didn't try to make me feel better, she didn't try to change the experience I was having, she didn't try to look for the silver lining. She didn't try to do anything like that. And so I want you to pause and think about yourself and maybe watch yourself over the next few weeks, the next month. When people have negative emotions, do you try to make them feel better? Do you try to make it stop? When you have negative emotions, do you try to make yourself, make yourself feel better? That's coming from a place of control and that's a sign that you are not tolerating the negative emotions within yourself and within others. Now, obviously, I know sometimes it can be taken too far and maybe sometimes people are like always super negative and always angry and always frustrated, and that's a whole another topic for another day that I don't even know if I'll ever talk about on this podcast. We're talking about the average person who is not showing up like that every single time you talk to them. So what did she do for me on the call? She didn't really do much other than validate how it makes sense that I'm frustrated, invalidate how entrepreneurship can be so hard and so confusing. So that, for me, was exactly what I needed and exactly what I wanted Someone to sit with me and create a safe space and a safe container for me to be human, because to be human doesn't mean that you show up with positive emotions all the time or neutral emotions all the time. To be human is to allow yourself to feel all of it. So now that I've talked about how she showed up, I wanna talk about what I'm doing.

Speaker 1: 5:48

Today and yesterday started feeling frustrated and what I'm not doing. So let's start with what I'm not doing. I'm not shaming myself for feeling angry or frustrated. I'm not guilting myself. I could be telling myself, like you shouldn't be frustrated, it's fine. You have so much to be grateful for, which I do. I have a million things to be grateful for, and it is okay for me to feel frustrated and for me to feel angry, and it is okay for you to feel frustrated and for you to feel angry. What I'm also not doing is I'm not blowing it out of proportion too much. I could be putting all kinds of meaning on everything that's going on and making the anger even stronger and even worse. So I'm basically not putting fuel on the fire, but I'm also not guilting myself, and what I'm definitely not doing is trying to make it stop, because that will not help.

Speaker 1: 7:01

If you try to suppress and make it stop and put that lid on a pot of boiling water, it doesn't just make the emotions go away, it just stays in your body and it comes out different ways, and it can come out in unexpected ways too. So here's what I am doing I'm letting myself feel it, and part of letting myself feel it is a physical release, but also a verbal release. So what are some of the things that I'm doing? Physically? Doing angry journaling, and that's just the term that I use, and it means that I'm just sharing all of the things that I would probably never say out loud, allowing myself to show up and do things that like I just wouldn't like. I wouldn't like show up here and be cursing at you and I wouldn't put people down and I wouldn't be talking about them. But I'm going to let myself just release all the nastiness and get that shitty first draft out.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Also, rage dancing, because I find that the physical release of like getting the emotions and getting the energy out of my body helps. So, putting on some loud music and just shaking it out. Also, physical release is I let myself bang on the desk and I let myself do that during the call, and that can be jarring, especially if you grew up in a home where you are not supposed to let yourself be angry. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a physical release. It's not like I'm at work and you know, obviously I kind of am because I own my own business, but you know what I mean. I'm not like in a place that's supposed to be a professional environment. So I'm sitting at my desk at my house and it is totally fine to physically release the anger, to get it out of my body. And then something that I'm continuing to do is a screen fest with my girls. We have implemented that in our home just to help my girls and myself release all of the pent up emotions from the day especially side note there's a lot of suppressed emotions in the school environment, so I want to give them a safe place to release that.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Okay, so I'm doing that physical release, I'm doing that verbal release. I really like to curse when I'm angry, so I'm not stopping myself from doing that in these dedicated like angry, physical, angry release moments. And then I'm leaning into the truth, and this is not just my truth, this is a truth that you can adopt as well. And here's the truth Somehow, some way, everything always works out just fine and it's okay to not like this, it's okay to throw an adult temper tantrum. And I know, deep down, there's a part of me that knows that this experience will help me move closer to what I want and to move closer to the ideal version of myself, because this is giving me the opportunity to learn something. And I know, because I'm a learner, that I will learn something. And so that truth is that somehow, everything always works out so I can handle this. And because I know that I can handle this, and because I know that it's okay to feel all the feels. I'm going to allow that process through it and then get back to being my normal, typical self, normally how I show up.

Speaker 1: 10:51

So I would love to hear from you Any takeaways, anything that resonated with you, any questions? Feel free to send me a DM and I will talk to you ladies, next week. Thank you for listening today. If you're ready to heal so that triggering situations no longer control you and so that you can feel empowered, brave and thrive in any situation, dm me the word brave on Instagram and I'll send you a training where you will learn three of the most common mistakes driven women are making that are keeping them stuck in negative emotions, and what you can do instead. Thank you.