EP 255: Healing Anger with Sean

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This call is a deep dive into what causes anger and what lies beneath the surface of anger. As a child, today’s caller, Sean, experienced emotional abuse from his parents. He would like to move past managing his anger and start healing it. Oftentimes, men put on a mask and reject the scared little boy who experienced wounding. And in many ways, little boys are more sensitive and tender than little girls but they are told to hide their feelings.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">[For show notes go here:</span> <a href="http://christinehassler.com/episode-255"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Christinehassler.com/episode255</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">]</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Men deal with anger in aggressive or passive ways. If anger isn’t dealt with in a healthy way, men either become aggressive and have outbursts such as yelling and throwing things, putting those they love through emotional turmoil. Or, they are super-passive and withdraw. They allow other people, especially women to push them around and emasculate them. Passive anger gets turned inward because they become incredibly self-critical. Anger left unprocessed or anger left unhealed creates incredible self-criticism. We are hard on ourselves when we have unprocessed anger.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When we communicate from a wounded place we can be lethal. People can’t hear us because they have to defend themselves.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A lot of times when we attempt to avoid sadness, we laugh. We default to humor because our pain is so big that it is hard to feel it. I encourage people to go into the pain on a regular basis and own the anger to break out of the cycle.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When we tap into anger it can feel scary. It is important to have someone who can hold a safe space for us.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">On