By Abi Beri | Integrative Somatic Therapist | Dublin, Naas, Newbridge & Online
When’s the last time you let yourself feel truly angry?
Not the leaking-out-as-resentment kind of anger. Not the exploding-at-your-partner-over-dishes kind. But clean, clear, healthy anger — the kind that says “this isn’t okay” and means it.
If you’re struggling to remember, you’re not alone.
For many of us — especially women, people-pleasers, and anyone raised to “keep the peace” — anger has become a forbidden emotion. We’ve learned to swallow it, apologize for it, turn it inward against ourselves. We’ve been told it’s unspiritual, unfeminine, too much.
But here’s what I’ve learned working as a somatic therapist with clients in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge, and online worldwide: the problem isn’t anger. The problem is what happens when anger can’t move through us in healthy ways.
In this article, I want to explore what healthy anger actually is, why so many of us have lost access to it, and how somatic therapy can help you reclaim this vital part of your emotional landscape.
What Is Healthy Anger (And Why Does It Matter)?
From a nervous system perspective, anger is part of your fight response. It’s your sympathetic nervous system mobilizing energy to protect you from a perceived threat. When a boundary is crossed — when something isn’t right — your body produces a surge of activation designed to help you take protective action.
This is biological. This is ancient. This is your body doing exactly what it evolved to do.
Healthy anger isn’t the same as rage or aggression. It’s not about hurting people or losing control. Healthy anger is the emotion that protects your boundaries, your values, your sense of self, and those you love. It’s the inner voice that knows when something isn’t right and has the energy to do something about it.
Without access to healthy anger, we lose our ability to say “no” clearly. We struggle to set boundaries. We become people-pleasers who abandon themselves to keep others comfortable. We feel walked over, resentful, and mysteriously exhausted.
Anger — in its healthy form — is life force. It’s the fierce protector that knows your needs matter, your boundaries are sacred, and your “no” deserves to be heard.
How We Learned to Fear Our Fire
Most of us didn’t choose to suppress our anger. We were taught to.
Think back to your childhood. What happened when you got angry? Were you sent to your room until you could “calm down”? Did your parent’s anger meet yours, teaching you that expressing this emotion was dangerous? Were you told you were “too much” or “overreacting”?
Perhaps there was already so much anger in your home that adding yours felt unsafe. Maybe you became the peacekeeper — the calm one who smoothed things over.
If you’re a woman, there’s an extra layer. Society has strict rules about female anger: don’t. An angry man is “assertive” or “passionate.” An angry woman is “hysterical,” “difficult,” or worse.
Research supports this: studies consistently show that women’s anger is perceived more negatively than men’s across virtually every context. Even when women express anger about legitimate injustice, they’re rated as less competent than men expressing the same emotion.
From childhood, many women receive the message that their anger makes them unlovable. And so they learn to smile when they want to scream. To say “I’m fine” when they’re seething. To turn the fire inward rather than risk the social consequences of expressing it outward.
The Connection Between Suppressed Anger and People-Pleasing
If you’ve read about trauma responses, you might be familiar with the “fawn” response — the tendency to people-please, accommodate, and prioritise others’ needs over your own. Fawning is what happens when your nervous system learns that the safest way to survive is to make yourself palatable to others.
Here’s what many people don’t realise: fawning and suppressed anger are two sides of the same coin.
Every time you override your “no,” there’s anger underneath. Every time you abandon yourself to keep the peace, there’s a part of you that knows this isn’t right. The protective fire is still there — it just has nowhere to go.
This is why many chronic people-pleasers eventually have moments where they “snap” over something relatively small. The pressure builds and builds until it has to release — usually at the worst possible moment, in the worst possible way.
Then comes the shame. “See? I AM an angry person. I need to control this better.” And the suppression continues.
Where Does Suppressed Anger Go?
When anger can’t be expressed outwardly, it doesn’t disappear. Energy can’t be destroyed — it can only be transformed or stored. Suppressed anger typically goes into one of three places:
Into the Body
Chronic muscle tension — especially in the jaw, neck, shoulders, and lower back. Headaches. Digestive issues. Research has even linked emotional suppression to increased inflammation and autoimmune conditions. Your body keeps the score, and sometimes it keeps it in muscle fibres and immune responses.
Into the Mind
Depression is sometimes described as “anger turned inward.” While this is an oversimplification, there’s truth in it. When fight energy has nowhere to go, it can collapse into hopelessness, numbness, or chronic anxiety — the revved-up energy of anger circling endlessly as worry.
Into Relationships
When we can’t express anger directly, it leaks out sideways: passive aggression, sarcasm, the silent treatment, chronic resentment. Or we attract relationships where our boundaries are constantly violated — because we’ve never developed the fierce “no” that healthy anger provides.
The Somatic Approach: Feeling Without Acting Out
So how do we reclaim healthy anger without becoming people who harm others?
The key — and this is what somatic therapy offers — is learning to feel anger in your body without necessarily acting it out. Instead of either suppressing the emotion or exploding with it, you learn to be present with it. To track it in your body. To let the energy move through you rather than getting stuck.
When someone can actually tolerate anger in their body — when they can feel the heat, the tension, the surge of energy without needing to do anything about it — something remarkable happens. They don’t need to explode, because the pressure isn’t building. And they don’t need to suppress, because they’re not afraid of what they’re feeling.
They can choose how to respond.
What Does Anger Feel Like in the Body?
If you’ve been disconnected from anger for a long time, you might not recognize it when it arises. Common physical signatures include heat in the chest, neck, or face, tension in the jaw, shoulders, hands, or solar plexus, an impulse to push, strike, or move forward, expansion in the chest or a desire to take up more space, a rising sensation of energy moving upward, and voice impulses such as wanting to growl, yell, or speak sharply.
Some people experience anger as fire, others as electricity or pressure. There’s no wrong way to feel it. The invitation is simply to get curious about how your body holds this energy.
Working With Anger in Somatic Therapy
In somatic therapy, we don’t try to “get rid of” anger. We help you develop a relationship with it. This might include titration (approaching anger in small, manageable doses rather than flooding the system), completing the action (exploring what your hands want to do, what your voice wants to say, what posture your body wants to take), tracking sensation (simply noticing what happens in the body as anger arises and what transforms when you stay with it), and finding the “no” (identifying what boundary the anger is protecting so you can assert it in healthier ways).
The Gifts of Reclaimed Anger
When people start to reclaim their healthy anger, beautiful things happen. They become better at setting boundaries — not from a defensive place, but from a clear, grounded one. They have more energy, because they’re not spending it on suppression. They become safer to be around, because they’re not building up pressure that will eventually explode.
Most importantly, they feel more like themselves — because a vital part of their emotional range is finally online.
Ready to Reclaim Your Fire?
If this article resonates — if you’ve recognised yourself in these patterns — I invite you to explore further.
I offer somatic therapy sessions in Dublin, Naas, and Newbridge, as well as online worldwide. Whether you’re a chronic people-pleaser, someone who’s terrified of their own anger, or someone who’s exhausted from the suppress-explode-regret cycle, there is another way.
Your anger isn’t a character flaw. It’s the guardian of your boundaries. And when you learn to feel it consciously, it becomes one of your greatest allies.
Book a session at blissfulevolution.com
Frequently Asked Questions
I’m worried that if I start feeling my anger, I’ll become an “angry person.” Is this a risk?
This is one of the most common fears I hear, and it’s actually a good sign. People who are genuinely worried about becoming harmful are rarely the ones at risk of it. Usually, the opposite happens: when you can feel anger consciously, you become LESS likely to act it out destructively, because the pressure isn’t building up.
What’s the difference between healthy anger and destructive anger?
Healthy anger is felt consciously in the body and expressed in boundaried, proportionate ways — a clear “no,” a firm conversation, walking away from something harmful. Destructive anger is usually what happens when healthy anger has been suppressed for too long; it explodes in ways that cause harm. Paradoxically, learning to feel anger makes destructive expressions less likely.
Can suppressed anger really cause physical symptoms?
Yes. Research has linked emotional suppression to increased inflammation, chronic tension, digestive issues, and even cardiovascular problems. From a somatic perspective, unfelt emotions don’t disappear — they get stored in the body. Many clients notice physical symptoms improving as they develop a healthier relationship with their emotions.
I don’t think I feel anger at all. Does that mean something is wrong with me?
Not at all — but it does suggest you may have learned to disconnect from this emotion. Sometimes anger shows up in disguised forms: exhaustion, resentment, chronic tension, passive aggression, or sudden tearfulness. Somatic therapy can help you reconnect with what you’re actually feeling underneath these surface presentations.
How long does it take to reclaim healthy anger?
This varies widely depending on how long you’ve suppressed your anger, what early experiences taught you about this emotion, and your overall nervous system capacity. Some people feel significant shifts within a few sessions; for others, it’s a longer process. The good news is that every small step builds on the last — each time you allow yourself to feel and express anger appropriately, you’re strengthening new neural pathways.
