the joy of expression

There is a freedom that comes when we feel allowed to express ourselves fully, and I have been thinking a lot about this lately in the context of feelings of anger or feeling put upon. What if we were taught we just needto ‘suck it up’, not be selfish.. not want or feel what we want or feel?

I struggled a lot in my life with anger and self assertion/expression, maybe I learned in many ways I did not have a right to exist. At times I can transfer this onto others, when they may be angry and scare me with it, I tell them to let it go or be softer. I have a backed up post to post on this issue from yesterday I haven’t published yet. It is how we go about expressing our anger which is the problem not so much the anger per se. If we are angry and feel and know that is a sign from ourselves about something important it then we have to take it seriously.

We don’t have to wantonly act it out on others by screaming and yelling or blowing (which is what I would do after having held it all in for so long and not being permitted to have it in my family or fearing it due to the way my Mum acted out in fury and rages at times). Louise Hay suggests we need to find a way to express it either through taking ourselves off and getting it out of our system… hitting some pillows with a bat, or running and exercising before we can address it with the person or person’s involved in an appropriate way. This is something I never learned to do and so in my case anger went inward and I became very accident prone from a young age. At 17 I nearly lost my life in my first car smash. This trauma repeated at the age of 42 when I left my marriage and smashed up again over seas trying to start a new life.

I do believe that those of us who end up as addicts or bi polar may struggle to have our anger and it comes out sideways or else we repress it and learn to swallow it down. Then as Louise Hay says our anger gets dumped in our tissues and system, in our joints or organs and causes disease. I know this is why I got my cancer back in 2016 in the years prior I feel I was acted on by the stronger will of others and buckled under. I could not express or know what I truly wanted or needed from myself and others I did not feel that I had a right to express it either.

This came to light when I read the paragraph from Louise Hay to my therapist that I posted the other day which said we know what to do to take care of our inner child, well some of us DO NOT!!! In our homes our inner child was squashed. We may have had to grow up super fast and bury that childlike part of us that needed and wanted and ached and danced and desired. Now liberation can only come if we are allowed to be that, who we really are, but for some of us so many forces can conspire against it. We need that permission. Will we give it to ourselves? Will I? The permission to express what we need to, feel what we need to, be who we need to?

Sometimes I fear I don’t have permission to be me. I know I have buried so much sadness over this. I find myself crying deeply when things trigger me that are about past injuries of not being seen or heard or free to express. I pray in time I start to find the strength… My disempowerment seems to be being projected lately onto several men around me. Its bothering to me. I see what is happening but at this stage I have not felt powerful enough to change a very old pattern that possibly started generations ago.