In the world of personal growth and healing, anger is still one of the most misunderstood emotions out there. It’s often seen as dangerous, destructive, or something we should avoid at all costs. But if anger is pushed away, so is a huge part of your power, your clarity, and your authenticity.

In this blog, we’re going to explore why anger is so important — why suppressing it keeps you stuck, how it leaks out in sneaky ways when ignored, and how learning to work with it can change everything: from your sense of self to your relationships to the way you show up in the world.

At Beyond Psychology, we’re not here to teach you how to get rid of anger. We’re here to help you reconnect with it, reclaim it, and use it as the life force it was always meant to be.

This blog is based on the video of Iris Savonije (Body-centered therapist) & Myrthe Glasbergen, MSc. (founder Beyond Psychology & Psychologist) about this topic. You can watch the video below. Prefer to read on? Just scroll past the video. 

Why Anger Matters

If you don’t have access to your anger, it’s almost impossible to truly feel empowered. Anger is the energy that lets you stand tall, carry yourself with strength, and take yourself seriously. It’s the fire behind setting healthy boundaries, speaking your truth, and living authentically.

When anger gets shut down — usually because of old wounds, emotional neglect, or learned survival strategies — something vital gets lost. You lose the fuel that anchors you into yourself. Reclaiming anger is therefore not about learning something new, but about unlearning the fear and shame that were attached to it.

The Big Misunderstanding About Anger

A lot of people think anger equals violence or losing control. No wonder so many of us have learned to fear it. But what’s often forgotten is that there’s a huge difference between immature anger – the explosive, aggressive kind – and mature anger – the clear, grounded, powerful kind. 

Mature anger isn’t about hurting anyone. It brings clarity, truth, life force, creativity, and boundaries. It’s about standing your ground, claiming your space, and using your life force energy wisely. It provides the skeletal structure – the containment – necessary to protect yourself, and to carry your more vulnerable emotions like sadness, fear, and grief. Without anger, these emotions can overwhelm and destabilize, leaving you feeling helpless, anxious, or chronically disconnected. 

How Suppressed Anger Leaks Out

Here’s the thing: anger doesn’t just disappear when you ignore it. It leaks. It shows up in ways you might not even connect to anger at first. Some common ways include:

👉🏼 Self-aggression: turning anger inward, resulting in tension, shallow breathing, body pain (such as stiff jaws or shoulders), and self-criticism.

👉🏼 Numbing behaviors: overeating, scrolling endlessly on phones, binge-watching series — all attempts to avoid feeling what’s inside.

👉🏼 Disproportionate reactions: overreacting to minor irritations because the internal reservoir of unexpressed anger is overflowing.

👉🏼 Excessive crying: while sadness is a natural emotion, for many, habitual crying masks a deeper, unexpressed scream of rage.

👉🏼 Disappearing acts: particularly among men, suppressed anger often results in freezing, isolating, or emotionally withdrawing from connection.

When anger is pushed down, it doesn’t go away. It just finds sideways, painful ways to express itself – often leaving you more exhausted, disconnected, and alone. 

Cultural Conditioning and the Suppression of Anger

The suppression of anger is not random. Society hasn’t exactly made it easy to embrace anger. Especially for women, there’s this constant pressure to be soft, heart-open, nurturing, receptive. In spiritual circles, there is often an even greater idealization of the “soft, heart-centered” woman, leaving little room for the full expression of anger and boundaries.

The truth? Many hardworking, kind-hearted people end up feeling empty inside – women and men alike – always trying to live up to outside ideals. Finding themselves disconnected from their authentic desires and needs. They sense something is missing, feel a screaming emptiness inside, yet cannot name it.

Underneath that emptiness, anger is sitting there. Waiting. Carrying the truth you’ve been taught to hide: your needs, your boundaries, your real self. 

The Trap of Learned Helplessness

When angers feels too dangerous to express, many people (without realizing it) slide into helplessness instead. Instead of confronting the feelings of hurt or betrayal directly and saying: “Hey that hurt” or “No, that’s not okay,” the survival instinct kicks in: sadness, neediness, shrinking yourself down. Hoping to elicit care or support without risking the perceived dangers of expressing anger.

While this strategy may provide temporary emotional safety, it deepens disempowerment and furthers the disconnect from true self-expression. This cycle reinforces the internalized belief that standing up for oneself is unsafe, leading to increased anxiety, self-doubt, and an ongoing loss of self-trust.

Reclaiming Anger as a Healing Force

Healing the relationship with anger is essential for reclaiming your personal power, setting boundaries, finding your authentic voice, and building emotional safety from within. Because the healing journey isn’t just about feeling safe. It’s about feeling alive, and reconnecting to anger is reconnecting to your life force. It’s learning to carry yourself, to stop abandoning yourself, and to trust your instincts again. It is a journey that requires unlearning deep-rooted fears, dismantling shame, and patiently reconditioning the nervous system to tolerate and embody this powerful energy.

Rather than leading to destruction, mature anger — when integrated — becomes a grounding, stabilizing, and empowering force. It provides the internal scaffolding needed to withstand vulnerability, to speak truth without fear, and to live fully without constant self-abandonment.

Reclaiming anger allows you to take up space in the world, heal relational wounds, break free from toxic cycles, and ultimately step into your authentic, sovereign selves.

And it’s bigger than just personal healing. When more people reclaim their anger in a mature, grounded way, they stop complying with systems and relationships that harm them. They stop perpetuating cycles of suppression. They become the leaders, healers, and changemakers the world desperately needs.

Anger, when it’s owned and integrated, becomes the fire that heals, protects, and transforms — inside and out.

Moving Forward: Anger as the Key to Authentic Transformation

Learning to work with anger is not merely a personal endeavor. It holds the potential for systemic and collective transformation. When more individuals reclaim their anger energy in a mature, grounded way, they not only change their own lives — they contribute to shifting the emotional and relational patterns of families, communities, and beyond.

Anger, once feared and suppressed, can become the fire that fuels healing, the foundation that supports authenticity, and the power that drives real, lasting change.

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Want to dive deeper?

🔥 Want to dive head first into this topic in a 12-week immersive group workshop series with Iris Savonije & Myrthe Glasbergen – that helps you to embody and reclaim anger as a source of personal empowerment? Then join Anger Alchemy. 

🙏🏻 Prefer to work 1-on-1 on this topic? Just book a free intake with Iris Savonije – body-centered therapist and chief anger – below. 

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