Reclaiming Anger: Trauma, Repression, and Healthy Protest with Elizabeth Ferreira

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Forrest and associate therapist Elizabeth Ferreira talk about healthy (and unhealthy) anger. They challenge the common framing of anger as a “secondary emotion,” and explore why anger matters, how it relates to trauma, and what it can tell us about our wants and needs. They discuss how to access healthy protest and work with less healthy forms of anger like explosive rage, repression, defensiveness, passive aggression, and righteousness. Elizabeth shares insights from both her personal experience as someone with CPTSD and her clinical practice.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction: Why anger matters, and why it’s misunderstood

3:32: How trauma shapes our relationship to anger

5:40: Bypassing anger in therapy

9:04: What happens when anger is suppressed

12:29: Reclaiming anger: submit, explode, or something else

15:45: Anger as a signal of wants and needs

16:20: Boundaries, protest, and complex trauma

25:01: When CPTSD makes it hard to know what you want

30:06: Dissociation, structural trauma, and accessing anger

35:04: Why we need others to co-regulate big emotions

43:20: Emotional responsibility, self-awareness, and repair

53:26: Reconnecting with wants and needs through play

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