Resource, Resilience and Regulation, Part 3: Somatic Experiencing as an Alternative to Conventional Anger Management Strategies
INTRODUCTION
Emotions are messengers that guide us toward meeting our personal and collective needs. However, these valuable envoys are often viewed as foes to be vanquished. Our culture has devised all manner of strategies to “manage” or “transcend” our difficult emotions. In this article, I will propose an alternative approach to relating with our feelings, anger in particular, which complements the Inner Relationship Focusing method discussed in part 2. With this process, rather than “killing the messenger”, we invite them to sit with us for tea in an effort to understand and heed their wise counsel. We learn to track their associated sensations and then gently follow the impulses generated by these emotions to move us to a sense of greater safety, empowerment, and vitality.
Emotions are linked with survival. For example, when we experience a boundary rupture that threatens our sense of safety, our nervous system automatically mobilizes a defensive response. For some, the response may be aggressive and accompanied by feelings of anger or possibly rage, depending upon the perceived intensity of the threat and its resemblance to past overwhelming experiences. For others, emotions of fear or terror may surface, giving rise to a flight response. In any case, emotions provide a strong impetus to support the successful completion of a survival response.
The ability to moderate or suppress these emotional impulses is fundamental to maintaining the fabric of our social structure. Unfortunately, the means whereby we achieve this prosocial behavior often creates other problems in its wake. When we are scared and want to run away, we are told to sit still and behave. When we are overwhelmed and our nervous system needs a break, we are admonished to snap out of it and pay attention. When our space has been invaded and we feel angry and aggressive, we are taught to use our “inside voice” and “be nice.”
If humans didn’t have this ability to override our primal impulses, a sophisticated civilization would not be possible. At the same time, abiding by these social norms without processing the instinctual responses and accompanying survival physiology comes at a high cost to our nervous system.
To illustrate how these competing needs for self-protection and abiding by social norms collide, I will present a hypothetical scenario. Imagine that while delivering a presentation to your colleagues in a conference room you are repeatedly interrupted with objections by your supervisor. As you conjure this situation in your mind, imagine what sensations you might be experiencing. Perhaps your shirt collar grows tighter and your face flushes as you feel all eyes upon you. Meanwhile, as your supervisor's critical voice cuts through the buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead, you experience a tightening of your jaw, a clenching of your fists, and a squeezing in your chest.
All of these sensations are the result of the subcortical regions of your brain preparing you for battle, even though your boss's interjections are not physically threatening in reality. The tightening in the jaw is a vestige of our built in instinct to snarl or bite, while the clenching of the fists readies you to punch. You exercise restraint, but even that creates a tightening in the chest from engaging antagonist muscles to inhibit the impulse to strike.
To make matters worse, if you were unfortunate enough to have had similar past experiences in childhood of being interrupted and criticized without a subsequent repair or resolution, the backlog of incomplete fight physiology will make the intensity of your survival response much stronger in such situations.
These survival impulses stem from your primitive brain's best efforts to keep you safe, but obviously aren’t the right tool for the job in most cases! Hopefully, you have enough cognitive function onboard to override them and don’t resort to overt violence. But even when you do manage to suppress an aggressive response, the charge associated with the trigger continues to circulate in the body long after the event has passed.
To your dismay, you may find later that day that you overreact to another seemingly innocuous situation. It could be that your child is slow to respond to take out the trash and you snap at them, or the driver in the car in front of you doesn't notice that the light has turned green, and you lay on your horn and yell in frustration.
Over the long term, various adaptations are adopted in an attempt to manage and quell the expression of these impulses. We may dissociate from the aggressive impulse by shifting the attention to logical arguments for why anger is counterproductive. However, the inevitable consequence of intellectualizing is a redirection of the hostility to another object once the activation level exceeds a level that we are able to override.
In the case of chronic disease, aggression is inwardly directed, whereas in the previous example of snapping at our children for not completing a chore, the aggression is displaced outwardly.
Another form of suppression is the use of spiritual bypass, in which we “use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks".[1] One of manifold ways spiritual bypass could manifest would be allowing oneself to tolerate abuse and repeated boundary ruptures while simultaneously adopting an attitude of moral superiority over the perpetrator. Rather than confronting the offender and asserting boundaries, one may retreat to the meditation cushion to practice loving kindness toward their abuser and rationalize the experience as a “burning off of Karma.” That was my preferred strategy before I had the good fortune of being introduced to Somatic Experiencing!
Alternatively, we may redirect fight energy by means of allying with more “righteous” forms of aggression in the form of social, political, economic, or environmental activism. While activism in and of itself can be a powerful force for good in the world, it can take a negative toll when it is driven by survival physiology, as is evidenced by the prevalence of burnout in this field.
Another approach is overt expression in the form of cathartic therapy involving screaming, pillow punching and the like to process the survival physiology. While cathartic or “primal” therapies may offer short term symptoms relief by “releasing the pressure valve”, they often do more harm than good in the long term, because in order to renegotiate trauma and repattern our responses, the simultaneous engagement of our thinking as well as our feeling brain is necessary.
In cathartic release, there is a tendency to focus exclusively on the attack action of hitting or kicking and to split off from the inner experience of one’s sensation and emotions, shunting blood from our “thinking brain” to our “survival brain.” The resulting adrenaline rush only serves to reinforce the activation of survival physiology we are seeking to disengage. A dependency upon this sort of catharsis often develops, as the client grows to crave further emotional release, culminating in a therapeutic dead-end.
Fortunately, there is an alternative approach that I have successfully used with clients for the past several years: Somatic Experiencing. By helping clients tune into the felt sense within the body generated by anger while simultaneously completing the innate self-protective motor responses that were suppressed or otherwise thwarted at the time of the triggering event, the inappropriate cuing and repeated looping of survival physiology is deactivated.
PRACTICE
It is beyond the scope of this article to detail the entire catalog of possible Somatic Experiencing interventions to help resolve the manifold self protective responses that may emerge from trauma. Doing so would take an entire book and even then would not be as effective as working with a somatic trauma specialist. This is because a professional can identify the specific motor responses that have been thwarted and help facilitate their reorganization by responding moment by moment to subtle shifts in physiology.
That being said, I will introduce one exercise that is applicable to a thwarted fight response that you might try if you are experiencing a minor irritation that isn’t resolving. As a caveat, the ideas presented here do not serve as a replacement for the help of a qualified trauma professional, but rather as an adjunct to professional support.
This particular practice, that I call the VOO Sequence, incorporates several typical defensive movement patterns into one series, thereby increasing the likelihood that the particular pattern you are experiencing in your body will be addressed. It combines vocalization along with movement of several regions of the body, and is most useful at times when you are feeling triggered and feeling frustration, resentment, or anger.
Begin in a comfortable seated position, ideally in a chair whose back is positioned against a wall for support. The practice involves several steps and works best when completed in the following sequence: first perform step one by itself, and then perform steps 1-2, then steps 2-3, then 2-4, then 2-5, and finally 2-6.
Before beginning, recall the triggering event and notice where in your body you are experiencing the sensations associated with the emotions of anger, frustration, resentment, etc. For reasons discussed further along, it is better not to replay the entire event in your mind, but only enough to connect you with the somatic component of the anger, .
Letting go of the narrative, find a few words to describe the sensations that are present. If you are able to, notice the amount of space they occupy in your body, as well as their intensity. After completing each of the following steps, pause for a breath or more to notice any changes in sensation that may take place in the region of the body where you feel activated. Don’t be surprised if the sensations initially intensify before subsiding.
Only continue as far into the exercise as is necessary to get a satisfying sense of relief and settling in your body. It is not necessary to complete all steps of the sequence. The telltale signs that you have arrived include a feeling of being large and/or powerful, the feeling that it is easy to take deep breaths, or a spontaneous feeling of joy where there was previously frustration or anger.
Guppy breath: Begin by slowly opening and closing the mouth in the way that a guppy fish does, taking 3-5 seconds for each repetition. Do this a few times.
Voo: The vocalization is similar to chanting “Om” with which you may be acquainted from yoga class. However, instead, we use a “Voo” phonation, which helps to resonate the lower abdomen, activating the vagus nerve. Take a deep breath, and make a low pitched voo sound on the exhalation, trying to make the sound of a foghorn. Try to extend the exhalation for as long as is comfortable. Repeat once or twice.
Voo-aaah: Repeat the vocalization from step two, except this time allow the jaw to slowly open over the course of the entire breath. So you will pace the rate of opening your jaw so that if your exhale lasts twenty seconds, your jaw will be halfway open at 10 seconds and fully open at 20.
Snarl and growl: Once again, repeat steps two and three, and now add a snarl in which you raise your upper lip to bare your teeth as you voo and open your jaw. If you feel spontaneously inclined to do so, make a fierce expression, scrunching your face, and add a growl to the voo sound.
Wringing out a towel: While repeating steps 2-4, twist a towel in your hands as if you were wringing water from it (the towel does not need to be wet). I find bath towels to be the best size for this.
Raise hips: For this step, your chair needs to be backed up against a wall or stable support, as you will push your feet into the ground and your back into the chair back as you arch upward, raising your hips as high as you can reach them. You are making a motion similar to bridge pose in yoga, but from a seated position in a chair.
Once you reach a point where you are experiencing significant settling, you might try replaying the triggering event in your mind, except this time envisioning it as you wish it had gone. If circumstances were such that you can’t imagine a positive outcome, simply change the circumstances in your imagined scenario. For example, if you were physically bullied and intimidated by someone who was stronger than you, you might imagine yourself being the Incredible Hulk, or shrinking that person down to a fraction of their actual size. Take the time to say the things that you didn’t have a chance to say in the moment and imagine them be received in way that you desire.
Or, if the situation is from your past or resembles a past situation of having had to assume a role that was far more mature than was appropriate for your age, you might imagine a competent protector intervening on your behalf. By “renegotiating” the event, you not only offer new pathways for different outcomes should a similar situation arise in the future, but you are helping to reset the activation threshold in the subcortical regions of your brain so that you don't get unnecessarily triggered moving forward.
I know some of the steps in the above exercise might sound a bit kooky, but I encourage you to give them a try the next time you find yourself unable to wind down after being triggered with anger. I have found the VOO sequence to reliably provide a satisfying down-regulation of the sympathetic activation associated with the fight response.
There is no one size fits all approach to completing thwarted self protective responses, so if you find this exercise doesn’t quite scratch that itch, you may be best served by working with an experienced somatic trauma specialist to help move toward resolution. There are many reasons that working with a professional will be helpful in these situations, a couple of which I will discuss below.
Firstly, having a trained eye carefully observing gestures, posture and subtle motor responses can help uncover deeply entrained patterns in the nervous system that would otherwise go undetected. They may then be gently reorganized with specifically targeted movements and exercises. Secondly, a large proportion of trauma is relational in nature, and therefore is best resolved through interaction with another nervous system that can provide a reparative experience. This is especially true if the trauma occurred early in life as a result of the absence of a competent protector to defend the child, resulting in premature parentification in the child’s psyche. Having the opportunity to co-regulate with the somatic therapist as they act as a proxy for that missing competent protector is often a vital missing piece in the renegotiation of early trauma.
Of course, somatic therapy is not the only outlet for these thwarted responses. Dancing, singing, martial arts, weightlifting and calisthenics are a few other avenues that, when performed mindfully, offer a means of reclaiming vitality that had been locked up in looping patterns in the nervous system from incomplete fight responses.
DISCUSSION
In order to renegotiate trauma, both the “thinking brain” (cortex) as well as the “feeling brain” (sub-cortex) regions must be simultaneously engaged [2]. Another way of stating this is to say that we need to be immersed in our emotions and interoceptive signals while also observing them with curiosity at the same time. By slowing down our experience, we are able to do just that.
In order to understand why this is so, it's helpful to understand the two distinct pathways in the brain that are involved in interpreting sensory information, slow and fast, each with a distinct role in processing incoming data. The fast pathway involves a streamlined neural circuit primarily comprising subcortical structures such as the thalamus and brainstem. For instance, in the auditory startle response, sound stimuli travel directly from the cochlea to the brainstem, bypassing higher cortical areas to reach the motor neurons responsible for a rapid reflexive action, typically within less than 50 milliseconds [3]. This immediate processing is facilitated by short, direct neural routes that minimize delay, allowing for swift reactions to sudden or potentially threatening stimuli. The rapid response time is crucial for survival, as it enables organisms to react to dangers before they have a chance to fully process the situation.
In contrast, the slow pathway involves more complex processing through the cerebral cortex, resulting in longer signal transmission times. For example, visual information from the retina is first processed in the primary visual cortex and then travels through the ventral stream to areas such as the fusiform gyrus, which is involved in object recognition [4]. This pathway, which involves several stages of cortical processing, can take hundreds of milliseconds to seconds, allowing for detailed and conscious interpretation of sensory inputs [5]. The slow pathway's extended processing time supports higher-order functions such as identifying familiar faces or integrating sensory information with contextual knowledge, facilitating thoughtful decision-making and complex behavior.
An example of how the difference between the two pathways processing times might play out in real life is the response a hiker might have to encountering a crooked stick along a trail. The dark object in their peripheral vision might initially be mistaken for a snake., and before having a chance to evaluate the object further, the hiker leaps away from the stick. It isn’t until moments later, after processing in the prefrontal cortex takes place, that the stick is properly identified and the threat response settles.
When we have an overwhelming experience, our fast pathway typically mobilizes a response before we've had an opportunity to evaluate it in the same way described above. Everything is coming at us so fast and we are on autopilot. When we are traumatized, we never get to the point where we recognize, “Oh, it’s just a stick.” This experience gets stored in our long term memory in the hippocampus, priming us to respond in the same fashion in the event of similar circumstances arising in the future and making us hypervigilant. Then, if we subsequently recall the situation, these defensive responses get mobilized again and again.
A feedback loop has been established in which our body signals danger, triggering the mobilization of a threat response, which in turn sets off further interoceptive cues to engender a state of chronic survival physiology. Because the subcortical regions of the brain are atemporal (that is to say they cannot distinguish past, present, future), the same physiology that was mobilized as a time limited response to an emergency situation may become chronic. We become stuck in “trauma time.”
The result of being stuck in trauma time is a shutting down of the normal maintenance and repair functions that ensure health and well being, because the imperative is our immediate survival. So even if we bury aggressive impulses and associated emotions deeply enough that no overt reactivity emerges, the associated internal dysregulation often results in the development of chronic health issues like migraines, insomnia, autoimmunity, hypertension, diabetes and the like.
However, if we recall the situation mindfully and skillfully using the methodology presented here and others like it, we simultaneously engage both the slow and fast processing pathways, which brings agency into the process. When activating material is being brought to the surface using the above approach, some level of survival physiology is activated. But because we are also engaging our curiosity, the prefrontal cortex must also remain engaged, creating a counterbalance that was not there at the time of the traumatic event or sequelae [6]. The witnessing presence made possible by activity in the frontal lobe serves to temper the magnitude of the activation such that our response is no longer governed solely by unconscious procedural memory. Instead, executive functioning is brought online, thereby enabling us to choose an alternative response.
Another benefit of mindful renegotiation of a traumatic event is the deactivation of chronic threat physiology via updating the somatic components of the episodic memory. This update results in the return of our threat detection system to a healthy baseline, allowing our health maintenance and repair functions to resume, thereby helping to resolve or decrease symptoms of chronic stress related health issues by eliminating hypervigilance.
You may have noticed that the intervention introduced above did not involve a chronological playing out of the activating event as we remember it having taken place. If we were to recount a memory from start to finish in that manner, there is a high likelihood that we would reinforce the dysfunctional pattern in the nervous system that we are seeking to resolve. With Somatic Experiencing, we interrupt the conditioned responses by briefly “touching in” to a memory only long enough to elicit the somatic memory of the experience, then take time to metabolize that particular memory.
By processing “bite sized” pieces of the overwhelming experience, we entrain the nervous system to smoothly pendulate between cycles of activation and deactivation, which thereby increases our range of resiliency over time. I often tell clients that this method is akin to going to the gym for our nervous system. We do a set at a moderate weight so we can perform multiple repetitions, and then we let our muscles recover so that we can repeat a couple more sets. This yields better results than loading up the barbell so that we can’t lift it, or can lift it once and then are laid out in bed for the next several days with a back sprain. By taking this gentle approach, we gradually increase vagal tone in the nervous system and increase our capacity for life.
The method presented here is one small example of how Somatic Experiencing may be used to help resolve trauma. I will leave you with an old joke that underscores the importance of using a body based approach to trauma as opposed to focusing exclusively on the cognitive part of our experiences:
A policeman sees a drunk man under a streetlight on his hands and knees looking for something and asks what the problem might be. The drunk says he lost his keys. After a few minutes of looking under the streetlight together, the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, “No. I lost them in the alley, but the light is much better here!”
Trauma resides in the body (alley) not in our thoughts (under the streetlight). Somatic Experiencing helps connect with the body, facilitating completion of thwarted self protective responses, and thereby resolving chronic nervous system dysregulation.
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