Feeling Angry

I’ve been feeling really angry lately. I wake up with it, and it’s like a default state that I fall back to when I’m not engaged in anything. I’m not consciously aware of being angry about anything in particular; of course I’m pissed off about the usual suspects like:

• not feeling well for so long
• not getting great emotional support from my family
• my business not going gangbusters
• not being able to go out at night and have fun

But it’s not like I wake up thinking any of those things; I just wake up feeling tense in the head and cranky. At least it’s better than feeling anxious though. Anger has a more empowering feel to it than anxiety, and I’ve been doing a lot of work over the last few years to learn to express my anger so perhaps the fruits of my labour are finally paying off.

Anger and anxiety are both generated in the same part of the brain; the amygdala. It’s the area that Gupta’s program attempts to “retrain” in the hope of curing CFS. I suspect there’s more to it than that, and that the trauma goes deeper into the nervous system than just the amygdala. But it makes sense that if you suppress anger, it’s going to come out as anxiety since the same brain structure generates both.

As I mentioned in [intlink id=”554″ type=”post”]another post[/intlink], I’ve been practicing Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing for over a year, and I still get shivers running through my nervous system which I hope are related to the shuddering he talks about when nervous energy is released. I suspect this is the same reason that Osho’s Dynamic Meditation works: by triggering the release of pent-up nervous energy.

I first learned Dynamic Meditation when I did Path Of Love a few years ago. It’s a form of meditation where you move your body in order to release nervous stress, so that the mind can settle more easily when you finally stop. As with any spiritual practice, the important point is to practice it. But I rarely do. Instead, I’d been relying on other people to create a space where I’d be motivated to do it, like doing Path Of Love again and going to burn meditations. It certainly is easier to do the practice in a group, but if I’m going to take responsibility for my own healing it doesn’t make sense to rely on other people all the time.

Reading Osho’s autobiography lately has inspired me; now I get what the guy was on about. There’s a greater goal now than just recovery from CFS: Freedom. Enlightenment.

So I’ve started doing “Dynamic” each morning. I notice during the cathartic phase that I end up dry retching. Vomiting up nervous energy or anger. I had a similar experience when I first started my morning bike rides; part way along the ride I’d have to stop to throw up, even though I didn’t feel nauseous. It was reminiscent of the migraines I used to get, which were overwhelmingly painful to the point where I would throw up; which felt absolutely ghastly, but always relieved the pain.

I’m hoping that doing the dynamic every morning will shift the anger that I’m feeling, and my sense of humour will return. There isn’t too much to laugh at when I’m pissed off all the time, and I’m not all that interested in contributing to the world when I’m angry.