Anger as Fuel for Healing
Welcome to Day 13 of TLC for your gut and understanding your emotions for internal healing! Sign up for the email if you want to receive a happy-gut tip every day for the next three weeks. Immediately improve your gut health, and make it easy to love your belly, so that your belly loves you!
My late teacher, Niravi Payne, constantly reminded us how people in pain need to allow themselves to really feel their anger in order to heal. However, many of us have been taught that feelings like anger and rage are shameful.
I was conditioned not to feel anger. “Nice girls don’t get angry!” Forgiveness is supposed to be healthier anyway, right? Niravi would say yes—except with the caveat that if we are still feeling the effects of trauma, loss, or wounding. If our lives, health, and gut are a mess because of it, then leaping to forgiveness too soon can short-circuit the healing process. She suggested we apply the concept of “compassion” instead. After years of avoiding my anger, and then, allowing myself to feel it, and finally begin to release negative emotions.
Steps to Release and Starting Healing
What do you think withheld or suppressed anger does to the gut? Right, it stops the gut from working. Creating an extremely acidic condition in the body, this suppressed anger can lead to all kinds of illnesses, from ulcers to cold sores to migraines to immune system breakdown. As we learned in It Takes Guts to Be Happy! our brain and gut are inextricably connected. Suppressing emotions, particularly anger, shuts down our ability to think clearly and live in the present. Instead, we exist in fight or flight. If we do this long enough, we can get depressed or hostile, and at the very least cranky and pessimistic.
Some ways to move this toxicity from your body follow:
1. Write three pages, uncensored, in your journal every day for thirty days.
2. Connect to a professional counselor or therapist.
3. Share the truth of how you feel with a trusted friend.
4. Write uncensored letters to those with whom you are angry, but do not send them.
Happy-Gut Reminder: We cannot feel joy if we do not allow ourselves to feel anger. It’s not a “bad emotion,” but highly toxic when misdirected.
The 21-Day Cleanse in Julia’s books is a road 
map for healing digestion, stopping gas & bloat, maximizing energy, and learning new tools to sustain your health and vitality. Julia’s books are available in both audible and printed versions!
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