Full Steam Ahead – Release Your Anger
“The repression of anger not only predisposes to disease, but the experience of anger has been shown to promote healing or, at least, prolong survival.”
-Gabor Matte, When the Body Says No; The cost of hidden stress
In theory, I love playing in the garden. But I must confess that I had mixed feelings about slacking off when I was working in my garden at the last house I owned.
Unfortunately, during the seven years I lived there, most of the time there was a lot in the way of neighborhood noise to deal with as I tried to achieve serenity in my little garden: children screaming, parents yelling at said children, high-pitched screams. bandsaws that are used for hours on end, pressure washers, as well as the boom-boom-boom of bass music and video games.
And then… there was the traffic.
I lived on a sort of thoroughfare that got increasingly crowded in our growing city, so maintenance and construction vehicles rumbled loudly on weekdays. Gravel and cement trucks (plus buses and Harley Davidson motorcycles) are LOUD vehicles, especially when speeding up, which, oddly enough, was often in front of my house. Years before I gave up trying to tend my front yard garden without wearing ear protection.
Some days, I could play in my backyard without earplugs or headphones, but not very often. But on a long weekend in what would be my last summer at home, I found myself working, without ear protection, in my backyard. He was delightfully (and strangely) calm. I could hear the birds chirping. It was lovely.
Part of the reason for this was the fact that my neighbor with the screaming children had finally moved out six months earlier and was preparing his house for sale. He was more than grateful for the relative peace and quiet.
One of the chores I was tackling in my yard that long weekend was wisteria and vine pruning. Both vines had grown out of control and were strangling neighboring trees, so I cut and cut and cut.
However, most of the time I had to be on a stairway, which meant I could see my neighbor’s backyard, the one that had (albeit inadvertently) annoyed me so much over the years. And the more I could, the angrier I got at my neighbor for a) being so loud and messy over the years and; b) only bothering to clean up his house and yard now that it was time to SELL it and make a lot of money.
“Blaming others requires an enormous amount of mental energy…it makes you feel powerless over your own life because your happiness depends on the actions and behaviors of others, which you cannot control.”
-Richard Carlson, Don’t worry about the little things
At first, directing all this pent-up anger at my noisy neighbor (or rather, his empty backyard) felt pretty therapeutic. But the more I smoked, the more I started turning that anger back on myself because I finally realized that Yo he was the one who had chosen to stay in my house for SEVEN years. No one had forced me to stay and tolerate noisy neighbors. I was alive in my own self!
By the end of the weekend, I had completely exhausted myself. But let me tell you, has my garden ever looked great? That poor wisteria didn’t know what hit her.
And then wouldn’t you know? I had a reflexology treatment on my feet two days later, and the next morning, I woke up sick as a dog. I had this weird headache on top of my head, like my body was a pressure cooker trying to release steam out the top but couldn’t. I was nauseated and had no appetite or energy. And I kept falling asleep. I drank enough water to sink a battleship as my body tried to rid itself of all the old toxic anger that had risen to the surface but seemed trapped.
The water detox worked. The next day, I woke up and felt pretty much back to my normal self. And my anger had dissipated.
“I am very empowered without harming anyone if I allow myself to experience the anger and contemplate what may have triggered it. Depending on the circumstances, I can choose to manifest the anger in some way or to let it go. The key is that I have not suppressed the experience of it “.
-Gabor Matte, When the body says no
In retrospect, even though I thought I’d been venting my anger over the years (you’d think so, judging by the number of livid phone calls made to family and friends about the noisy neighbor and the noisy traffic situation). ), now I’m not so sure. I suspect I had just suppressed it, and it took pruning a runaway wisteria to bring it to the surface…and a reflexology and water detox to finally release it.
Interestingly, two weeks later I sold my house…and still hadn’t put it on the market. Go outside; full steam.