ANGER, TRUTH & POWER
UnShame your Anger, Speak your Truth and Unearth your Power
A Master Class with David Bedrick
Most people meet anger with a shaming attitude.
What does a shaming attitude look like? It often looks like suppression—“Do something with your anger to make it go away!”
People suppress by holding it in, or by trying to let it go when it’s not ready.
They might do a spiritual bypass— “I’m going to meditate these feelings away.”
Meditating is great, but not as a substitution for working out relationship issues, or communication.
Unshaming allows anger to be channeled into making change and taking stands. Suppressing anger always favors the dominant workplace, family, or relationship culture, complicit in the harm it causes, supporting the status instead of change.
When people shame their anger, they say things like:
“Why am I getting angry? Why am I still angry? I keep getting triggered.”
That’s how shame infects our anger - hiding it, marginalizing it, pathologizing it.
People in sessions almost always see it as a problem, a bad thing, instead of meeting it with curiosity.
And some say, “Mad hides sad,” implying that anger is not an important feeling in and of itself; that we have to get to the real issue – sadness. But this kind of truism, again, is not helpful.
Sometimes anger turns to sadness; sometimes people are more comfortable crying then expressing anger, in which case their sad is hiding mad. But all the time, anger is one piece of the great diversity of our feelings, not because it leads to anything else; just for itself.
Being angry does not mean something is wrong with us.
But why does anger so often get suppressed?
For so many reasons, including…
A lot of men grew up with angry, abusive fathers, so they suppress their own anger—“I’m never going to be like that.” That’s a good beginning - don’t harm others. BUT this can lead to them being disempowered, disconnected from their own power and wholeness. This can interfere with them creating fulfilling relationships and life paths true to their calling instead of obedient to societal norms.
Many of us grew up hearing— “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Teaching us that anger isn’t kind, is wrong and we should be silent rather than speak up.
Oppressive and abusive systems that perpetuate the suppression of some people’s anger more than others:
The “angry Black woman” stereotype is consistently weaponized to dismiss Black women’s valid individual and collective reasons for anger.
Palestinian people speak up and are looked at as potential terrorists.
LGBTQIA folks speak up and are accused of trying to sexualize children.
Women are treated like their anger is a pathology— “Calm down, don’t be angry.”
Anger arises so often in response to oppressive or abusive conditions. It's a force of resistance, it's a force of protest.
Anger is intelligent - it responds like nature responds.
It is aware of oppressive conditions and responds just like our immune system responds to bacteria and toxins.
It responds to attack, to take care of something.
When our immune system isn’t working well, we ’trust’ the oppressive systems, we internalize their norms and gaslighting, and we try to make our anger go away.
What happens when we suppress and try to ‘heal’ away our anger?
Our immune systems turns against itself; we develop a literal or metaphorical immune disease.
I lie awake at night furious about the number of people, especially women, who are convinced that their anger is problem to fix, a power to let go of, a truth to deny, a moral deficit that could be cured by forgiveness, a pathology to be healed.
Let me make this promise to you:
I will honor your anger, not treat it as a secondary emotion, but instead as a POWER and a seed that, once taken root, can open doors, erect boundaries, speak truths to power, and give support life long agendas of relationship with self, with others, and your calling to live a purposeful and authentic life.
So let me say it loud, say it clear:
Anger is not a secondary emotion. It is not second class. It is not less than. It belongs to the panoply of your experience – your authentic experience. It is a valid and important feeling - sacred, like all feelings.
Anger doesn’t hide sad or grief. In fact, sometimes sadness and tears hide anger, as so many women have taught me - who have been conditioned to cry when they are on fire with fury.
Anger isn’t dangerous, but shamed anger, suppressed anger, IS dangerous. Suppressed anger injures; suppressed anger comes out sideways; suppressed anger internalizes and fuels inner criticism and self hatred; suppressed anger somatizes and becomes body symptoms, from cramps and muscle tension to constricution, stomach acid, and sometimes even tumors.
Shamed anger is one root cause of immune issues. It is not the only cause and immune issues have many other sources. But, many people don’t use their anger to create an outer immune system to abuse, condescension, patronization, put downs, micro-aggressions, and relationship violence of myriad forms. Instead, this potential immune system turns inward, against itself. That’s a VERY BIG DEAL.
So what do we need to do?
As such, in this master class we will focus on:
The somatic experience of anger – how it feels in the body, how it moves in the body, how it dances in the body, how the throat and tongue and larynx turn it into sound. And then what? And then we learn to appreciate it.
And then? And then we learn to celebrate it and enjoy its magnificent stride, its clarity, it life-giving wildness.The ethics and the inner-confilict that arises when we want to channel our anger into a relationship, be it an intimate relationship, a friend, a business associate, a family member or a peer.
The internalized voice of shame whose power is almost equal to your anger (almost) – a power that has ruled and disempowered you for way too long. A power that needs to be outed, seen and heard for what it is, and stopped from turning this great life force against you and those you love and seek to nurture and protect.
Anger is like a powerful animal that we can either cage (and watch it become depressed and even suicidal through addictions, self-annihilation and self-censoring) or we can learn to ride its magnificence and follow it’s animal instinct toward what it is hungry for, what it seeks.
What Past Students Are Saying…
“Immensely impactful.”
A transformative workshop.
"Just finished this [anger] class with David Bedrick...couldn't recommend more highly! ... Currently speechless over the impact which is still being integrated and expanded."
"It was so moving to listen to all those voices chiming in, like a chorus in church. You made it a sacred space."
“Wonderful.. .Thank you everyone for sharing.”
“This was so amazing!”
“This course was absolutely brilliant...my anger which at first was terrifying to even think about experiencing, became an awareness about myself I am excited to get to know. 10/10"
In our class we will:
Explore and talk about anger— What’s it like? What do you know about it? What are the somatic experiences of what people call anger? What does anger sound like and how can it be expressed in sounds and in words?
Learn about the shaming witness— What is against anger? Why not be angry? Who says you shouldn’t be angry and to allow the angry energy to speak back to that? How can we use somatic experiences to speak back to the internalized shaming witness?
Work with the radical soma - not just the somatic feeling exprience but also movement and voice. Why? Because anger moves through you and it’s very hard to feel our anger when we’ve been taught to hide it, to suppress it in a way that our body isn’t free to move with it.
Be guided through exercises to tap into, feel, move and express your anger AND learn how to integrate this into your life.
UnShame Your Anger, Speak Your Truth & Unearth Your Power
The RECORDING of this class is now available - get instant access with your purchase!
COST: $60 for just this master class OR bundle this class with our Death, Deadliness & Rebirth master class recording for $100 for both.
MEET YOUR FACILITATOR:
David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he offers facilitation training to deepen the skills and awareness of healers as well as workshops for individuals to further their own personal development. David’s embodied way of teaching is far more than informational, students are often brought to tears and face to face with their beauty, power, life path and soul.
David’s passion for studying shame arose from his childhood, growing up with a father who used fists and belts to express his rage and a mother who coped by denying and gaslighting his experience. Over thirty years of research, teaching and working with individuals awakened his heart and mind to how the dominant healing paradigm pathologizes people - seeing our sufferings and ills as something to fix and cure, instead of messages to be understood and invitations to deepen our relationships with ourselves and the world around us. In this way, David understands our difficulties to be “dreams” - invitations to insight, soul, and the divine unfolding of our lives.
David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.
His upcoming book, The Unshaming Way, will be published by North Atlantic books in 2024.