Anger
Surely, I thought the one representing the angry woman with road rage would eventually morph into something about White Supremacy. Instead my Family Constellation revealed...
I had a chance to look again at the road rage incident from last week. At the time, my flight instincts had kicked in. I was able to flee the situation relatively unscathed yet, I was still so curious about what it was that terrorized me? It didn’t make sense why I would be frightened of a middle-aged woman who seemingly fumbled out of her car, waddling from side to side as she ran toward me?
Surely, I thought the one representing the angry woman with road rage in my Family Constellation would eventually morph into something about White Supremacy. Instead, it slowly revealed insight into how I automatically associate anger with violence.
As the Family Constellation progresses, my brain clicks suddenly, and I have pictures of little moments in my life where I have connected anger with violence…like the time I would get so upset at my husband when he expressed his anguish over politics or the times when he yelled “dinner” at the top of his lungs. Often I would complain how there was so much anger in his tone of voice, and his response was always, “I’m expressing an urgency, not anger.”
Then there were sooo many memories of my mother…using the cleaver chopping vigorously on the cutting board…the time she tried to spank my bottom when I looked at her a certain way…any look my mother gave me meant a punishment later.
Many years ago, my mother called me after someone in my family had a meltdown. I was on a road trip and she blamed me, demanding that I come home immediately to take care of the conflict. She needed me to deal with it!! I helped her to regulate before hanging up the phone then silently grieved how in that moment, my mother needed me to be her friend and confidant, the parent, and the fixer all at the same time. At the time, I so resented it yet, I did as I was told.
Now all these memories and its connection to violence made sense. From my earliest memories, I have always associated anger with violence and danger. While there was little physical violence in my own childhood, I was often in trouble. What stories did my conflict-avoidant mother inherit from her mother and her grandmother?
At some point, younger Yvette made an unconscious vow to sacrifice her own nervous system…to help her mother emotionally regulate. In turn, Yvette vowed she would never be like her mother…she would suppress her anger, even feeling pride after intense conflicts where she was not angry. Most recently, she did not advocate for herself, so there would be peace…no matter the cost to herself. There had never been no room for those inconvenient, sensitive feelings that had been considered a burden to her family.
Yet, suppressed anger is also associated with rheumatoid arthritis. Is this the root to my autoimmune disease? How often have I given myself and carried the emotional labor on behalf of those around me?
I, Yvette Leung, revoke the vow that I had made to the Divine so long ago…to sacrifice my nervous system on behalf of my mother…to sacrifice myself in order to protect those around me from feeling pain…in order to keep the peace. Instead, I will take back the strength, disentangling that energetic force which belongs to me from what I associated with harm, danger and violence. I will love myself, feeling all the feelings that make me human.
“Loving yourself is a political act. We are taught not to love ourselves, and from that place we are easily manipulated...
Love yourself so much that this love changes the world.”
Rita Shimmin, UNtraining Co-Founder