Spellwork Somatics
The Spellwork Somatics Podcast features conversations with healers, artists, and activists, on the magic of personal transformation and collective liberation. Every episode includes a practice to try out for yourself, adapt, or inspire you to create your own!
Spellwork Somatics
Embodying and Expressing Anger with Jade Chung and Anabel Khoo
On this episode, Anabel Khoo chats with Jade Chung, co-facilitator of their upcoming collaborative workshop, Accessing Your Anger, for Asian folks seeking to safely embody and express anger/rage.
We go deeper into our relationships to anger/rage in our upbringing, childhood, and our personal journeys to have more a compassionate and authentic relationship with our anger and our selves.
Jade Chung is an art therapist, coach, and healer who helps her clients heal their trauma, rediscover their creativity/soul, and learn to live an embodied life of authenticity and expression. You can find out more about Jade and her services at yourpiece.art!
Listen to Part 2 of our conversation on Jade's podcast Creativity + Soul!
ACCESSING YOUR ANGER WORKSHOP
This will be a live, interactive, and intimate (max. 16 participants) 3-hour workshop on Sunday December 3, 2023 at 12-3pm PST // 3-6pm EST.
Tickets are $66 USD and spots are limited!
Register for the Accessing Your Anger workshop here!
WE'LL BE COVERING:
- Deep perspectives on why we feel anger/range, what they really are as emotions, and why they feel so uncomfortable and sticky sometimes
- How to healthily and gently process both anger and rage on your own
- A somatic therapy practice to help you tune into anger/rage held in the body
- An expressive art therapy practice to release these emotions you've held within
YOU'LL WALK AWAY WITH:
- Being able to witness, identify, and hold your experience of anger/rage
- Knowing how to move through moments of anger/rage safely on your own
- Having really tapped into any repressed or unexpressed anger/rage, and released it from your body and energy
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Hey everyone, welcome back to the Spells and Skills podcast! I'm just so excited to share with you in a little conversation my friend Jade and I had very recently, as we are getting ready to put together a workshop on anger for folks who are Asian and looking to safely embody and express anger and rage. We are gonna be offering this workshop on Sunday, December 3rd, coming up next month. It's gonna be a three hour workshop. You can find all the details in the link in the show notes and also, if you follow us, you can find more information on our accounts as well on our websites. So, yeah, I am just really excited just to get into this topic with folks. Jade and I got to. Really, we had just a lot of deep conversations, both being Asian, and we have different relationships to our own anger, the ways we've experienced or learned about anger, and we wanted to share some resources and create a space where other folks like us can feel like it's okay to be confused or to struggle with accessing anger, to feel stuck, and so, yeah, we'll be covering some perspectives on why we feel anger or rage, some ways we can gently and authentically process our anger and rage. I'm going to help folks through, or guide folks through, a somatic practice and Jade, who's an art therapist, will be guiding folks through an expressive arts therapy practice to tune in and express those emotions coming up. So, yeah, that's just a little synopsis. I just wanted to share that announcement and, yeah, we got to have a really amazing conversation about accessing anger or relationship to this emotion. It was so good. It was so great just to chat and hopefully it'll inspire you all as well, if you're interested in taking the workshop or even just in general, to just hear from other folks having these conversations, if it resonates with you. We always love to hear from folks to let us know if you're relating or if it's been helpful. And, yeah, I'll share the conversation in just a bit and I'll link everything that you need to access the registration and find out more information about the workshop below. But really just so glad you were able to tune in today and, yeah, hope you enjoy. Oh, yeah, this is going to be part one of our conversation. So we had a two-part conversation. I'm sharing Part 1 on the Spells and Skills podcast and Jade will be sharing Part 2. I actually think it's already up. So, if you can, yeah, if you wanna find out the rest of our conversation you can go on over to Jade's podcast, and I'll link that below as well.
Anabel Khoo:So we were talking about having this podcast episode separate from the have more space space to get more personal. We talked for so long about all kinds of stuff, but just about anger, before we even had the workshop outline. It was just really cool to talk about the ways that we experienced anger, either in our upbringing or just in life. It could be cool if we can chat about that. I know you mentioned in your childhood or growing up that you felt like you had to pretend like you weren't angry or you weren't allowed to express it. I don't know if you want to say more about that.
Jade Chung:Yeah, it's so funny because, just a little preface, you and I we connected first not with the intention of doing a workshop or facilitating anything together, just through Instagram. Then we had this fun little call where we had tea together. We were just talking about our own experiences in our Asian culture and growing up, you know, multi-cultural or within the Asian diaspora experience. The topic of anger came up. That's why we're doing a workshop.
Jade Chung:My experience with the emotion of anger has to be honest. I grew up really truly believing that I didn't ever feel angry Like I just like anger was like, not a. Obviously I knew that anger was an emotion, but I don't really feel like I ever would have labeled any of my experiences, emotional experiences, as having anger, just because now, thinking back, it was just something that was like so discouraged in my household, never really super explicitly, but it was just more like we don't do explosive Any aggression I'm using air quotes here aggression, any kind of like we just don't show loud emotion. That is negative, that is quote-unquote negative. For that I just associated like if I express anger externally then I won't be a good daughter. So I just grew up suppressing and swallowing like really really swallowing my anger.
Jade Chung:But I do remember, like when I was young, sometimes I would like go back to my room and I would rage, but I still never associated that with anger because I had just like compartmentalized that word because it was just so taboo.
Jade Chung:So I would like rage, I would throw pillows, I would like scream, I would just like have a fit a tantrum in my room and I would tell no one about it. Now it's just so funny to think back on those times because I now, with the knowledge that I have, I'm like, wow, I was kind of messed up. I never felt like I had that space to be able to communicate, to be able to be in anger with other people, and it just was something that I had to like keep secret, almost. So, yeah, I feel like that's why creating spaces like we're hoping to do now together is so important, because there is so much stickiness like I keep saying around that emotion, whether it be experiences kind of like mine, where it's been repressed and your family dealt with a lot of violence, or like outburst of anger in a way that looked disregulating or traumatizing.
Anabel Khoo:Yeah, all the same yeah, yeah.
Anabel Khoo:And I just like that type of anger, like anger was also treated, but I don't know, it sounds like in general, but maybe I don't know if you felt like you resonate with this, but like anger was this sort of thing on the surface, like it was, like you know, like a either it's shameful or it's like violent and like it's. There's a stigma, you know, and you know I guess maybe I don't know if I'm generalizing, because maybe I think it's kind of true but there's a stigma around anger because, like, in some ways, it's like it is acceptable in some forms, but the thing that's really unacceptable is that there's pain under anger and there's like vulnerability and like heartbreak and like hurt and like tenderness actually under anger, and that's like like, like absolutely, like there's literally like there's no space for that. If there's an even room for anger, there definitely isn't room to be. Like you know, I'm angry because, like I feel deeply something, like I'm really actually hurt, and so, yeah, I feel like I don't know, there's like this weird way of even like there's so many layers to anger being stigmatized, like, yeah, because I don't.
Anabel Khoo:I think that's like a skill that either I don't know is is like you know just, we don't have space to even practice the vulnerable part of it and so, kind of in anticipation of that, it feels like culturally, it's like we just don't even get upset because then we're going to have to get into this whole thing about why, yeah, and it's so uncomfortable, or it's just so dysregulating, you know, yeah. So, yeah, I'm just, I'm like I've had this image of you throwing pillows in your room.
Jade Chung:Yeah, yeah, and it's. I mean, I think, yeah, everything you're saying like 100 percent it. If you're not expressing this big part of you that is in fact there and it's being suppressed within you, then everything underneath that is is also being suppressed. Right, you need to be able to access, like you say, that first layer in order for you to witness the second and the third layer and then, ultimately, that all, like when you peel it all back, that is, there's an unhealed something, an unhealed wound, pain, like you say that, yeah, that we have to give space to, and a big part of it also for my, for you know, in my own experience I don't know if you resonate with this, but I'm like my parents and I and my family, we did have conversation, but Oftentimes, like emotional conversation was Difficult, especially with my dad, who has a lot of repressed anger, and so, yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
Jade Chung:I think because of the, because of the lack of conversation around it, that was the implicit boundary. I suppose that was drawn all my life. It was never explicit For me. It wasn't like you're not allowed to feel anger, you're not allowed to be angry. It was just kind of like we don't talk about stuff like that. We don't do stuff like that. It's stronger to just be stoic, or stronger to all of that typical generalized Asian narrative of being showing your emotion is weak, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. To a degree like that is true, yeah, something that I had to work through. What about you?
Anabel Khoo:Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like I had, yeah, some things were really similar and some things were different For me. I didn't know my whole life up until very recently that I had ADHD. I had a lot of meltdowns. I'm also really sensitive as a person. Emotionally. I would have these huge mega meltdowns that were kind of violent. I was throwing things, I would. I just remember. Sometimes I would be so mad I would tear all the bed sheets off my bed. Aw, little Annabelle.
Jade Chung:I know.
Anabel Khoo:know! I was just like. I just needed to use, dig my claws into some bed sheets. It was such a primal experience, I don't know. I wanted to run through the woods like a wolf or something. I felt really like, yeah, I felt a lot of shame. It was very hard to hide because I felt like I did hide it a lot, but then there's only so much you can do, At least so long you can be masking the fact that you're overwhelmed. Then eventually, I don't know, it all builds up and I would have these temper tantrums. My family didn't understand what I think. They just thought I was unhinged. I felt really yeah, unfortunately, I felt really monstrous. I felt like a creature. I was just not fully human and I was just so wild and intense, I'd be crying.
Anabel Khoo:I wasn't just angry, I'm mad I would be sobbing and raging at the same time.
Jade Chung:Deep rage.
Anabel Khoo:It just felt like this deep injustice was occurring within me. It was also this isolation of being screaming, and then it feels like no one's hearing you. What's wrong? It's not like your parents just ignored me, but I think they were like what is happening with you? It felt so big and they didn't understand why.
Anabel Khoo:Yeah, it was like I needed the space and the physical outlet to feel like I don't know. We have to express those emotions in some kind of way. Yeah, I don't know, that was my experience with the room. I looked at the bedroom room thing, but it was hard to hide that. I don't know. I always wanted to talk about feelings with my family. I think everyone just did their own thing.
Jade Chung:Were they receptive to you wanting to have conversations about what was going on with you, or did you try to have conversation?
Anabel Khoo:No, I think it was just. It felt like my reactions were disproportionate. That's kind of the message I got. You need to reign it in, you need to calm down. It's not that big of a deal, or here it's fixed, the problem is fixed. But I still had all these emotional waves. I needed the space to land. I couldn't just flip the switch. I'm fine and I'm happy. Now the emotion was so. It's not like I was just like oh, I didn't get what I want, or I am frustrated, or I'm confused. It was like a deep grief. I guess that's what I'm trying to say it was so intensely in grief.
Anabel Khoo:But there wasn't room for that, because sometimes you're still upset after the problem is fixed. Or maybe you didn't even understand. You misunderstood something that was upsetting, but we still need time to grieve. Oh, I thought it was as a kid, and probably always. But to be like that was scary. I thought it was this, it wasn't that. But then you still had this moment, or it's just hard being a kid you don't have control of anything.
Jade Chung:Especially if you're super sensitive which I really respect, also to be bypassed in your experience, when you are young and you don't have the tools and the language to be able to Rationally calm yourself down.
Jade Chung:It's the most I know, it is the most frustrating thing, and it's also like I know what you mean by that sense of deep injustice, because it feels like when you're a kid, your parents and your family and the small bubble that you live in is your whole world.
Jade Chung:If you feel like your whole world isn't seeing you, like you said, you just feel like you aren't seen and you feel like you aren't understood or witnessed or held, like the carpet is entirely swept out from under you. That's why I feel like, with the work we do now, so much of it is really about giving people the permission to To go back to a lot of those pieces that may have been bypassed and that they may have bypassed themselves because they were told growing up that it's not a big deal. It's not a big deal like you're over, you're traumatizing it or over exaggerating it, whereas a lack of attunement or a lack of being co-regulated with can be really traumatizing for any child, even with the most well-attentioned parents. Yeah, so much of us have that, like those uncomfortable experiences with emotions, that we tie a lot of shame around like anger and like rage.
Anabel Khoo:Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to, like, you know, if you don't know how to embody that kind of anger, that deep grief and rage, like it's. You know I'm imagining like I have different skills than my parents do, like I'm from a different generation, a different culture and stuff like that and we have different personalities. But, like I can imagine, like it's, it is very difficult, unless you're, you know, actively working on it, to be able to emotionally attune Because, like I don't think they've ever experienced the feelings I was experiencing in their bodies, like I don't think they knew how to be like to match me. It was just like so intense for them and yeah, so it's, it's just hard Like I think that's, you know, like the work we're doing is like, yeah, like you know, just helping people and each other like practice, the whole range of emotions and yeah, like, especially the really uncomfortable ones or the ones we're like told aren't, you know, polite or mature or like, and some you know like, yeah, like things, obviously, when you're like you know a lot of things are being, it's not like anger doesn't exist, like lots of things are being in the world, are done through this intense, like you know, on process, grief and rage and it's like already there anyway, but it's like for some reason we're like not allowed to like like fine tune it, you know, it's just like.
Anabel Khoo:It's just like it is what it is and it's like it doesn't have to be that way. Like that's kind of you know, what emotions are when they're not?
Anabel Khoo:yeah, when they're not fine tuned. It's like when you're you know, you have like it's I don't know kind of reminds me of like I don't know, you know, like the archetype, when, like there's like a character and they find out they have magic powers, and then the powers are just like like all kinds of horrible things, all kinds of like mistakes are happening, things are blowing up because they don't know how to control their powers, and so it's like that's what emotions are like. They are our powers that like are so amazing, but like you do need to learn how to work with them, not repress them. But it means you have to go to places that are really painful for you to be able to like to a tune to someone feeling that I don't know. That's just kind of. That's kind of how I'm.
Jade Chung:I've started to think about it more, but I love the analogy of it being our superpowers, or like our powers, because I always, I always like think of them as like our guideposts, but are like, you know, like the freight, like signs and like frameworks that our bodies give us to tell us like what's going on, like where our value system is, like what our boundaries are and like where we've been violated or not, but like the idea that being a power is like. I love that. I love that.
Jade Chung:And also, you know, something I want to add is I think what you're saying to has to do with the fact that a lot of us we are in the society that likes to intellectualize everything, right, we like to cognitively rationalize and define everything and like have a perfect answer to, you know, to everything that we feel and everything that we see and everything that we experience and relate to.
Jade Chung:And it's just like some of those things, some of those things are so deep rooted that you cannot just simply intellectualize, and there is really also, I personally believe, no point in intellectualizing some of our experiences, and you know, we need to think about fine-tuning. A part of that also is about I don't know, I don't know how to explain it. It's like a new one saying but it's like, how can you, how can you relate to your emotions and your experience without, without your ego taking over and without letting it, you know, letting your conscious thoughts create stories and conceptions around what it has to be? Because it just simply is and it, it simply is and it is vital. Does that make sense?
Anabel Khoo:Yeah, yeah, it's like, there's like a raw, a rawness to emotions as well, like and we don't always have. You know, the meaning comes after.
Jade Chung:You know, like the meaning comes after exactly we like to interpret so much. And you know, when we talk about anger like when I first started, like accessing my anger at at like the age of 20, something, after years of being like I'm not an angry person, I don't feel anger. By the way, I now fully believe that those who have ever said that and those who tend to say that tend to be those who carry the most anger within themselves, just depressed and repressed, because you're not expressing that, it's just building up inside of you. But it took me. It took me like a long time to be able to get to the point where I could actually get to the root of, like get to the root cognitively, of what that anger was trying to tell me, because there were so many layers of it that I had to unpeel that were festering, yeah, yeah.
Anabel Khoo:Yeah, what was the, I guess, the catalyst for unpeeling those layers?
Jade Chung:What was the catalyst for unpeeling? Honestly, I went to a You're just not so angry.
Anabel Khoo:You just you just get your one day.
Jade Chung:Not even no. So, like you know, I it's so interesting because I, about like two years ago, I was like really hitting rock bottom with. I was like going through a big career transition. I was like training. I was like at the end of training to become an art therapist and I felt like such an imposter. I like didn't know what I was. I felt like I didn't know what I was doing and I was just going through like a massive, like identity crisis essentially.
Jade Chung:And you know, during that period I would have, I would have timed where I would just go into like insane rage as well and I would like, you know, I would talk to my partner and it would just completely I would have a complete meltdown and would start like screaming and throwing pillows and like and like bless him, like he was very good at like witnessing and holding me through it.
Jade Chung:But even then, right, I was coming out of that was still like, oh, like I'm not an anchor person, I was still denial about it. And it was only until I went to a Reiki healer who, within the first session, felt my back with her hands and she was like oh, you have a lot of self anger and you're carrying a lot of anger from your father that you've just absorbed through the years, and I could feel it and it's holding in your back and I was like I still was like I don't feel anger, but I don't, I don't get angry, I'm not an angry person. And she was just like, well, I can feel it, so maybe you are. And then that was when I really like I went home and I was like, oh, okay, that was the unraveling.
Jade Chung:And then from then on, I really did a lot of work around like healthily processing it for myself and like letting myself feel anger and like doing different somatic and expressive practices with myself to work through it. But yeah, that was the, that was the activator.
Anabel Khoo:I love that and it's it's also like, yeah, like that healer names or yeah, like you know, they named the intergenerational aspects to it. Like it's not like you know. It kind of was yeah about you, but it wasn't like, oh, you're doing something wrong. It's just like, yeah, like you're just carrying, you're carrying this in your body and that's like totally what we do. Like that's what intergenerational trauma is. It's also what like intergenerational resilience and like the things that are the generations before us don't process or deal with, like they stay and then they get passed down. So, yeah, like that's another layer of things not making sense. Like sometimes we're just like it's not just your own anger, it's like generations and generations of anger in your body and that's yeah, that's it's hard to like. Yeah, it makes sense now, but like I know that was a whole thing for a long time and like psychology, like that wasn't a thing people maybe understood or it wasn't like possible to intellectualize that.
Jade Chung:I mean, it's a very moderate phenomenon that we're talking about, like how, how, how emotions and trauma can be passed down generation, generationally through, like DNA and all of that.