Transforming Toxic Anger Through Somatic Awareness with Dr. Karyne Wilner

Meg Kearney (00:11)
Hello and welcome to the Root to Rise Seeds for Spiritual Awakening podcast. I'm your host Meg Kerney and today we'll be talking about anger and specifically toxic anger. My guest today is Dr. Karyne Wilner who is a licensed psychologist with a private practice in Newport, Rhode Island. She also currently directs the Core Energetics Academy in Bethel, Connecticut and she finds joy in helping people become more authentic.

and lead richer, fuller lives. She also wrote the book, Releasing Toxic Anger for Women, Somatic Practices and CBT Skills to Transform Negative Thoughts, Soothe Stress and Stay True to Yourself. I stumbled across this book and was so interested in it because I recently have been noticing an uptick in road rage, feelings of annoyance, and I just had never really

dove deep into the topic of anger and how we experience it in our bodies and how we can release it. this book was honestly a godsend. And basically the theme of this episode that I really want to drive home is best said with a quote from the book on page 47. Dr. Wilner writes, if you realize your body is a rich and fertile ground for feelings,

and like an emotional garden, it grows flowers of every shape and size. You will soon have a different relationship with your anger for it can be both a beautiful flower that protects you from danger and a poisonous weed when used destructively. hopefully in this episode, you can gain some perspective on how to use your anger productively and when you may be diving into the realm of more toxic anger.

So thanks for listening today and enjoy the episode.

Meg Kearney (02:13)
Welcome Dr. Wilner. So excited to have you on today to talk about toxic anger and anger in the body and all those things. So first I want to ask you what inspired your work on anger and how did you get interested in toxic anger?

Karyne Wilner (02:33)
Okay, I'll tell you about it, but thank you for having me here as a guest. I'm delighted to talk about toxic anger. I think I got inspired in my childhood because I watched my parents handle anger so differently. My mother would yell, even throw things, and my father was very quiet when he got angry. He would...

shut the door, take a walk or drive and come back and everything would be fine. So that interested me. Secondly, when my parents got older, I noticed a connection between anger and loss and illness. So that was interesting to me. My mother who had a fairly important job in Pennsylvania,

was dismissed due to age discrimination. So I saw anger with that and immediately she had a devastating health problem. And I also noticed my father who lost his mother when he was 12 years of age, he started having heart attacks, minor ones, at the very anniversary of her death. So that was like...

I mean sad, but really interesting. And that made me want to study anger when I worked at my doctorate in psychology. So I was at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine getting a degree in clinical psychology. And therefore I was able to look at health issues and anger. And that was the subject of my dissertation, how

I could work with stroke patients to decrease their anger and give them a better chance of not having another stroke.

Meg Kearney (04:22)
Wow, so it sounds like you saw anger manifest in a number of different ways in your childhood and you know, maybe some people would have internalized it and used those as their own way of coping with anger, but it sounds like you went a completely different route and just studied it instead, which is amazing. So in your book, you talk about the function of true healthy anger and

I'm curious, what does a healthy expression of anger look like and what is anger's true function in our lives?

Karyne Wilner (04:59)
Well, it's easier to start with the true function. I mean, it really is there to protect us. So in our brain, we have something called the limbic system, which is about fight or flight. In other words, when we're under attack and in true danger, anger comes up with a chemistry that makes up anger, adrenaline and neuroadrenaline and cortisol, to protect us. So we're ready to fight.

And if we can't fight, we're going to take flight and flee. So it's a very important emotion. And its chemistry is very important to keep the species alive. It just has gone pat. When it becomes toxic, it's no longer there in a lifesaving equivalent.

You asked what healthy anger looks like and that's harder to answer because we all see the toxic varieties. In other words, people who suppress their anger and say, it's okay, step on my toe anytime you want. That's not healthy anger. you know, people who throw things or, you know, so that's not healthy anger. So I didn't really see healthy anger growing up and probably most people don't.

What I would say healthy anger is being able to talk about it without blame or criticism. So in other words, if I'm angry at you, I need to say,

You know, I feel angry, Meg, something you said triggered me. I realize it's my anger and it's not your fault, but I want to talk about it to get it off my chest. So we don't, we need to take responsibility. It's our brain that gets triggered, not somebody else's. And so it's my anger. You just did something or said something that...

touched a button I have, it's not your button, it's mine. So I have to own it and take responsibility for it. And at the same time, I need to talk about it or do something positive with it, even if it's writing in a journal, so that I don't take it out on someone else.

Meg Kearney (07:14)
That's a great point. And I think it does require a level of self-awareness to be able to talk to somebody about the anger without making it the other person's fault, which I know you do mention a lot in your book. So I know you kind of touched on how anger comes up and becomes toxic So can you talk about the three

main forms of toxic anger and how these might show up on a daily basis.

Karyne Wilner (07:43)
In my book I mentioned three forms of anger that can become toxic and one is suppressed anger. So suppressed anger is toxic because it actually affects your health. So you're actually turning your anger against your own body when you suppress it. So...

It's heart disease is the number one killer in the United States and anger is highly correlated with that. And we find in women, particularly women that suppress their anger and are very nice and agreeable have more often have cancer diagnoses. And we're also looking right now and seeing a lot of evidence that autoimmune diseases, which are becoming quite prevalent in this country.

are connected in one way or another with anger. So suppressed anger is toxic because it creates health issues for you. And if you already have health issues, it can make them worse. Destructive expressed anger, someone that says, well, everybody yells at my family, so I'm going to yell too.

You know, that's toxic in the sense it also can create cardiovascular issues and it affects relationships. Children are frightened of their parents. Marriages and other beautiful relationships that were once beautiful and loving break up because one person frightens the other.

business partnerships, the same thing. So anger can be very destructive to relationships and also to health when it's expressed destructively. And it can go as far as people killing other people. So it's pretty bad. And then the third type of anger I talk about is passive aggressive. And

That's when you're angry and you want to get back at somebody. So there's a revenge element here, but you don't want anyone to know it's you. So you, or that you're angry. So you might, if let's say you purchased a service and you weren't satisfied with the service, rather than saying, I'm not satisfied. You need to come back and do it again. You just.

don't pay the person or you delay payment for a number of months. So that would be a passive aggressive thing. Not giving somebody a message, a secretary not giving her boss a message would be passive aggressive. So any way you can hurt someone without owning it. I remember once somebody, a neighbor when I was living in Philadelphia left a message in my mailbox.

there's something wrong with you lady, didn't shovel your sidewalk or something. The person was obviously angry and probably rightfully so, but rather than confronting me directly, there was this unknown message in my mailbox.

Meg Kearney (10:39)
Wow. So it definitely can take many different forms and some of the forms are more covert, like the passive aggressive, like you mentioned. And with that being said, sometimes we know that our reactions are not the most productive and we still engage in them anyway. And in your book, you talk about the concept of negative excitement.

and how sometimes expressing anger in this way or any emotion can feel good. Can you discuss that concept a little bit and how it plays into anger?

Karyne Wilner (11:20)
Yeah, I didn't realize this until I got deep into psychology in my studies. But some people really enjoy their anger. It makes them feel strong and powerful. So it becomes almost like an addiction. It's your own little emotional heroine, you could say. So they actually, they may not realize this, but look for reasons to

to be angry or they actually trigger other people's angry so they can be angry back in return because it again makes them feel powerful, strong, it's exciting in a somewhat boring life. And it really does become addictive. I mean, that's not what anger's about. Anger's about saving your life or somebody else's life. And so they're way off track.

and need to find other ways to feel good. But because they get this burst of excitement, they don't do anything to change it, no matter how many people they hurt or how many relationships they destroy.

Meg Kearney (12:26)
That makes a lot of sense and it seems like with that in mind, maybe it's a little more difficult to detach from the anger and take a step back. Can you talk about what strategies somebody might use in the beginning stages of identifying their anger and expressing it in a healthier way?

Karyne Wilner (12:47)
So, if you're not aware you're angry, becoming aware of it is really important. Sometimes anger shows up in the body, so I would suggest to our listeners they get a sense of what's happening in their jaw. This is...

One place we hold a lot of anger, our jaw tightens. If you have a tense jaw, there's a good chance you're angry about something, maybe not presently, but something that could be back in the past. So that would be one way of listening to yourself. We do do something called a body scan, where you actually go through your body from the tips of your toes to the tops of your head.

touch upon each aspect of your body and ask it, you holding anger? A lot of people hold anger in their shoulders. So right now, what we could all do is just raise your shoulders up around your ears. And hopefully the people that are listening are doing this too, if you're not in too public a place and squeeze it really tight and then drop them down.

Yeah, so that's good. So one way is just to tune into your body and see where you're holding tension because tension is a sign of anger and fear.

Meg Kearney (14:08)
That makes sense. So it sounds like body awareness is kind of the first step to see maybe where we're holding trapped emotions. So you talk about the body a lot as a tool for releasing anger. in the book, you provide a lot of examples of somatic movements. And I'm curious how important is our intention and presence?

in these somatic movements when we're trying to release anger.

Karyne Wilner (14:38)
Yeah, I love that question because it's extremely important. So if just body movement got rid of anger, all the people in every gymnasium in the world right now or anybody playing any sport would be the most peaceful, happy, healthy human beings. But that's not the case. So.

Meg Kearney (14:51)
you

Karyne Wilner (15:02)
The prescription is exactly what you're saying. You have to have the intention to release anger from muscles in your body that are holding it. the chemistry in those muscles is not good for those muscles. So you want to release this. And you want these chemicals to flow back into your life stream, to become part of your body. And then they'll leave the way everything else leave your body.

So to do that, you have to set the intention. I am here to acknowledge I have this anger. It may not be reasonable, but I'm angry anyhow, and I want to release it from my body. So I might just stamp my feet. And each time I stamp a foot, I'm going to say, I'm angry. I'm angry and stamp my feet. But I have to set the intention.

that I want to release this anger from my body and transform it into a positive emotion. I want to look at this situation differently. I don't want to see it just as something that was unfair, unreasonable, or something against me.

Meg Kearney (15:59)
I love that.

I love that. our intention and our presence is very important when we're trying to move through.

Karyne Wilner (16:16)
Exactly.

So important.

Meg Kearney (16:19)
Another thing that you talk about that is important when we want to release anger is the importance of grounding both before and after we release our anger. So can you talk about the importance of grounding and maybe some techniques that we can use to ground before we release anger?

Karyne Wilner (16:41)
Right, what ground, grounding means several things. So let me just say that first. Grounding means your energy is balanced in your body. So you don't have more energy in your head or in your chest or, you know, it's equal, it equalized throughout your body. And grounding.

In a certain sense you're kind of connected to both the sky which represents ideas and visions and to the earth which represents reality. So with anger we lose contact with reality. We stop being realistic so we're ungrounded and our energy rather than being balanced and spread throughout our body tends to go upper.

upward. So when you see people explode, it's because their energy is coming up and out their mouth or out the top of their head, if you could see their aura. and even people who suppress a lot of that suppressed anger, as I said before, is in the jaw and in the shoulders and in the chest. So that anger rises up. So the last thing you want to do is leave it up there.

So grounding means to balance your energy and bring it back down. And there are several ways to do it. Usually you're working with your feet and your legs. so right now, if people listening to this podcast, you might want to, if you're standing, press your feet as hard as you can into the ground.

And imagine, for example, that you're a tree and your roots are going deep into the ground. And you can do that when you're angry. You really, before you even express it, talk about it or do anything, just reconnect with the earth and you can do it through your feet. If you're sitting down, you can do it. You put your feet on the floor, make sure they touch the floor from the chair you're sitting in.

and put your sit bones, push them as hard as you can into the chair. So you're grounding even while you're sitting. And you can imagine these roots going deep into the ground. For people that exercise, the forward bend from yoga is a very good grounding exercise. And squats, I like to do squats to bring me closer to the ground.

So any exercise you can think of, and the trick is to do this stuff, you ground as soon as you feel the anger, and you ground after you've dealt with it. Even if you've expressed it, talked to the person about the situation, or maybe you went into some private place and hit some pillows, whatever you did, you want to ground

after it so that again your energy is well balanced. The most awful thing is for an angry person to go out into the world, get into their car ungrounded. It's a scary situation.

Meg Kearney (19:51)
when road rage takes over. Yes that makes a lot of sense and I think that's probably a helpful practice anytime that we're working through some of these strong emotions but especially anger because it can be so charged so thank you for that. Going off of that in your book you talk about how observing our legs and feet can give us an idea of how

grounded we may be. And I found this so interesting because I practice yoga, I'm aware of the chakras, and I feel like the legs and the feet kind of get overlooked in that. So I noticed I was scrunching my toes, locking my knees. So very interesting, and I'd love for you to just share a little bit about that.

Karyne Wilner (20:36)
Yeah, so that's a good question. locking your knees is a no-no, I'll say that right now. So you always want your knees to be just slightly bent. They're a joint. You don't want any joint to be really stiff. And if you lock your knees, that will pull you away from the ground immediately. So you can try that right now if you're listening. Lock your knees and see what happens. What you can look at...

The arch is very important and many of us don't have an arch, we're what you call flat footed. So in that way, we're ungrounded. what I suggest for people in that situation, if you can get arch supports, hopefully from a podiatrist and not just from the drug store, but a good arch support in a shoe.

makes a heck of a lot of difference in being grounded. I know a lot of people don't like to wear them, but it will really help the personality. And the other thing is sometimes people have very high arches, and that's because muscles contracted in their foot so that they, we often say in my field of body psychotherapy that a high arch represents wanting to get away from the earth.

And since the earth represents the mother, we think maybe you had some mother issues. But whatever, whether you had mother issues or not, if you have a high arch, massage it. You can get a soft ball or a tennis ball that's soft and rub your foot on it. Or they sell those foot massagers in certain stores. You can use that. But the idea is to...

get inside those muscles so that they'll release and relax a little bit. So it's very important that energy comes down from the root chakra, which is at your perineum, all the way to the floor. And your legs need to guide that energy down. So holding your legs three to six inches apart, they become like walls of a tunnel that the energy can just move down to the

ground between them. If you stand with your legs afoot or foot and half apart, you know, like that might make you feel powerful in a certain way. I have this image of someone standing wide-legged with their hands on their hips. They're really ungrounded because the energy is not going to get all the way down.

Meg Kearney (23:03)
it's interesting because we use our legs and feet for so much in our daily lives and I at least sometimes just take it for granted and don't tune in to what's really going on. So I think that's such good awareness to have and a great practice to kind of see where we're at.

Karyne Wilner (23:23)
Yeah, I want to just add to that because we do need more awareness. if you're standing at a sink washing dishes, try to be just aware of your stance or waiting for an elevator or walking your dog when your dog stops to sniff. Take those moments to be aware of how you're standing and whether you're connected with the earth.

Meg Kearney (23:48)
That's great advice. I often do, when I'm washing the dishes, I notice my locked knees, and I'm tightened up, and sometimes I just have to take a deep breath and relax, because I'm just washing the dishes. It's not that serious. Yes. So you also talk about rhythmic movements, such as dance. I think you talk about country dancing in the book.

Karyne Wilner (24:02)
Yeah.

Meg Kearney (24:15)
I'd love to know how we can use dance to transcend this heavy energy of anger that we carry in our bodies.

Karyne Wilner (24:24)
Alright, so that's very important. So anger has a very dense, heavy energy. In fact, if we measured energy, its beats would be very slow. Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Love has a very high vibration, very fast, right? So the purpose in this book is to help people transform that heavy energy to that higher frequency. So we can do that through movement. The faster the movement, the better.

So we're all of different ages and abilities, so some people can obviously move faster than others. But the idea is to move as fast as you can, your age and your ability. So we start, again, this is where intention becomes. You need to know I'm doing this, I'm going to do a dance, but I'm doing it to transform my anger.

And then let's say you create your own little, you put on some music you like, maybe there's a lot of drumming in it, and you create your own dance. You can do this in the privacy of a room so no one else can see you. You don't even have to do a dress, because no one will know. And...

Then you begin to quicken the movement. So move a little faster. At the end of the stance, when you stop, let's say you do it three minutes or five minutes, it doesn't have to be a whole long time. Have an image in your mind of the person or the situation that angers you.

and see if you can find one positive thing to say about it. Maybe if it's a person like your father, you might say, and I really appreciated that you took time out to read me stories when I was a child, that you were there for me at that time. So again, you start bringing the positive in to blast through all the negative.

Meg Kearney (26:27)
That makes a lot of sense and it sounds like it does still go back to intention and sort of working with our energy with whatever movement that we're doing. it sounds like that's really important. So what if you suspect that you have suppressed anger, maybe something you're not dealing with?

Do you need to have a specific situation or memory to engage in these practices or can you sort of just go into it with this general desire to release anger? Will it have the same effect?

Karyne Wilner (27:04)
I think you can do both and I think sometimes we have to do both because if we don't know, we don't know.

So if you go into it without knowing what you're angry at, you really do some of the, if you happen to read my book, which is called Releasing Toxic Anger for Women, although it's for both men and women, and if you do some of the exercises, there's a good chance you will remember something. So you'll uncover an early memory. And so that even though you start without knowing what you're angry about,

different things you're angry about will come up. So for example, if I take a small pillow and hit a large pillow with it and I just start saying, I'm angry, I'm mad, I'm angry, I'm mad, I may get some images and then I can go forth with them.

At other times you know exactly, or you think you know what you're angry at. That's a tricky thing. We're really not angry at what we think we're angry at. So our anger is often triggered by something that came from years before. It just reminds us of a situation. And it's a situation that we never resolved much earlier in our life. So you might start being angry

you know, at the postal service for postal service gets a lot of anger for something. And that will bring as you're beginning to move, let's say you've created dance or you're writing in your journal or you're hitting a pillow, you'll remember something. Maybe your father worked for the postal service and you'll remember something happened as a child.

Meg Kearney (28:25)
you

Karyne Wilner (28:46)
or, you know, so something will come up. So often what we think we're angry at is just a trigger for unhealed work that we still need to do.

Meg Kearney (28:56)
kind of going off of that, you mentioned that with these practices, it can be helpful to keep an anger journal. How can we also use journaling to work through some of this anger that we have and maybe uncover some root memories like you were just talking about?

Karyne Wilner (29:14)
Good question. journaling is very important. In fact, there's current research that shows that people with health issues heal a lot quicker.

if they journal than those who don't journal. with anger, you can write in a journal what the situation was, you can write in the journal how intense your anger was. Maybe it wasn't, so I'm calling everything anger, even annoyance and irritation. So maybe it was just a minor annoyance. You write about that.

Maybe if something was one of your children and it caused like major rage, somehow our children and our spouses can get to us. So you're not going to go attack your child, but this would be a good time to sit down and write.

So when you start to write, can just write, you know, blame the person for whatever they did or the situation. But as you write longer, you might begin to think about, what's my part in this? Maybe you weren't clear about something.

Or maybe you had an expectation that was based on nothing. No one ever said it was going to be a particular way. know, life isn't fair, so maybe you expect fairness where there is no justice. So writing can be a very healthy thing to do, and I think a lot of people get relief from that.

Meg Kearney (30:44)
Do you find that it's helpful to write with a certain format or is it more helpful to kind of just free write whatever's coming up in the moment?

Karyne Wilner (30:55)
I think that depends on the personality to be honest with you. Some people don't like to be reined in by rules and regulations, so they're going to want to write however they want to write. And some people really like structure. there are, you know, for people that like structures, it would be important to, you know, write about all the details of what happened, what your reaction was like, what you wish your reaction was like, and how you

react the next time. So that would be a structure that you would go through. And other people, you know, aren't going to follow that structure. They're just going to do their own thing.

Meg Kearney (31:31)
so it sounds like the format doesn't necessarily matter. It's just the commitment to using your journal, using writing as a tool to help you gain some clarity on what's happening.

Karyne Wilner (31:42)
Yeah, I think so. mean, the statistics don't show that people did better because they had a format. But I know when I studied anger when I got my doctorate, and I know I did create a format for the patients to use. And it was pretty much like I just said, to describe what happened, the intensity.

your reaction, how you would like to handle it the next time, how you feel now that you're writing, something like that. There were a various set of questions.

Meg Kearney (32:17)
That makes sense. And kind of shifting gears a little bit, but when we were talking about journaling, you mentioned maybe it's not outright anger or rage. Maybe it's just a minor annoyance. So in the book, I know you mentioned there are many variations of anger. Can you just talk about what those variations are just in case people...

think to themselves, well, you know, I'm not exploding in rage, I don't feel angry. What are some of the more subtle ways it shows up?

Karyne Wilner (32:49)
Well, you're feeling... So all of these things will affect your body because they fall into the family of anger. criticism, contempt, judgments, annoyance, irritation, bullying, particularly on the playground or in the office, in the corporate world.

Jealousy. Envy.

so much. Just feeling when you feel misunderstood, that can move to anger. Feeling disappointed can move to anger toward the person who didn't follow through. Blame, every time you blame someone, you're angry, whether you want to admit that or not.

So anytime you kind of look at the world through a negative eye, even though I'm not saying you're wrong, you may be absolutely right, but it's still a kind of poison. It's because you can't control life. You can control yourself, and that's about it. So things are going to happen. They're going to be unfair. They're going to be scary at times.

Meg Kearney (33:52)
Mm-hmm.

Karyne Wilner (33:58)
and you will be misunderstood and you will be accused of stuff you didn't do. So the question is, how are you going to handle it?

Meg Kearney (34:05)
And it seems like a lot of the underlying feelings also could be considered fear. Can you talk about the relationship between anger and fear?

Karyne Wilner (34:18)
Yeah, mean anger is what's called a secondary emotion, meaning that it comes with a primary emotion that people don't want to deal with. If you ask people would they rather be afraid or angry, most people will choose anger because fear makes you feel really weak and like you don't have, know, something's going to happen and you can't do anything about it.

where anger makes you feel somewhat strong and like you have a choice to do something. So usually you have to have some other feeling to be angry and the one that comes most often is fear. Like if you look at parents when they start screaming at their kids, it's because they were afraid first. The kid almost ran in front of the car.

The kid almost drank a bottle of perfume, whatever it is. The parent gets terrified, but that terror they only feel for one second. And then they're shouting, what's wrong with you?

Meg Kearney (35:19)
I've definitely had that experience before. I'm sure you have too. So it seems like anger can almost be used as a sort of a control mechanism. Would you say that's true or an attempt to control the situation?

Karyne Wilner (35:24)
Thank

I would say it's true, but some people aren't conscious of that. So some people will actually choose to be angry. In fact, therapists do it sometimes even as an intervention to get a certain effect from a client or you can choose to be angry because you know it will have a certain consequence that you want.

Meg Kearney (35:39)
Hmm.

Karyne Wilner (35:57)
However, a lot of people, don't think, I think it's too, it comes up so quickly. It's basically a chemical response that you're having. It's very quick. So don't know if you have too much time. In fact, that's one of the things we work on is slowing ourselves down so we can actually feel it, so we can stop it.

So I don't think too many people use it to control the situation other than people like therapists who might, and then you're more play acting, like don't do that again, or I'm gonna be your father now, so you know, whatever.

Meg Kearney (36:37)
you

Yes, that makes sense. maybe it's just, it seems like it's just a really quick reaction and it's up to us to kind of communicate after the fact or try to communicate better.

Karyne Wilner (36:50)
Right, we want to slow

it down. So you want to use your control more towards yourself to like control this emotional experience so I can get in it and work with it.

Meg Kearney (37:04)
makes sense. I'm curious too. I know that your book mostly focuses on anger in women and I'm curious if you have a theory of why anger might become more toxic in women as opposed to toxic anger in men.

Karyne Wilner (37:21)
Yeah, I don't really. So my book started out as titled as a book proposal, which many books start out as, and the book, the proposal was titled, know, transform, I think it was from anger to love and then seven steps to do that. And the publisher,

was interested, or I think several publishers were interested, but this publisher is a psychological publisher and they needed something for women. So it filled their niche more than, I mean, anger is toxic for both men and women. Women, think the difference is women get a bad rap. When we're angry, then we're told we're crazy.

or that we're having our period, or it's always diminished and blamed. Where what man is told he's crazy or having his period. So it's just a cultural thing. It's more respected in men. Health-wise, it's a serious problem for both men and women. But again, women's health has been ignored. Where, you know,

Meg Kearney (38:17)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Karyne Wilner (38:36)
all the cardiovascular stuff, they were looking at men, not at women. Most health issues are men or the research was done on men and the cures are designed for men, not for women. So our anger as women creates health issues and yet the medical field isn't.

They didn't even know for a few years that signs for a female heart attack are different than for men. So it's more of a problem for women in that regard.

Meg Kearney (39:05)
Mm-hmm.

That makes a lot of sense. And as you've mentioned, and as you've researched, it has a really big impact on our health. So when we're working with our anger, when we're wanting to increase our ability to handle it, you've given so many great tools in this interview and also in your book. So once we feel as though we've released a lot of the

maybe the toxic anger that we have or the suppressed anger that we have, how can we maintain our state of peace and allow anger to flow through us rather than to define how we respond?

Karyne Wilner (39:53)
Well, I think by doing some of the stuff we're talking about right now, I mean, you always want to be able to have this emotion because you never know when something's going to come up. Like the fire right now in Los Angeles, which I feel terrible about, those people are losing everything. mean, that, so anger and grief are very connected, just like I talked about anger and fear.

So a lot of those people are grieving, but they're also going to be quite angry. And there's already a lot of anger in the US, and there's going to be more. So it's not so much that you want peace. You want to have anger, but appropriate anger. And you want to have the right tools to deal with it. So if you do some of the things we're talking about today, if you...

Meg Kearney (40:27)
Hmm.

Karyne Wilner (40:44)
ground regularly, keep your knees bent. If you find yourself angry, do some movement, create a dance or write in your journal. And if you do these things regularly, so not just once in a blue moon, but weekly or monthly or daily for grounding, then you will have the peace that you're talking about Meg.

So using the tools as part of your life plan.

Meg Kearney (41:14)
Sounds like consistency is key here. One tool that we didn't necessarily touch on in depth is the power of forgiveness and using that to connect with our true selves in the universe and again, not letting anger define us. So how can we use this practice of forgiveness to really embody this work?

Karyne Wilner (41:37)
So I say forgiveness is the last step and my book talks about seven steps and I call it radical forgiveness because I think the first person you have to forgive is yourself. it's forgiving yourself for in certain sense your own angry reactions, the times you've not purposely but possibly bullied people.

or the times you've acted passive aggressively, or the times you've wanted revenge, whether you got it or not. So I think you have to forgive yourself for your own misuse of anger. you know, forgiveness, you can sit in meditation or prayer. It should be just in a relaxed, beautiful...

You might want to put in even some music that you like. And then people who have hurt you, whether they intended to or even people who have hurt you unintentionally. You want to forgive so you can imagine holding them in your heart. You can imagine sending pink clouds of energy and surrounding them with beautiful pink energy.

So the idea is to give love and compassion. There may be people that you have anger to who you don't want in your life, and they shouldn't be in your life. But that doesn't mean you can't do something energetically, that you can send love to someone and still feel like they're not the right person to bring into your life.

Meg Kearney (43:06)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. sounds like forgiveness is just as much. Well, it seems like forgiveness is more so for us than it is for the other person, because if we're able to practice this forgiveness and feel it, we can release maybe that anger that we might be holding on to towards somebody else. So that's great. And I love that that's the last step in the process, because it really does just tie everything together. So.

Karyne Wilner (43:26)
Yeah.

Meg Kearney (43:33)
Well, thank you so much. You have shared so much wisdom about anger in your book and in this podcast episode for listeners that would like to get your book, maybe work with you, connect with you. Where is the best place for them to reach you?

Karyne Wilner (43:50)
The book can be found on Amazon, so it's Releasing Toxic Anger for Women by Karyne Wilner. And the best way to reach me is probably my email, and that's K-A-R-Y-N-E-W at AOL.com.

And if you're interested, I am doing a workshop on February 1, sponsored by the Institute of Core Energetics. But if you email me, then I will send you information about that workshop. And there will probably be more workshops to follow in the spring and summer. So it's K-A-R-Y-N-E-W at AOL.com. Thank you for having me.

Meg Kearney (44:36)
Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Karyne Wilner (44:39)
Bye bye.

Meg Kearney (44:51)
All of the links for Karyne's book and her workshop will be in the show notes for this episode. If you enjoyed this information, I would highly recommend picking up Corrine's book. It has so many great practical tools that you can use every single day to work through your own anger. And from the theme of this episode, I just want to leave with this quote from page 13 of Karyne's book.

Anger is a healthy emotion, energetic and alive. Anger pushes us to make changes in our lives in order to achieve our goals. Through anger, we find our voices and publish our grievances.

take a minute and see how that resonates with you and where in your life you might want to explore expressing anger in a more healthy way. Thanks for listening and much love to you all.