Expressing Anger Safely

Life coaching is a wonderful opportunity to try out new strategies and solutions. It can also be a place to discover when a new strategy is needed.

In the course of working with a coach, clients often become aware of their lack of positive experience in a certain area of their life. With no foundation of past success to draw on, they realize they’re in completely new territory. It’s exciting for both client and coach to recognize an opportunity for new possibilities to be added to the client’s toolkit and a new track record to be launched.

One of my coaching clients learned from a young age to put away his anger for the sake of his safety. He’d experienced firsthand the harm that anger could cause, and he wanted no part of it. Recently, he began to understand that his anger was an exiled part of him that needed attention and healing. But he didn’t have any models for positive, non-damaging expressions of anger.

I introduced this client to my art journal. Ever since I attended an art therapy workshop in 1989 at the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland, I’ve been hooked on art as a way to explore emotions. And since I first learned about Internal Family Systems (IFS) in 2004, I’ve been using art to safely explore different parts (aspects or subpersonalities) of myself.

In coaching sessions, I often use IFS with clients to explore parts of them that present as obstacles to their goals. Although these parts may at first appear as forces working in opposition to goals, we uncover the parts’ positive intentions, which either brings them into alignment with goals or informs needed course corrections. In sessions, we generally explore parts in the third person; a client speaking for a part might say, for example, “I have a part that just doesn’t have any motivation.”

Occasionally, I’ll encourage a client to instead speak from a part, taking on the role of the part in order to inhabit its world and get to know it better. This second approach can be fruitfully adapted when using art to explore a part, either in a session or between sessions. It’s a powerful way to get to know an exiled part and give it a safe place to express.

Here are two samples from my art journal that illustrate a completely safe way to express anger that may otherwise block growth. No possibility of danger here—just a few pieces of paper. The release I felt after several pages of “anger journaling” were a signal that my inner world had become more spacious and balanced. And having continued to cultivate a relationship with this angry part over time, it no longer hijacks me. Instead, it nudges me just enough to express its positive intent: reminding me to set good boundaries and live true to myself.

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