Healing Rage
A Bit about Rage and Ruth...
Rage sits at the crossroads of personal transformation. Those of us seeking spiritual enlightenment will inevitably stumble upon personal rage on the path. Rage is not to be understood as a useless emotion, empty of story or knowledge. Rather rage is fierce clarity and untapped fuel. Once embraced with compassion, the energy trapped in rage becomes an intimate and empathic teacher offering balance, integrity, and inner peace to our healing journey and relationships. We cannot transform rage by being against it or by being afraid of it. It takes a devotion of kindness towards ourselves and others to heal rage.
What is Rage?
Rage is an oppressed child emotion housed deep in our bodies, minds and spirits. We react to our rage as if it were an emotional enemy to be annihilated, a fire to be feared. Yet rage is the daughter of our traumas, the twin of our shame, the burden of our denied histories, the foreign language of our emotional pain, and the wisdom that helps us heal. Without question, rage is a natural resource of misused energy, and it exists--even rules our lives--whether we acknowledge it or not.
I don't have rage, do I?
Many of us go through our lives maintaining a good front. We may have all of the trappings--good job, higher education, and material gain, yet we have an inherent discontent with our lives that won't go away. We manage to look OK from the outside, hiding those periods of despair when we feel everything caving in on us. We express confidence on the surface and feel fear or dread underneath. We know we feel chaotic and on the edge, but we hide it, sometimes beautifully, even from ourselves. This is accomplished by wearing Disguises of Rage.
Say more about Disguises of Rage!
Disguises are our rage child's armor--the coats we wear year round to cope with the chill of life, even on a warm day. There are six Disguises of Rage that high functioning women wear:
- Dominance--You control to avoid being controlled. You distance from others and abuse power to manage your terror of tenderness.
- Defiance--You use anger to divert your need to be loved, often by your perceived enemy.
- Distraction--You avoid intolerable feelings of emptiness by filling yourself and your time with self-defeating diversions.
- Devotion--You take perfect care of others, sacrificing your own well being to avoid knowing and receiving what you deeply need.
- Dependence--You stay financially insecure and emotionally young. You deny your personal power out of your fear of losing love.
- Depression--You become heavy, numb, lifeless or indifferent to shut down overwhelming feelings of grief and rage.
Disguises attempt to hide what we fear, but they have a way of creating more fear in our day-to-day lives and in the lives of others. With Disguises, we convince ourselves that we are in control of a chronically frightening life, one we would prefer to accept as normal. Yet Disguises are symbolic of what is ungrieved--blocked energy that constricts the heart and all matters of the heart. Disguises are ambassadors of the past--old stories of rage that require our loving attention.
Why do I disguise my rage?
By the time we are 12 years old, we are well armed in our Disguises of Rage. They are the result of both childhood trauma and a rage inheritance--the unresolved rage of our parents and ancestors that we carry out of an unconscious loyalty to them. These Disguises continue throughout our adult lives with slight change until we heal them. While Disguises have played a significant role in our survival, they interfere with our healing. We, often unknowingly, continue to wear our Disguises because we perceive these obscure expressions of rage as being safer and more acceptable than the truth they pretend to hide.
Is rage bad?
Our rage child is not the problem. She is simply a child emotion lodged deep inside of our bodies fighting for her [and our] lives! The problem is our denial of her existence, disrespect of her power, and disregard of her contribution to our healing. We distract ourselves from our rage child because it is not safe to see, feel or express her, yet our fear of rage negatively impacts the integrity of our lives.
Our challenge is to learn to embody the fierce energies of rage without story, shame, blame, or revenge; to develop such presence with rage that we can witness it come and go without urgency or repulsion. Our first priority is to take care of our own pain, just as we would attend to a child hurt by a hit-and-run driver--we probably wouldn't run after the driver. We have a rage child within us that, when triggered, is hurting and calling us to attend to our own pain. What's bad is when we betray ourselves by lashing out towards others and ourselves.
How will healing rage help me?
When you are unaware of your own personal rage and its impact, you cause tremendous suffering and perpetuate generational legacies of rage in your children and loved ones. You're like a lively dragon dancing wildly at a party, so into your own world that you don't realize that your tale is destroying the room and everyone in it. Or maybe you are like the man on his death bed arguing: But the light was green--I had the right away just before taking his last breath. His gravestone reads: He was dead right! Or you are like me and had open heart surgery before the age of 30 only to discover that it was the beginning of a spiritual journey that would open my heart.
Canadian poet and song-write Leonard Cohen shares in his song, Anthem, "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Our understanding and acceptance of personal rage deepens our capacity to let light in. With an open heart, we are able to honor the basic goodness of all who suffer, especially ourselves. With practice, our interactions are more present, honest and compassionate, and our actions wise, intentional, and joyful. We know intimately that our and others' expressions of rage are not the deepest truth that wants to be told. The deeper truth is the heart's longing for our rage and those of our parents and ancestors to be dignified. Some benefits include:
- More access to passion, creativity and service.
- Ability to rest in your own skin; find refuge within.
- Ability to take control of your life.
- Loving interactions with others.
- More easily able to forgive.
- Less need to judge others or yourself harshly.
- Less attachment to outcomes.
- Less demands on intimate relationships.
- Enhanced confidence to overcome fear, shame and anger.
- More kindness towards what life offers; less need to change what is.
- Less mental, emotional, and physical disease.
- More intimacy, joy, and happiness.
How do I heal rage?
Oscar Wilde shares: "Hearts are meant to be broken. This is how we heal." Rage is akin to matters of the heart, and healing requires that our hearts be broken again and again. To heal rage is to take that risk--to come out of hiding and recognize that we are not broken. What we fear is our greatest teacher.
The antidote to our fear and discomfort with rage is to cultivate a compassionate mind and heart, intellectual understanding, moral consciousness, humility, and an ambition that leaves a good legacy. When we are paying kind attention to rage, it ceases to be a problem.
Celebration of Rage Retreat
The basic assumption of the Celebration of Rage retreat is that unresolved rage from childhood trauma is still locked in our bodies and mind. This blocked energy manifests as disguises of rage in our adult lives, ways we cope with life while denying an intimate experience with living. While these disguises of rage attempt to protect us from the pain of our past, they more often recreate the past, and perpetuate the very suffering we seek to avoid. These disguises become such an ingrained part of our existence that we forget the origins of our rage. Each of us embodies a rage inheritance from our parents and ancestors that presents itself as an opportunity to transform personal and generational suffering. Unresolved, rage is passed on from one generation to the next, contributing to rage legacies that collectively plague the world.
In the Celebration of Rage retreat, we learn how to become deeply knowledgeable about the true character of our rage and discover that rage can be both an obstacle as well as a portal to spiritual awakening. We learn how to put rage in sacred perspective, and understand the role we play in perpetuating our own madness. We stop struggling with ourselves and explore the messages rage offers. We deal directly with those aspects of ourselves that are unwanted, and learn how to feed ourselves when our soul is starving. We acknowledge rage as intolerable pain and shame--something we all embody and avoid to no avail. And we cultivate an intimate relationship with our rage child and find new and creative ways to integrate--not eliminate--rage in our lives. More profoundly, we discover that we are more than what has happened to us, and that we can embrace rage and rest in our own skin. We welcome our rage child into a broader range of passionate life possibilities. This honoring allows us to celebrate who we are as vibrant human beings and embrace the rage of others without judgment. Nancy Lupa, body worker, shares,
"For many years I searched for an integrated way to work through the rage I held inside me. In the Celebration of Rage retreat, I was supported lovingly and without judgment in the complete expression of my emotions and experienced healing of my past."
Our rage child is a passionate truth-teller worthy of playing a creative role in our healing. It is through love and compassion that we are able to tap the shadow and wisdom of our rage child.
Celebration of Rage is not "crisis" work, nor will it immediately change our behavior. The retreat is not intended to eliminate rage from our lives. Rather it is a journey of profound introspection that awakens us to the positive potential of rage. We discover how our most enraging and shame-provoking experiences can be sacred initiations into deeper truth and purpose. Celebration of Rage is an invitation to experience power, freedom, and peace.
About the Book:
Healing Rage--Women Making Inner Peace Possible, is a personal study guide, introducing six disguises of rage and a mind/body practice that transforms the negative energies of rage to self-empowering fuel. Readers identify their disguises of rage through a self-assessment, gain insight into how unresolved rage affects how they respond and influence the world, learn to stop generational pain patterns of oppressed and displaced rage, discover the pure nature and wisdom of rage, and utilize the power of personal rage to live and love in outrageous dignity. This book evolved from Ruth's 11+ years of experience working with women and rage in her Celebration of Rage™ retreats.
Alice Walker, poet, author, and Pulitzer Prize Winner for The Color Purple says: "Healing Rage is a classic self-help book filled with the passion, earthiness and wisdom of a self-described wounded healer. Ruth King's desire for our wellness and freedom radiates throughout. This is a book that can change your life."
Jack Kornfield, renowned Buddhist psychologist, author, and founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, shares: "King has articulated the painful history, patterns and traps of a raging heart and offers the skillful means for liberation in their very midst. This is revolutionary work." Dr. Kornfield also wrote the book foreword.
About Ruth King
Ruth King, MA, is a respected voice on women and rage and has devoted her life to strategies that transform rage. President of Bridges, Branches & Braids--an organization working with negative emotions in positive ways, and author of the best seller Healing Rage--Women Making Inner Peace Possible [Sacred Spaces Press, 2004; Penguin Publishing Group, 2007]. King weaves 20+ years in psychology, leadership development, shamanism, metaphysics, systems theory, meditation, and teachings from wisdom traditions to lecture, coach, and facilitate retreats that transform the emotional body and mind. As a lecturer, coach, consultant, and scholar of indigenous wisdom, King provides guidance in understanding one of the most intimate and challenging emotions of our lives--rage. King has offered retreats, workshops and lectures throughout the nation including:
- Celebration of Rage - a weekend retreat for women
- Meditations that Sooth the Inner Flames of Rage, Worry & Fear
- Disguises of Rage - Why we Wear Them & How we Heal Them
- Generational Healing - Transforming our Rage Inheritance
- Transforming Rage - Looking In before Acting Out
- Got Rage? What you don't know about rage can harm you!
- From Rage to Riches - Transforming Rage in the Workplace
- Breaking Habitual Pain Patterns in Relationships that Matter
- Learning How to be Kind Regardless!
- Predictable Joys - Gratitude as an Alternative to Rage
- The Art of Healing Rage - Facilitator Training
King, an experiential learner and teacher, balances theory and practice with learning and action. She creates experiences where individuals rediscover what they deeply know, and provides practical tools for personal transformation. King shares: "I'm interested in egos reducing, hearts opening, and in tenderly examine what is possible instead of what is feared."
King's work supports the transformation of rage into self-empowering fuel. Participants:
- Discover your disguises of rage and why you wear them.
- Discover your rage inheritance and how to transform your legacy.
- Realize how you are more than the stories you tell yourself.
- Learn how to Look Within before Acting Out.
- Learn how to break habitual pain patterns in relationships.
- Learn how to center yourself again and again in difficult situations.
- Learn how to be with the energy of rage without story, blame or shame.
- Become intimate with the pure nature and wisdom of rage.
- Learn how to stay true to yourself when others are raging.
- Learn how to stop contributing to your own suffering.
- Ignite your passion for creativity and service.
Early in her career as an organizational consultant, King consulted to high-tech firms and other large multinationals undergoing dramatic organizational change. In these organizations she specialized in workplace trauma and the behavioral and cultural implications of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, and severe downsizing. Currently, King specializes in life coaching and team development, and is recognized as a consultant to consultants. King emphasizes self-awareness, compassion, and choice. Educational designs focus on collaborations that foster aliveness and personal integrity.
King works extensively with managers, counselors, consultants, psychotherapists, educators, trauma workers, practitioners of the healing and expressive arts, spiritual counselors, artists, activists, mothers, and other women and men who influence the lives of others.
King completed a Master's in Clinical Psychology at John F. Kennedy University [1991] where she served as adjunct faculty in the Graduate School of Psychology. King has studied indigenous cultures in China, the Philippines, Europe, Cuba, Brazil, Scandinavia, and India, and led diversity tours to Egypt, Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa. King shares: "I'm able to go back and forth between worlds and experience our oneness. From this place of oneness, I serve." King was a Vanguard Public Foundation 2001 finalist of the Social Justice Sabbatical Fund.
Ruth King have over 20 years of professional experience bridging, branching and braiding cultural, psychological, and personal wisdom into practical approaches for transformation. She worked as a Senior Executive with Intel Corporation and Levi Strauss & Company. Her corporate consulting clients include Kaiser Permanente, The GAP, Best Buy, Levi Strauss, Johnson & Johnson, Ambrose Consulting, Interaction Associates, Sun Microsystems, and The Automobile Association of America. Not for Profit clients include Contra Costa Kinship/Foster Program, Corporation for Supportive Housing, Habitat for Humanities, Oakland Youth Chorus, WORLD, Compass Point, Hispanics in Philanthropy, and the Levi Strauss Foundation. Municipal clients include East Bay Municipal Utility District, Port of Oakland, and AC Transit.
Visit our website for more details and references: www.HealingRage.com.
