What is Rage Therapy and How Does it Work?
Introducing Rage as Liberation
The topic of rage is an explosive arena of history and politics, and both the individual and the collective have both visible and hidden experiences in regards to the emotional and lived landscape of rage.
Here at Cozy Couch Counseling, we look at rage as both a practice of liberation and a doorway into an expressive life. Throughout time, rage has been suppressed, quieted, and used as a tool of oppression, especially with Black and Indigenous bodies. Expressed anger in groups historically has led to murder and violence against Black and Indigenous peoples, women and other minority groups, the result of which is often to make ourselves smaller, less obvious, less a target for hatred. When this occurs, the rage we feel is turned inward, toward ourselves, and has no outlet for expression. Rage shows up in the body as chronic illness, pain, injury, and emotional neglect. The effect of rage suppression is a legacy of pain and containment that we did not ask for, and do not need.
We are killing our bodies with unexpressed rage. Carrying unexpressed rage is like wearing a skin that’s too tight, in a body consuming itself from within. Rage In Practice
However, throughout time we have also seen incredible examples of rage as a liberation practice or liberatory force, often led by the same minorities who are the victims of violent rage. This is a kind of phenomenon that Paulo Freire outlines in “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” when he states that only the oppressed can take the lead in their own liberation. We can look to women like Nina Simone, who channeled her rage into music and wrote one of the main songs of the civil rights movement, “Mississippi Goddamn”
From the lyrics to “Mississippi Goddamn”
“Picket lines
School boycotts
They try to say it's a communist plot
All I want is equality
For my sister, my brother, my people, and me
Yes, you lied to me all these years
You told me to wash and clean my ears
And talk real fine just like a lady
And you'd stop calling me Sister Sadie
Oh, but this whole country is full of lies
You're all gonna die and die like flies
I don't trust you any more
You keep on saying "Go slow"
"Go slow"”
Nina Simone’s lyrics of Black liberation and the example of rage suppression through the call to “wait” or “go slow” is palpable and real. It’s expressive, and in being so, it has become a different sort of legacy, one where we are speaking what needs to be spoken rather than turning rage inward. Ms. Simone isn’t responsible for the events that cause her rage. But she is deeply affected by them, and therefore rage has found her in that effect. However, instead of engaging with the expectation of silence in the face of injustice, Ms. Simone uses active expression to create a lasting legacy of liberation. This is rage liberation in practice.
When we speak our rage, we loosen the reins on our own internal injury. When we give our rage a creative outlet, we take our healing and the healing of our communities a step further by showing up as an active participant in both the creation of art, as well as liberators of the unconscious. Creative expression is one of the avenues of therapeutic intervention when it comes to rage.
What is Rage Therapy and How Does It Work?
At Cozy Couch Counseling, we want to help you practice self compassion by offering a therapeutic framework for chronic anger and rage. We offer to you, through a healing lens, the concept of rage as freedom. We practice expressing rage as movement through and out your body. We want to free you from generational trauma that taught your parents and grandparents to hide, to conform, to not cause any trouble. We want you to walk your own path of liberation, of freedom, of individuality, while relearning methods of being that belong to your ancestry, and belong to Earth’s ancestry, before it became a target of violence to be outspoken and free.
As Dr. Jennifer Mullan says in Decolonizing Therapy, “Rage is not a problem to be treated, but a sacred gift from our ancestors—a potent force that illuminates our chords of connection and serves as a guardian of our boundaries.” (2023).
And if your rage needs boundaries, needs quiet and space, we will explore that too. However your rage shows up both in therapy and in your life is where we will do our work. It may be that the rage you’ve been holding in and holding back is your doorway to the expressive life and active creation that you desire….
How Atlanta Therapists Treat Chronic Rage and Anger
At Cozy Couch Counseling, we look at rage and chronic anger as one part of you, rather than all of you. We use a lens of Internal Family Systems, developed by Richard Schwartz, although the method of viewing a system as parts is much older than that, and has been used in indigenous health practices for a long time. We feel that is worth mentioning as so much is borrowed without acknowledgement by Western health systems.
Regardless, Internal Family Systems, or IFS, is a method that lends itself well to rage and chronic anger. Here at Cozy Couch Counseling, we use IFS to help you understand your rage as a part of you that doesn’t need to be excommunicated or rejected from your system. We develop a lens of compassion toward your parts that will help you begin to understand:
The depths of your rage
The needs of your rage, both obvious and hidden
The rage’s relationship with your other parts within your system
What your rage is doing for you
How rage wants to work with you
How to offer healing and support by unburdening the part of you that’s chronically angry
How to have compassion for your rage
How to love your rage
How to give your rage a voice
How to transmute your rage into creativity.
In addition to the IFS method of psychotherapy for rage, we use other methods as well such as somatic therapy. Somatic therapy includes movement, breathwork, and other body-centered methods of staying present with what’s coming up as relevant in your system. We also use art as a method of expression, whether that may be writing, speaking, painting, sculpting, or other methods of creative expression. Remember, our goal is not to reject or refuse rage access to you, but rather to begin to be in relationship with it as a helpful and loved part of your system. We take what is inside of you and bring it into light, give it a home, a space, and a voice.
Atlanta Rage Therapy: Finding the Right Therapist
We know that finding the right counselor in Atlanta for Rage Therapy is a big concern, but we have an incredibly qualified and experienced therapist available to you.
Let us introduce you to Bonnie Mosby, MSW.
Bonnie is our resident rage therapist, but she’s so much more than that. She’s our liberation therapist, as well. Bonnie’s guiding stars are liberation and rage as liberatory expression. Bonnie believes in the right of all people to exist unoppressed, to exist free, and with no threat of violence against their bodies, minds, hearts, or families, or communities. Bonnie’s principles lie in community healing, and she approaches therapy as an interconnected existence of all things, both living and non-living, both imaginal and tangible. Bonnie knows that we are affected by all things both real and imagined, now and throughout time. Therefore, her approach to rage therapy and liberation therapy may cover both individual and communal ways of being in the world, therefore taking the onus off of you as an individual responsible for all the ways you are enraged. Bonnie approaches this work instead from a shared responsibility, a shared lived experience, and treats the phenomenology of rage as a collection of historical, social and psychological events. Therefore, you do not ever have to be alone in your healing, as you aren’t alone in your experience of trauma.
This is a trauma lens of rage; a lens that recognizes the harm both done to you and by you, as part of the collective human experience of both violence and love, rage and compassion, trauma and healing. In therapy with Bonnie, there is space to hold all parts of the experience of rage and liberation, of freedom and entrapment. Also, you’ll laugh. Bonnie is funny. And sometimes we also need that, the lightness of our rage as well as the depths. Because we cannot stay in the place of hurt ongoing, we will learn to liberate our rage and bring it joy through our creative gifts.
If you’d like to book a session with Bonnie, we encourage you to do so here.
Until next time,
Cozy Couch Counseling, your center for healing.
