On Anger, Expression, and Yelling on the 101

“You’ve never yelled before?” he asked me with disbelief.

I was visiting a friend and her boyfriend in Santa Monica the summer before I moved when half my throat closed up on the airplane. And then again as we sat down for lunch and I struggled to eat or speak.

“Haven’t, like, just let it all out?” he pressed.

Before I could answer, my friend’s boyfriend pushed himself from the table, tilted his head back, and filled the tiny apartment with a bellow that reverberated throughout the echos of my heart chamber.

I laughed uncomfortably and pushed my fingers into my neck, massaging my throat. This wasn’t a new feeling, this tightening of my throat. I had seen a massage therapist for an “esophageal spasm” I was experiencing that unpredictably caused my throat to constrict.

The first night it happened I stayed awake sipping water every few minutes so as not to choke in my sleep. And for a few months, I couldn’t eat solid food without choking on this blockage. Some thought it was an energetic block. A repression of speaking up for myself, my story, my truths. I just needed to yell, my friends said. Let your voice meet the world, meet itself outside your head.

It made sense. Maybe I just need to go outside and howl it out. For quite some time, I’d been having dreams about yelling. In my dreams, I stood across from the man who sexually assaulted me as a teenager and wailed at him. I dreamt of struggling to push words out underwater and yelling to be seen. And then there was the recurring dream of screaming from the bottom of my heart for someone or something, only for utter silence while soundlessly asleep to make its way out my mouth. I’d wake up breathless, my chest on fire, speaking to myself a squeaky “hi” to make sure I could still formulate sound.

When I returned home from that summer visit, I slipped into my apartment pool on a drizzly morning back in Oregon. I swam my usual laps back and forth and decided to dive under and try opening up my airway.

First, I let out a soft “ahh”testing its texture in the smooth water. I had to feel it out. I felt silly and self-conscious. But, eventually, I was spilling my wails into my slipstream back and forth underwater until I ran out of breath. The water absorbing the sound and the energy in a comforting way. I felt like I had moved something out of me that I could not extract otherwise.

At some point, the spasms stopped.

I remember a therapist once asked me if I was angry and I laughed out loud, “no.” I didn’t feel angry. I felt tired, exhausted, surviving. I was disconnected from myself. I had lost touch with my emotional body.

Within the span of a year or so, everything in my life had fallen apart.

Family, relationship, career, home, health.

Burned down. And burned me in the backdraft as I tried to salvage any piece of it.

My heart, seared black, has been choking on the smoke for a long time.

The pain held inside me had been bubbling up to the brim and I kept trying to swallow it and stuff if back down, without giving it a way out, or a voice.

I needed to yell.

This week, instead of getting on my mat for yoga and quieting my mind, I took the long way home and detoured onto freeway toward the beach. I pulled over to hear the ocean and couldn’t settle myself beside the water. So I kept driving. Away from myself. My thoughts. I threw on music and sang from my heart, letting emotions taking over my body with the memories that the songs brought up. Experiencing them. Letting them go.

Then, I was yelling at the top of my lungs. I’ve been angry with myself as I work toward peace and healing from the events that took place the year before the pandemic. I want peace. I want to catch my breath. I want a home. Lately, it’s been a heavy-footed two steps forward. One step back. One step forward, two steps back.

I felt stagnant energy, perhaps anger with myself. I continued driving all the way down the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu, yelling into the night, allowing the ocean to absorb the sound. I drove until my voice grew hoarse, my chest felt lighter, and I could once again settle into the space between my thoughts. What I want, I need to create within first.

The last time I had really yelled like this I was driving on the opposite side of the highway from Oregon with remnants of what used to look like my life packed up and on the way down to SoCal. I had left behind a life in ashes and moved toward the sun and water to plant myself somewhere new.

While I have been working to heal, it surprises me how suddenly I can be right back at war with myself, at war with my mind, my body, my spirit. The Universe. And, at times, there are casualties that keep me up at night.

I used to say “this is fine,” just breathe through it, just do some yoga, just sit in the fire and sip your coffee. Anger carries energy and we are responsible for healthily mobilizing it. For me, that looks like movement or expression. Or, yelling in a safe space that will absorb the sound and not wake up your neighbors. I’ve been self-censoring and blocking my own expression in my choice tool that is writing. This is not only hurting me, but is now affecting others I care about.

We are not meant to keep things inside us. I know part of healing trauma is integration and sharing your story. Through art, writing, dance. And, in the current climate with pandemic grief, cultural identity shifts, and uncertainty, I struggle with keeping it real and keeping it to myself outside of conversations with trusted friends.

I always thought I’ll write more when I’ve healed or when there’s some calm in the world.

But, pain that is not transmuted gets stuck and will be intent to find its way out eventually, in any way it can. And I would like to take back my say in what I do about that.

I have been reminded that just as we practice physical postures in yoga, aum is also a posture for the throat. To guide us in our self-expression. We are to practice this as with any other pose on and off the mat.

While this isn’t the most eloquent, linear, or complete post, this is part of my practice off the mat.

And I don’t know how my story will come out or when, at the very least, will save some gas money.