Rand – I am starting by quoting from the page on anger from this site.
“Whether you show or repress anger in dreams it is important. This is because like any other basic or instinctive response, anger uses tremendous resources of emotional and physical energy. The repression of emotional energy can be a key factor in the breakdown of health, and in the lack of positive and creative self-expression. Blocked emotional energy tends to attack your sense of wellbeing and body if it is stopped from external expression.
In some dreams enormous anger is expressed, but it is accompanied by a sense of frustration because the anger brings no satisfaction. This may indicate it is still linked with childhood dependence, when our personal well-being was intricately bound with our parents, and we depended upon them for our good feelings. Of course, in some extreme situations in adult life, such as being a prisoner who is maltreated, our anger may actually be incapable of changing things, but expressing it in a safe way can do wonders.
Anger may be a way of hiding one’s vulnerability or real pain. In this case, it is important to feel the anger and discover what is underneath it. Sometimes deep feelings from childhood emerge once the anger has been felt. Such a surfacing of encapsulated emotions usually brings about deep insight into why certain traits are so powerful in your nature.” See
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/anger-angry/ Of course you can stuff anger – for years. Here is an example - Anger is not simply in the mind and emotions, it is deeply in and influencing your body. Once in a class where we were using methods of release I found that a young woman had tensions in her back like bars of iron. When we started to relax the muscles the woman began to thrash around on the floor, beating the floor in obvious anger. A few minutes later she sat up and said, “So that’s why I haven’t been able to talk to my sister for ages, I was so angry at her.”
We are taught that anger is bad to express, and that to express it we are like beasts. But ‘beasts’ are not like that except in films. Animals only attack to kill if threatened or to gain food. The sentence should be, restrain your anger toward others if it will harm them, but always let it be expressed harmlessly. This is because anger, like the sex instinct, is built in, it is a natural impulse, and if restrained can lead in both cases to neurosis. But being humans and programmed by being told to restrain things, we are often very missed up. See
http://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/animal-children/#Program A way of dealing with anger and great emotions is to be the dream person who is angry, or being yourself being angry is one of the safest ways of allowing and healing the causes of anger. Anger is a natural feeling, and when we repress it, as we are usually taught to do in our society, it becomes pressurised and sick or dangerous. Being the dream person is described in
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPersonYou can release it safely by standing in the role of the angry or emotional person, and sometimes it can help to act out anger by hitting cushions or an armchair with a rolled up newspaper, tennis racquet or baseball bat. Acting it out can often lead to a real release and then you can see where it all started. You may need to do it without feelings and automatically at first, but if you keep on it will slowly become real. You will probably need to do this a number of times over a period of time to feel the results.
It is important to let any feelings be expresses and not to feel guilty about any negative feelings to people. In releasing them in this way you are not hurting anyone, but you are clearing out your unexpressed darkness.
You are the beast, the old man and everything else in your dream. You can experience it by using Being the Person.
Tony