Tips from a Psychotherapist: Releasing Anger, Shame, and Guilt with Bronwyn Schweigerdt

Welcome back to the Real Life Momz podcast. This is a place where you can take a break from all your to dos and take time to focus on yourself. I'm Lisa Foster, your host, and I am passionate about helping moms prioritize themselves. On this podcast, we discuss strategies to promote our mental, physical, and emotional well being.

Especially the ones we are ashamed of, including anger and hatred. And I am here with fellow mom, Bronwyn Schweigerdt.

. She is a psychotherapist and a podcast host of Angry at the Right Things. And she knows that even though feelings are invisible, they don't evaporate, but stored away in our bodies when they're disowned.

So hi, Bronwyn. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Lisa. I'm so excited to have you, as I feel like I had a little feelings coming up just even between work and here today, so I'm excited to see how this is all affecting our lives. [00:01:00] But I have to ask, you have a podcast called Angry at the Right Things, and I mean, you got to know the question, like, what are the right things to be angry at?

Yeah. Oh, wow. No one's ever asked me that question. That's so good. Yeah. So I would say it really depends on the situation. Is there something that like percolates in your mind when you ask that question? Well, I mean, I guess I feel like anger is, it feels very negative. Like it's a negative emotion to me.

Right. And so when you say angry at the right things, I get this thought that like, Oh, there is a right. Thing that to be angry at. Am I outta out of the wrong realm here? ? Yeah. I, okay. Yeah, I could see that. So, and I'm glad you said it's a negative emotion. I think most humans see it as a negative emotion.

But you know, first of all, we, therapists will say the truth is there's no such [00:02:00] thing as a good feeling or a bad feeling, a right. Feeling or wrong feeling, we don't judge our feelings. Guess what? They're involuntary. So why would you judge them? What actually matters is how we act with those feelings, right?

So anger does get associated with negativity because we see a lot of people being verbally violent, physically violent, doing stupid things with their anger. Right. So people can make really poor choices when they're angry. Yes. And I think that is kind of the notoriety that we all associate with anger, unfortunately, but you know, all humans experience anger.

And honestly, I think we experienced it a lot more than we are willing to let on or even admit. And, and when I say anger, I mean, like, there's so many words for anger. So it could be, irritation. It could be annoyance. It could be resentment. It could be, you know, infuriated, like feeling infuriated. It could be disappointed because that is [00:03:00] also a type of anger.

It could be betrayed. And feelings, the reason why they're not right or wrong or even good or bad is they are, are a reflection of a truth. And the truth is when we feel anger or disappointment or betrayal or any of those things, it's reflecting, there is something negative going on, but guess what? It is not my feeling of anger.

The anger is kind of like a light on the emotional dashboard. Of my car saying, Hey, check under the hood, something's off. So, you know, when we see that light come up on the dashboard of our car, do we go, oh, that's so negative. I'm just going to ignore it because it's so negative and just see what happens because I don't want to see it.

Well, I mean, maybe some people do, but hopefully most of us see the light on the dashboard of their actual car and go, you know, I really need to check under the hood because something needs my attention and that's exactly. [00:04:00] What are angry feelings are they're there to say something needs resolution. It needs your attention.

It needs to, you need to work to bring about resolution to it. So if we don't do that, if we dissociate from those feelings and say, no, I'm fine. Or we talk ourselves out of it. You know, you shouldn't feel that way. Bronwyn it's actually really positive. I'm sure let's find the silver lining. If we do that to ourselves.

We're dissociating from those feelings and that's when they store up in our bodies because they don't go away. They really don't and you know, I like to say anger is invisible like all feelings are but you know, I honestly think it's more real than the chair I'm sitting on right now. I think it is more real than the visible practical tangible thing and it doesn't go away.

It stores up in our body and it haunts us. From many, many years, I had insomnia, which is by the way, gone. I absolutely believe that was my body [00:05:00] being angry with me trying to tell me, you need to cut off your relationship with your father because you're betraying yourself.

I think I was feeling angry at me for betraying myself. And Yeah. Yeah. Disassociating from that landed me with years of insomnia. I mean, really bad insomnia. I have clients who experienced insomnia, but other people experience migraines. That's anger. That's anger in your body. Some people experience GI issues.

A lot of people get autoimmune disorders. Autoimmune is your your own white blood cells are attacking your body. They're angry, they're inflamed. And when you say inflamed, I'm like, those are angry white blood cells. I believe so much autoimmune issues are anger that is just stored away in our bodies.

But then also things like anxiety and depression are also disassociated anger in our bodies. [00:06:00] I love the idea of this, like light check. In the car that we should look under the hood and see where that anger is coming from. And so what I'm hearing is that if we either push down or ignore, dissociate, that this anger actually can manifest as other things stored in our body.

Oh, yeah. Would you like an example of that? Yes. I would love that. So you know, one of my podcast episodes, I talk a lot about my own relationship with my daughter, who's now 20 and we're doing great now, but for 14 years, I was her enemy.

It was like, it was like she was a teenager for 14, you know, since she was five, basically. Around age five, we moved and I fell into a horrific depression and anyone who's ever been severely depressed, it's like you lose yourself, , and she had only experienced, my attunement, my full attunement.

Cause she's, she's my only child. And I was [00:07:00] very connected to her. And when I lost myself, she felt rejected by me, you know, her name's Edie. So I say little Edie, little five year old Edie felt rejected by mom. And you know what? She was. It's not intentionally, but she was, it's like, I will, the lights are on, but nobody was home and mom wasn't making eye contact anymore.

Mom wasn't smiling. She had her own experience of the move and mom didn't care because mom was lost inside herself. And so she, from that age on all of a sudden, like so suddenly started getting headaches and stomach aches like almost every day and that was when I was still a nutritionist is before I became.

That was my first, you know, career and I'm like, what could it be? You know, what are we eating? You know, whatever. And well, she had those symptoms until like a year, year and a half ago when I wrote her, when I started as a therapist, I started connecting the dots because I would see him with my clients and I would see him with, you know, my clients is when they were children.

[00:08:00] And I started kind of seeing, Oh, she has rejected me because she felt rejected by me. And that's why she's held me at arm's length for 14 years. And I wrote her a letter and it was called dear five year old Edie. And I apologized and I said, this is what I think you experienced back then.

This is what I'm so sorry for. And you felt abandoned by me and you've been angry ever since. And I don't blame you. And I apologized and I just sent it to her. I didn't even follow up.

So I'm like, okay. So but that's when things started changing in our dynamic. And I even got to say at one point to her, I said, you know, when you were five, little Edie felt rejected by me. And what I want little Edie to know is that was a hundred percent a mom problem and zero percent an Edie problem.

And like, when I said that she was like, Oh wow, you're [00:09:00] right. , I always took that as, personal and you're right. You were depressed and Oh my God. And it just did something for her. So during that year and a half where we were kind of, I was winning back her trust, basically as her parent, her headaches and stomach aches that persevered for 14 years.

It's completely stopped. Wow. And her anxiety, she had so much anxiety, it completely diminished. That's incredible. I mean, that's such a great example of how those feelings can really manifest as physical symptoms. And yeah, I agree. I think it happens so much more often than, than we think. And I, I see patients too, I'm a craniosacral therapist and a physical therapist.

And yes, there are so many times that clients come to my door. And go to the doctor and they're like, I don't know, they're finding nothing wrong with me, but this is how I'm feeling. And you're right. So tell us a little bit more about this actual [00:10:00] storing of the feeling in the tissue, in the body being trapped in there and, and maybe expanding into like, how are we able to release this?

Because I'm sure people are listening going, Oh, I have all those feelings. However, and I'm sure it's stored, like, how do we get it out of us? Yeah. Well, I don't know exactly how it stores physiologically. I wouldn't have believed this when I was a nutritionist. I wouldn't have ever believed I would have thought, Oh, someone's making this up.

And now it's like, Oh wow. Like I cannot deny it because I see it every single day. With my clients, I'm learning different feelings store in different parts of the body. And it's going to make intuitive sense to you and everyone who's listening, but it's crazy.

Some of my clients are have had eating disorders or disordered eating. And. I noticed the ones who struggled with bulimia, our gut, our stomach is where we start discussed

like when people say, Oh, [00:11:00] I feel sick to my stomach. I'm like, what made you feel discussed? And the other thing that we store in our stomach or our gut is shame.

And I really think shame is also discussed. It's self discussed. . So I, I believe our, our uterus actually is where we feel the lack of nurture that we're getting.

This sounds so like hocus pocus, honestly, but I really believe this. I believe like women with really severe premenstrual cramps, it's like their uterus is like, wait, how am I supposed to nurture someone when I am not getting the nurture that I need? Like, I'm angry about that. It's almost like the uterus is just like angry and I actually just had a client yesterday.

This, this is crazy too. She was. It's Sharing how she just moved and unfortunately she lost her plants that she's had for many years and those plants have been her one consistent source of nurture. Like she even said that and she said, [00:12:00] Oh my God, while I'm talking, I'm getting cramps. And she had been having cramps around the loss of these plants.

They all died when she put them outside. She didn't realize how hot it was. And she's like, it's not my period, but I'm cramping. And when she talked about how she loves us, those plants and how they nurtured her and she nurtured them. She was feeling the cramp. So I absolutely associate like nurture

and that's so interesting you're talking about. I haven't heard it like that, but once again, in the kind of manual therapy world, it is kind of known that like they'll say liver, is where anger is stored.

Lungs are grief. And so there are organs that are kind of like known to actually hold these type of feelings. So I love that you went kind of looked at it even further and looked at your clients to see what kind of repetitively is happening.

In their bodies and coinciding with that. So, we're talking [00:13:00] about the storing in the body. Now, how do we, either, I mean, I have two questions. Like, how do we prevent this from even happening if, if there are emotions? Are there things that we could be doing as we're actually feeling the emotions in the moment?

Yeah. So maybe let's start with that one. Absolutely. So when we feel something in the moment, we need to learn to self attune. And the thing is we parent ourselves the way we were parented. So there's a lot of unlearning we need to do and heal our relationship with ourselves.

But that said, that sounds really like long and hard and it's not, it's just saying, you know what little Bronwyn, I am so sorry. I have abandoned you and dismissed your feelings. For so long. And even shamed you. For your feelings, especially the angry feelings.

I'm so sorry. And you know what? Let's start with the anger. I want to really heal my relationship with you and I want to. Give you permission to feel it. Just feel it in your body. I will listen. [00:14:00] And I will validate. And I'll just say, you know what? Yeah. You, you are angry. and that's okay to feel that, of course it is.

Because someone just hurt you. So, what do you need? Because our feelings tell us what we need. So when we start with like, I feel angry in my chest. And for a lot of people, that's just anxiety. But what I say is, that's suppressed anger.

You just say to yourself, no, no, little Lisa, you're angry and you have permission to be angry. Help me understand. I validate it. You have every right to feel that way. Help me understand. And what do you need? What is that anger need right now? And I big Lisa will help you little Lisa channel it out in a healthy way through boundaries, through assertiveness or through some kind of accountability.

Yeah, easier said than done in the moment. I'm even thinking like little, little things, right? I guess that's a [00:15:00] question too. Do little things like, I was on my way home from work today. I got a whole list texted to me from my family. I need this, this, this, this, but I only have like a very few minutes before I have to come home, do something else, and then jump on this, right?

So. I felt myself getting, the word I had, because I thought I was like, oh good, I'm going to talk to you today. I was like, I felt resentful, like, I just felt like I was feeling resentful of this,

Well that sounds like a good thing, Lisa. So let's do you right now. And those who are listening can like, yeah, at work. Cause I do this in my podcast too, for my cohost, Katie, she's my best friend. She's not a therapist. So I do this kind of exercises with her, but I think that's the best way for people to learn.

So let's do that with you, if that's okay. Oh yeah, I'm here. Okay. So weird. If you let yourself and we got it. We can't feel it in our head. If you start to feel any kind of tension in your head, just say, Hey brain, you're amazing. I love you. [00:16:00] Thank you for all your hard work, but right now I need you to take a big break.

This is just between me and my body and I need to feel the resentment, the anger. So where do you feel that in your body when you think of, oh, I can feel it right now. Just telling you again, it's in my chest. Like I'm just like, oh, right. in my chest. Okay. So what does your chest wanna say in fantasy? to the main person or the person who represents the people.

It wants to say get it yourself. Yeah. Like those are the first words that come to my head. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to add to this because maybe, and you can tell me if right or wrong or whatever. So maybe your chest wants to say, you know, I really resent that, you know, how busy I am and you know, everything I have on my plate and this is a pattern and it's still happening and

if this is not a one time event, and I really resent that this is still happening right now. It's like, I don't matter. [00:17:00] Yeah. That feels actually, my chest is loosening as you're saying that it's so funny. You just say it. You don't have to say it to that person.

And that's what I really want everyone to hear. Yeah. Because. Half the time, if not more, it would be counterproductive to actually do that. So when we're talking about parents, we're talking about like major betrayals. You do not want to actually say that to the person, but you can say it in fantasy. You could write a fantasy letter and you could say it to a friend who's a good listener.

And all you need is for someone to attune to you and you, for you to attune to you and just go, I have every right to feel this and this is what I want to see in fantasy and you externalize it, you know, we use the word express, we express it, words express things. You are literally expressing it out of your body into the ether and that's why I think your chest feels looser right now.

Yeah, I think that was really helpful. Is it important like [00:18:00] timing wise to do it? Does it matter if I do it a day later or in the moment the sooner the better, because, you know, it might affect your sleep. It might affect your interactions with your kids. If we don't express our anger in a healthy way, it will leak out.

You're right. It will leak out. In some way, shape or form. Yeah. That's where the snap would come in. And I'm going to be honest. I brought in these groceries. I was in a rush because I had to do something before coming on. And literally I put them on the thing. And my husband so sweetly comes over and says something really nice.

I'm like, I can't deal. I can't deal. And then next thing I know that he tips over it. Like my energy affected him. He tips over this whole water. Spilled all over the floor, and then I just took a breath and I was like, okay, wait, , I have time. I have a minute, I can do this and so, yeah, that domino effect.

So, oh my gosh. Yeah. What you're saying is right. So if we delay it, then it will leak out in a passive aggressive way with that person, or we'll [00:19:00] be mean to the kids or whatever, or we'll cut someone off on the freeway.

And that might be a very costly thing to do. So we really need to be responsible for anger in the moment. And that is also not betraying ourself because our, our inner child is now going to trust us more. So when we express it in fantasy, but then after we've expressed it in fantasy, we feel better.

And then we can get to the husband and say, The non fantasy version saying,, this keeps happening and it's making me resentful and I'm not going to respond anymore. So that would be the boundary or the assertiveness. Yeah, yeah. And, and honestly, yes, there were many times I couldn't put a boundary, but then there's feelings of guilt.

Where does that fall in? The guilt. Yeah, why would you feel guilty for having a boundary? I have been told that many times. I've had somebody literally say, Lizzie, you just put a boundary. Why do you feel guilty? I don't know. That must come from somewhere. Because I'm sure you're not the only [00:20:00] woman or mother who feels guilt when she has a boundary, right? In fact, I'm being very sarcastic because I think you represent every woman. So, so we, again, we parent ourselves the way we were parented. So you're parenting little Lisa.

You're like, that's wrong. Little Lisa to like have limits that is wrong. You're a little robot, not a little human, little Lisa. It's not okay to say no. It's not okay to have a limit. And, and so we have to heal that relationship with ourself. And so. What I do with my clients is I lead people in integration exercises with their inner child where we see our, like we go to like an, what I call an imprint memory and it can just be any memory that is kind of emblematic of where we were guilted for saying no.

And we were guilted for being a human versus a robot. And. We picture, you know, let's say we picture seven year old Lisa and she's being [00:21:00] guilted for being human. And I would have you picture little Lisa and you're talking to her and mom and dad are fading in the background. It's just you and her and you're making eye contact with her.

You're getting on her level and looking her in the eyes and say, Little Lisa, I see how guilty you feel for being human, for having a limit, for having needs, for being burdensome on others or inconvenient to others. And I want to let you know that the truth is you're not a burden. You're not a burden to me.

And you get to say no to me as much as you want, because I love that you're human. I love that about you. And I will honor and respect your natural human limitation from here on out and I will meet your needs and I will validate your feelings because they matter to me and I will prioritize them. And I'm sorry, I haven't done a good job of that.

I'm sorry. I've parented you the way we were parented. [00:22:00] That's changing today and your anger matters to me and I'm going to help us channel it out in healthy ways with no guilt. I'm going to help us trust ourselves because we matter too. And I need you to see that when you're guilted by your mom, I need you to see that that's a her problem, not a you problem.

And you've won my approval, little Lisa. There's nothing left to win because you already have it and you can't ever lose it. There's nothing you can do that can add to it or ever detract from it. And you belong to me. And so now you're free. We're free to disappoint the hell out of everyone else because I will never leave you.

I will never abandon you. I will never reject you. I'm here to stay yeah. Wow. That is powerful now, isn't it? Now I hear you doing that, you know, for me, [00:23:00] which feels amazing by the way. I love you as big Lisa. But how do people do this themselves? It seems like you have to be good at like self talk almost. What are, what about people who aren't there yet? Well, I think it starts with the self attunement. So it could be as simple as, you're driving home and you're feeling the anger. And instead of like, Ignoring it instead of dismissing it instead of minimizing it. You're going to say, you know what, Lisa, you have every right to feel resentful.

And I, yeah, you feel it right in your chest. And that is, that is exactly what you should feel right now. That's great. What do you need from me right now? Where does this anger need to go? How do we need to channel it up? And once you start having, developing that relationship with yourself, I think naturally You're going to start healing that relationship and it's going to just grow like relationships grow when they're healthy.

Yeah. That seems so much more, doable so what is it that you want [00:24:00] moms to know that maybe you didn't know back then? That's a great question. So I would say, you know, on the episode where I talk about my own daughter I think it's the episode is called how to overcome betrayal in the best way possible or something like that.

Cause I betrayed Edie, my daughter, but I talk about rupture and repair, which is something, you know, certain kinds of therapists will talk about. And the, the, the point is. We can't avoid rupture in any relationship. That's not realistic that we're going to have rupture. You know, if you've known someone a day or two, like there's going to be a rupture, especially when you live with them day in and day out.

So we're going to fail our kids. We absolutely will. And there's no shame in that because that's what humans do. We fail. The shame isn't from that because we're human. What we need to do is have a really good repair and that's what all the research, all the attachment theory shows that actually, and maybe you'll [00:25:00] like start to make this connection, but they, they show that the healthiest, strongest relationships in the world are ones, you know, let's say just between a friend, two friends where there's been a rupture, but there was a great repair because what that does is it teaches both parties just kind of implicitly, This is a safe environment for us to be real and make mistakes and fail.

And we're going to be honest and authentic afterwards and apologize. And that creates a safe environment for a child to grow up with a mother who says, you know what little Johnny, I'm sorry that I yelled at you. Mommy was wrong to do that. And mommy, sorry. And she just wants you to know that that was a mistake.

And what that does is it teaches Johnny that he matters. Just implicitly. You can tell a child they matter. I don't think that lands for them, but if they matter because you're showing them by an apology, by saying, you know, Johnny, you, you're right to be [00:26:00] angry with me. I don't blame you for feeling angry.

Then that teaches them. They matter when their feelings matter. They matter. So it's teaching him that, but it's also modeling for him. Humans make mistakes, Johnny. And. It's modeling that. And so little Johnny doesn't grow up to feel shame. Like when he makes a mistake, he is a mistake. He's not going to confuse those two things.

He's not going to conflate those. He grows up like, okay, I made a mistake. Cool. And, and he'll even learn. We learned from our mistakes. He's going to learn all of that implicitly. Mom is creating a safe environment for him to make lots of mistakes. And you know what, how in the world are we supposed to grow in an environment where we can't make mistakes?

Cause In order to grow, you need to make tons of mistakes and it needs to be a safe environment for that to happen. So there's just so much with a good repair, like having a relationship where when there's a rupture, we go first, we model that we don't demand it of them [00:27:00] until we model it for them. And, and that they're going to start naturally wanting to model it back or to do it back.

Yeah. And I think what I'm also hearing is this repair. I totally agree. I've had some friends that something has happened and we. Get reconnected and made the repair. And yeah, those are like, there's so much more trust and strength in those because you've done that you've gone through something. So I totally agree.

That is really important. But I'm also kind of feeling that this is also a repair with yourself, right? With that inner little you. And the big you, it's almost like that same thing, making that repair and connection. And that really strengthened us too. That is so true. Thank you for pointing that out.

That is very true. And yeah, and that's, the goal of therapy should be integration because integration means that we're whole and that we're, [00:28:00] what you see is what you get. Cause when you think about like, or, you know, people who remember math. An integral number. It's a whole number and someone who's integrated, you know, it also means complete, it means, you know, I'm 53 now I finally feel right now, like I'm the same age on the inside as on the outside.

And I did not feel that until, you know, not too long ago, actually, I think in my forties, I felt like I was in my late teens, I always felt kind of just like, I don't know what I'm doing. Everyone else seems to know. And now I'm like, Oh, I know what I'm doing and no one else does. That's the truth.

But anyway so integrated It's whole it's complete. It's mature the word mature in in spanish is maduro, which means ripe like ripe yeah, so that's the goal is to be integrated. And the other thing is when we're integrated We're trustworthy. We're what you see is what you get there when you're with someone who's integrated You don't you walk [00:29:00] away and you're like You're not second guessing.

Oh, did I offend them? Oh, when they said that, did they really mean this? You're not doing that because you're with someone who's so real and you just feel it. You feel relaxed. You feel at ease. You trust that. And that is really the goal to become an integrated person. And then to help our children become integrated people, because what makes us disintegrate is shame.

That's what causes that. So if we can raise our children just to be human. And if we can go first by learning to be human and, and expect ourselves only to be human, that's going to undo the shame that causes us to. Disintegrate. I love that so much. Yes. And that feeling just listening to you talk about being a fully integrated person.

Ah, that just feels like I want to be around that all the time. Just knowing who you are, showing up who you are and being able to trust that. I love that. So where can the listeners find you? Yeah. So [00:30:00] my podcast is at anywhere you find your podcasts, but it's angry at the right things. And. I think I have 18 episodes right now.

So it's 18 hours of me speaking basically with my co host, Katie. I don't do interviews. So it's, Just a lot of this kind of stuff but Katie helped slow me down. Like you're helping me do. I can kind of talk a mile a minute and then I do the exercises with her. , and the whole goal is for the listener to be able to do them for themselves.

So this is really a podcast for anyone who either wants to bypass therapy. Or doesn't feel like they have a good enough therapist, but also for people who want to go into the therapy world. I didn't know what I was doing when I started out. And it's also for therapists who want to like. Learn more as well.

Yeah. So it sounds like it's a great way to learn some of these exercises you kind of talked about today or demonstrated even, sounds like you can get some of that just from your podcast.

That's the [00:31:00] goal. Absolutely. Well, is there anything you want to leave us with before we go? I just want to say that when we are true to ourselves, I used to think that was like sounded selfish. And now I'm like, wow, it's actually a win win when we are learned to be true to ourselves, we win and everyone around us, around us wins.

So it's the opposite of selfish and we feel alive. And when we're alive, people around us feel more alive in our company. And we can bring them comfort and joy. So it's a win win.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today I learned so much What can I say I learned so much and I had my own therapy session. So thank you for taking the time And doing that for me Yes, you're welcome. Thanks for having me, Lisa.

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. It was so nice to have Bronwyn just teach us something new about our bodies. Feel free to check out the show notes for links for her [00:32:00] podcast and keep learning some of these techniques that she offers

And remember, keep carving out time for yourself because you matter.