Joe prescribes different approaches depending on which direction anger tends to kink. For people who get dysregulated (lose themselves in the story, rage at others), the exercise is: “Be an actor playing the role of you getting angry.” This keeps a part of you outside the process — you’re giving a good performance, but on some level you don’t believe it. The anger moves, but you maintain the observer position.
For people who freeze or go into flight — who can’t access anger at all — the observer position would shut them down completely. These people need to go into the story a bit, believe it enough for the anger to start moving. They can also “fake it” — just play-act a five-year-old getting angry at their father, give a good performance without believing it has to be real.
The key insight is that anger moves faster when some part of you stays outside the process while the anger moves. Either you’re “playing the actor” (for dysregulators) or “listening to the anger” (for suppressors) — but in both cases, awareness and emotional movement are happening simultaneously.
“Either way — either you’re playing the actor or you’re listening to the anger — there’s a part of you that is outside of the process, and the anger moves a lot quicker if there’s some part of you outside of the process and the anger is moving.”
Related Concepts
- Actor technique for stuck emotions
- Collapse, dysregulation, and shame recreation
- You can express anger without directing it at anyone
- Moving anger is the fastest way out of stuckness
- Anger reaches clarity only after it moves through