The moment we start needing to be seen in a certain way to be safe in our families — which happens to all of us — we tamp down our wildness. Our musculature, authenticity, and full aliveness get constricted to fit the acceptable mold. A father telling his kids “don’t get too wild” in a bounce house designed for wildness reveals exactly this: his own wildness wasn’t allowed, so he can’t allow his children’s.
“The minute we start needing to be seen in a certain way to be safe in our families… it is a tamping down of our wildness and our authenticity and who we really are.”
Emotional work — particularly anger work and grief — brings us back to our wildness. The journey typically involves first finding safety and ground, then developing compassion (which allows us to see beyond the false self without terror), then grieving all the parts of ourselves that were stamped down to maintain the false front, and finally encountering the shadow: the petty, slow, selfish, rageful parts that were disallowed.
The wildness isn’t something to be created or cultivated — it’s what’s already there beneath the suppression. It’s reclaimed, not built. And it won’t come through surface-level acknowledgment; the deeper, disallowed parts must actually be welcomed.
Related Concepts
- Suppressing one emotion suppresses all
- Anger is love with a boundary
- Grief is necessary for transformation