A brief coaching/therapeutic demonstration teaching an 'unshaming' technique to access and express frozen anger. The facilitator instructs a participant to 'freeze' physically, notice bodily signs (tension, shaking, fists), and then deliberately shake and channel the fight energy into adaptive actions (asserting boundaries, leaving an abusive situation) rather than violence. The excerpt is instructional and demonstrative in tone.
Chapters
Now I'm going to give you an unshaming approach. Show me what it's like to freeze. So the person. What do you mean? Show me? Act like you're freezing right now. All the way. The person. Their hands go up. You can see my shoulders are getting tight. And you can see my fingers start to move like this. Keep going. Freeze more. Why would I do more? Because I want you to feel and get to know this thing that we have a word for that's unchained. Let's get to know it. Now look at me. This is what the person does. Now if you're looking at me, if my hands are shaking and I say, go ahead and keep shaking. The person starts doing like this. Keep going. Let yourself freeze all the way and shake. The person's like crazy with their fists, right? They have a lot of fight in them. How would we ever have known that if we calm that person down. Here's a nice music. Relax. They never find out that they have fight in them. And what's the solution for this kind of person? Learning where to use this. Where are you going to use that fight? Where do you need that? Every day I wake up and I have an inner critic that tells me I'm a piece of shit. I'm a piece of shit. I'm a piece of shit. Stand up and make some hand motions because that's what lives in you. Or I'm living with a person who's abusive to me. Stand up to them. Should I punch them? I don't think so. Let's be careful. But you could also walk out the door. That's a kind of a punch. Does that make sense? I'm leaving. That also could take a punch.