- I hear you talk about
rage and anger a lot. Do you feel like the suppression is... I mean, if you had to like, have a pie chart, or a percentage of different emotions that people typically suppress, would you say most of the time it's say, rage, or sadness, or fear, or is it even possible to separate those? - Well, it's interesting. There was, sadly, he's not alive anymore, a neuroscientist, his name is Dr. Jaak Panksepp, who looked at the
neuroscience of emotions. "Affective Neuroscience," he called it. Affective Neuroscience. Not effective, Affective Neuroscience. And he distinguished some brain systems that we share with other mammals, some rudimentary, but
essential brain systems. And he capitalized them, just for nomenclature's sake. And each of these brain systems were associated with
certain brain chemicals and certain circuits in the brain. And they were not, you know, they were
very much intermingled. But, there was a circuitry for rage. He called it R-A-G-E, RAGE. There was also a circuitry
for panic and grief. He called it PANIC/GRIEF, capital PANIC, slash GRIEF. There's one for fear, there's one for lust, there's one for seeking, there's one for play. And one or two others. And each of these are
necessary for human life, mammalian life, actually. Now, the RAGE system, isn't an aberration, it's part of our apparatus. It shows up, it gets activated, when we're threatened and our boundaries are threatened. You want to find out what rage is? Try to mess with the bear
cubs of a bear mother. You'll find out what rage is. It's there for a good reason. We have a system for care, C-A-R-E, which makes us care for one another, especially for the young of the species. Without that, mammals don't survive. If the adults didn't have a
CARE system in their brains, no infant would survive. We have a panic and grief system, PANIC/GRIEF, which is what the young feels when the care is absent. They feel panic, they feel sadness. Now, what I find, is the most commonly
repressed are the RAGE and the PANIC and GRIEF. And when you repress that... Now, when you repress
anger, healthy anger, you're actually suppressing
your immune system. Why? I could go into the science of it, but in a nutshell, mind and body cannot be separated. And when you look at what is
the role of healthy anger, it's to protect your boundaries. It's to make sure that something that shouldn't
intrude on you, doesn't. That's emotionally, or
physically, the case. Sean, if I were in the same room with you, if I were to attack you, you should mount a RAGE response. "Oh, you can't do this to me!" You know? And you might do the same thing if I was emotionally intrusive. That's to keep out what is unhealthy. In fact, the role of the emotional
system in general, is very simply, let in what's healthy and nourishing and keep out what's not. That's basically the role of emotions. Now, what is the role
of the immune system? Trick question. It's to keep out what's unhealthy and let in what's healthy. It's the same as the emotions. In fact, the immune system and the emotional system are part and parcel of the same apparatus. When you're suppressing rage, you're your healthy
rage, I'm talking about. There's such a thing as healthy anger, then there's unhealthy anger. When you're suppressing healthy anger, you're suppressing your immune system, documentably so, physiologically so. But, this is where therapy
and inquiry comes into it because why would somebody
repress healthy anger? Well, let me put it to you. Why would somebody repress healthy anger? What would you people say about that? Anybody want to answer that? - Melissa? - Because it's not safe to do so. - Under what circumstances? I agree.
- Connection, relationship. - Exactly. And exactly when? Particularly when? Let me put it that way. - A caregiver, somebody that is is needed for care, it would sever the relationship that would give you the
care that is needed. - I'm completely with you, and I totally agree with you. But, when most particularly in life? - [Melissa] Oh, when you're a child. - Exactly. You know? So, in that case, you would agree with me that the suppression of
anger is actually a benefit because it allowed you to
keep that relationship, without which you can't survive. But, that same benefit becomes a deficit later on. So, most commonly, it's what I see suppressed, is anger. And of course, if you look at even the language, like we call depression this
a "mental health disorder" because of chemicals. Nonsense. Look at the word "depression." What does it mean to depress something? It means to push it down. What do we push down? We push down our emotions. Why do we push them down? Because, as Melissa points out, it's too dangerous to feel them when they would threaten
the attachment relationship. So, the pushing down of healthy anger can lead you to autoimmune
disease, or cancer, neurological disease, like ALS. And by the way, you know what something? They've done studies. Even when people have ALS, who express anger, they live longer than people with ALS
who don't express anger. I could talk at length about that. There was a study of
2000 women in the States, over 10 years. Women who were unhappily married and didn't express their
feelings of unhappiness, were, in those 10-year period, four times as likely to die as those women who were unhappily married, but they talked about their feelings. So, the repression of healthy anger, and sadness, and grief, it undermines your physiology. I could go on about multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, in all of these conditions
where you've got migraines, for God's sakes. Meet anybody with a migraine, they got a lot of suppressed rage. That's what happens. And sadness, of course. If your parents need you to be happy, you'll put on a happy face. "Yes, everything is okay." And then you go through life and everybody thinks
what a nice guy you are. What a nice person you are. Always joyful, always cheerful. And then, they come to your funeral and they wonder, "Why is it
that the good die young?" The good die young because
they suppress themselves. - [Sean] We provide you
with the certification and the credentials you need to teach mindfulness in
professional settings. I invite you to check out our webpage at Teach.MindfulnessExercises.com, to learn more about the program. And I look forward to
seeing you on the inside.
