ABSTRACT
Aggressive feelings are part of our human experience, and they are called into play whenever we feel frustrated or threatened. Early experiences, of course, will powerfully influence exactly what is felt. Even the ”flight” part of the fight/flight response can become quite complicated, emerging more as a flight of mind that leaves the body frozen and quite vulnerable. For many, anger has become disconnected from data, such that the intensity of the response does not match the actual level of threat. Thus the conscious awareness and communication of aggressive feelings can contain elements of dissociated lack of awareness, anxious denial, fearful withdrawal, paralyzed inaction, various forms of modulated expression, as well as explosive activation accompanied by powerful impulses to act out.
