How Repressed Emotions Shape Our Children and How We Can Free Them - GABOR MATÉ Part 3

At 20 years old, at my grandfather’s wake, one of my uncles went to sneak away. Feeling indignant and protective of my grandmother, whom I was very close with, I felt a sense of duty to let him know how much she needed him right now. How could he leave?

Only I didn’t share this in a calm, collected way.

I was angry.

Angry for all the times I saw my grandmother weep because she barely saw this son. Angry for all the times it broke her heart that she lived in the same town as her grandchildren and barely knew them.

So that day, as the wake was just about to begin, his leaving was too much pain to bear, and I became rageful, shouting, How could he leave?

From that day forward, that uncle and his family didn’t speak to me. And to this day, there is no relationship.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much that moment would shape me.

Years later, when I wanted to share my passion—my healthy form of anger—in my business, I found myself freezing. I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I couldn’t share what I wanted to. Until, through some inquiry, I realised my body remembered that event. It had encoded a message deep within me:

If I express my passion, I will be rejected and ostracised forever.

Now, that might sound dramatic, but that was the truth of how my body had stored that moment.

Gabor Maté’s third commonality among those who became sick before they died was that they repressed healthy anger (in case you missed them here are the first and second commonalities).

On (or before) that day, if someone had helped me process my anger—if they had said, Dina, it’s okay to feel angry. You have every right to feel this way. And it’s not okay to lash out in anger at someone, and then they had hugged me, stayed connected with me in some way—perhaps my belief about my voice and my ability to share my passion would have taken a very different path.

Instead, my body learned that expressing my anger meant exile. And so I buried it.

For decades, I wouldn’t speak up. I wouldn’t call anyone out on their bad behaviour. I would only say nice things that would please others—ignoring, invalidating, and suppressing my own anger.

But anger is a healthy emotion. It’s how passion is expressed. It’s what fuels action, advocacy, and deep connection with our values.

The problem isn’t anger, {first_name}. it’s how we express it.

And if we weren’t taught healthy ways to express anger, how can we teach our kids?

When I created my 30 Days to Less Toddler Tantrums Course and the Stressed to Best Parent Method, I realised how critical it is for children to learn how to process their emotions in a healthy way.

And how, as parents, the way we connect with them during and after a tantrum will determine how they process that emotion—and encode a belief into their body.

It’s safe for me to express my emotions. I can do that in a healthy way and still be loved.

When a child throws a tantrum, they aren’t being difficult. They’re overwhelmed. Their body is flooded with emotion, and they need us to guide them, not shut them down.

If a child is told to “stop being dramatic” or is punished for expressing their feelings, they learn to suppress them. And that suppression doesn’t just disappear—it lodges itself in their body, shaping the way they move through life.

But if a child is held through their anger, if they are shown that their emotions are valid while also being taught how to express them safely, they learn something different:

My feelings matter. I am safe. I am loved, even when I feel big emotions.

Being able to sit with your child’s anger, help them process it, and guide them through to the other side—feeling empowered rather than ashamed—is a skill.

And a skill can be learned.