This section addresses the following questions:

• The phrase ‘completing the stress response’ is really interesting to me in the context of modern life, since logistically we can’t really sprint away from, let alone murder, our abusers/people who trigger us. Is twisting a towel an attempt at completing the stress response, or is it just a way of getting us through activation in the short-term, so we can get to a point where our body moves that response through organically? What does organically completing the fight stress response look like (both within an SE session and without)?
• Do I just keep repeating these processes over and over? Will this help me deal with anger?
• Nothing seems to happen. I have a lot of stored up aggression. It’s just not ready to come out yet. Should I still keep doing these suggested exercises? (Ringing out towel. Annihilation article.)

The Healthy Aggression exercises, like twisting the towel, serve a couple of purposes.

One is to allow us to find a way to let sympathetic (fight/flight) activation move through us in a healthy way. It engages the muscles of self-protection (the arms and hands), and if we can allow our face to express as well, and maybe let some sound emerge, it can engage the affect, or emotions, associated with self protection. So this can be a way to address activation in the short term, while building our comfort with this kind of work.

Two, through that practice we open the door to allowing old, thwarted, self-protective responses to complete. By becoming familiar and comfortable with letting the energy out in this way, we can organically start to move into completing these old responses when they arise, which will often happen from a present-moment trigger. Usually, these old responses will have something specific they want to DO, and that may be wringing someone’s neck, so the towel thing will work well, or it may mean pushing away, or hitting, kicking, biting, or all of the above.

We can’t know ahead of time exactly how it will look, but by practicing the principles and above all staying connected to the energy, and how it wants to move through the system, we can discover what our body wants to do.

Whatever that looks like, the key is to stay connected to our body and the energy and to not be explosive in our actions, but rather to slow them down, and really feel the effort involved.

For example, if the urge that organically arises is to punch someone, to take that motion and reaaaalllly slow it down, like a punch in slow motion, to feel your effort and energy, and to allow yourself to see, in your imagination, the completion of that (the impact on the person’s face, their response, how you feel being victorious, etc.) is the goal here.

If you are just going through the motions with these but don’t actually feel anything happening, then this means your system is probably not feeling safe enough yet to let that energy out. You can keep practicing and slow it down, and hold the intention of really inviting that energy into the world, or it may be that you would benefit from the added safety and containment of exploring this work with a good Somatic Experiencing practitioner.