Research shows pushing down difficult emotions, especially about early-life experiences, and “numbing out” excessively, brings on symptoms and mental disorders, including depression, anxiety, trauma, OCD, eating issues and many others. Suppressing deep emotions can also show up as irritability or rage.

Tholáge™ helps people access and experience (tolerate) those difficult emotions in a therapeutic setting. Over time, this creates new neural pathways, so you can start experiencing and regulating your emotions on your own.

How does Tholáge™ access emotions?

Research shows that holding a certain eye position activates the locus coeruleus, which accesses a chemical called norepinephrine, or NE. NE is the brain’s version of adrenaline. The NE activates a part of the brain called the amygdala, which taps into our “emotional-memory center,” letting you feel emotions you suppressed (for good reason) in the past. Tholáge™ also gives you techniques to increase chemicals in your brain and body that make you feel safe, to help you do this difficult work with confidence and strength, even joy.

What difficult emotions are we talking about?

In Tholáge™, we focus on anger, but we differentiate between anger and rage. Anger is a normal, healthy emotion, and it is important to be able to experience it without going up into fight-or-flight rage. Similarly, we differentiate anger from irritability, frustration, and aggravation. In fact, those things are signs of emotion suppression–they are not true anger. And sometimes, they are coming out at other people, perhaps those you are not truly angry at or deeply connected to.

Will I have to talk to my caregiver from childhood about my anger?

Generally, no, we do not recommend that. You can’t change them. However, there are exceptions.