Research shows pushing down difficult emotions, especially about early-life experiences, brings on symptoms and mental disorders, including depression, anxiety, trauma, OCD, eating issues and many others. Suppressing deep emotions, such as healthy regulated anger toward a caregiver or other important person from early life, can also show up as irritability or rage or numerous other symptoms.

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. Tholáge® also uses deeply parasympathetic, relaxation states shown to create feelings of safety, social connection, well-being, and even joy.

Tholáge® techniques are non-invasive and somatic, putting the power in your hands. Tholáge® uses these techniques both to destabilize traumatic memories and then to reconsolidate them with these new associations, changing the way your body responds to traumas–and the disorders that result from trauma and emotion suppression.

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 basolateral amygdala, our “emotional-memory center,” letting you feel emotions you suppressed (for good reason) in the past, while feeling empowered. 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.

What difficult emotions are we talking about?

In Tholáge®, we focus on accessing suppressed healthy anger (and empowerment), 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.