Release Anger
A Few Tips on How to Release Anger
Learning how to release anger in a healthy way is something that seems to be harder and harder to do in today’s society. Anger is a normal part of everyone’s life but like many other things, it can be positive or negative depending on how we deal with it. Learning to release anger in a healthy way can turn it into a positive emotion. Dealing with anger by expressing it in violent outbursts is going to make it a negative emotion, as is repressing anger rather than releasing it.
The way we handle anger has a lot to do with the way were taught growing up. But what we have learned doesn’t need to be set in stone. We are capable of making changes in the way we deal with every emotion and every life circumstance. One of the first steps needed to release anger is to take responsibility for your anger and to allow yourself to feel it.
Here are some more tips on how to release anger:
Start keeping an anger journal. Whenever you get angry, write down all of your feelings. No one ever has to see it so you can be totally honest about being angry and why you are angry. Write down everything that is going through your head at the moment. Do it for at least twenty to thirty minutes. The more you do it, the easier it will become.
Once you have identified where your anger is coming from, learn to let go of it. For some people this might involve going down to the basement alone and screaming as loud as you can scream. It could mean taking a glass jar out of the recycling box and throwing it hard against the wall and breaking it. If this is one that works for you, make sure no one is around to get in the way and pick up the broken glass.
Go to a local self-help group where people share their anger with one another. You would be surprised to discover how small a large burden might become when you share it with other people. There is not another person in the entire world who doesn’t get angry, so talk about it with others. If a group is too scary, go to a therapist so that you can talk about your anger one-on-one.
Turn your anger into a healthy habit like running or bicycling or lifting weights. Physical activities are one of the best ways to release anger. Plus, you do release endorphins which can help you feel better about yourself and the situation at hand. Many times anger blows things so out of proportion that small things that should be insignificant become larger than life.
Some people are thinkers and thinking about why they are angry and what to do about it is one of the first steps in beginning to release anger. In fact, anger is usually not logical. We are not talking here about justifiable anger which may be perfectly logical, but about anger that just causes us to blow up for no good reason at all. Maybe we will discover that we have simply blown something completely out of proportion.
Many people release anger by getting outside and doing something in nature. It could be gardening or a walk in the woods. It could be watching a stream run until we feel peaceful inside, or it may mean venting some anger by climbing to a mountaintop and then back down again.