Do This To Reduce Your Rage
Study reveals a simple, effective strategy to help eliminate feelings of anger
Hello! Two things you may be interested in before we start…
In June I’m launching a new, monthly workshop series called Motivation Mondays in collaboration with Mortimer House – the first one is June 3rd 9-10am and Beauty Pie are sponsoring which means a FREE membership and some excellent goodies. If you liked my thoughts on The Myth Of Balance or generally feel as if your life is completely out of whack… this workshop is for you. Book a ticket here, would love to see you.
I have an amazing wellness giveaway running on Instagram this week with fantastic brands. Prize includes a 90 min coaching session with me as well as a yoga retreat, luxury candle, 3 amazing books and more. Enter here, good luck!
The things that make me feel angry roughly fall into two categories: objectively justifiable (closure of local youth clubs) and subjectively justifiable (my kids refusing to do as I say). It’s the subjectively justifiable category we’ll focus on today, because I think an angry response here, while sometimes understandable, is also useless.
Most of the time, because of the work I do and the amount of time I’ve been doing it, when my kids are ignoring me and doing all sorts of stupid sh*t, I stay within an annoyed-frustrated continuum in which I find it fairly accessible to choose how to respond and manage to do so with compassion and understanding et al.
Now and again though, I do get angry. It probably depends on other contributing factors and is maybe even a fair response, but ultimately, even if the reasons are justified, as above – I don’t particularly want to feel angry. Or perhaps more aptly, I don’t want to stay feeling angry.
Anger is a completely normal, healthy, human emotion. An adaptive response to any perceived threat; it creates powerful, instinctively aggressive feelings and behaviours that allow us to fight and/or defend ourselves when under attack. In essence, anger is necessary to our survival. But, as with so many of our emotions that developed in more ancient times, anger in the modern world doesn’t always support the survival of our mental - or physical - health.
We can’t and shouldn’t lash out at every person or object that irritates or annoys us, so what we all need to have and have all (hopefully!) developed to some degree is a variety of both conscious and unconscious processes to deal with angry feelings.
Calming activities that decrease physiological arousal have seemingly been proven to reduce anger with more effectiveness than, for example, punching a pillow.
So yes (as we hear repeatedly) meditation and deep breathing can help – it puts things into perspective and creates more awareness which in time leads to you being able to identify the early signs of anger and nip them in the bud.
Movement, also good – powerful outlet for pent-up emotions, allows you to release tension and stress in a healthy and constructive manner.
Journaling too, has always been touted as a tool to help with anger management. To write down and gain perspective on a situation can be profoundly cathartic, allowing you to process emotions and gain insight into their underlying cause.
But, researchers in Japan have now found that there’s an extra step after writing down your reaction to a negative incident on a piece of paper which apparently reduces rage in an instant: shredding or throwing it away.
“We expected that our method would suppress anger to some extent,” said Nobuyuki Kawai, lead researcher of the study at Nagoya University. “However, we were amazed that anger was eliminated almost entirely.”
The results of this study, published in Scientific Reports, are the culmination of years of previous research on the association between the written word and anger reduction. It builds on work showing how interactions with physical objects can control a person's mood – things like voodoo dolls, I suppose.
In the study, participants (doctorate students) were deliberately angered by researchers criticising and insulting their work with comments such as “I cannot believe an educated person would think like this. I hope this person learns something while at the university”. Burn.
Participants were then asked to write down thoughts on the feedback, focusing on how they felt. One group were told to throw the paper away or shred it, the other were told to keep it. The ones who disposed of the paper apparently “eliminated their anger”.
It’s a small study and I’d definitely question it’s effectiveness on more objectively justifiable anger-inducing stuff (the economics in this country for example), but given that anger does increase the risk of heart disease and stroke (as well as the risk of loved ones not wanting to be around you!) I think any technique that offers support is worth a try. I also like that it doesn’t ask anyone to minimise (or justify) their feelings about a situation – this is about acknowledging your anger and then letting it go.
So, next time I find myself angry, I’m going to write down my feelings on a piece of paper, scrunch it up and throw it away.
Will report back on effectiveness… In the meantime would love to hear if a) you’ve tried this or b) you have another technique you find brilliant for reducing rage.
L. x
p.s. Can’t mention journalling without mentioning my JOURNAL. That is all.