How to Get Your Anger Out

Do you blow up at others easily? Do you scream at other drivers? Does your family walk on egg shells around you? Do you find that any little thing will set you off? Have you been told, “you have an anger problem?” Do you harbor resentment and ill will towards others you believe have hurt or offended you in the past? Are you looking for revenge against people you feel have been unfair to you? Do people say you're hostile, cynical, or sarcastic? Do you harbor hatred which impacts how you deal with other people? If you say yes to any or all of these questions then you probably need to follow the next few steps to get the anger out of your system.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Identify the causes of your anger: It's important to recognize what makes you angry. You might say: “Who, me angry? What have I got to be angry about?” Well the truth is there are lots of things in your life you might be angry about.
2. Identify what makes you angry: Make a heartfelt, soul searching inventory of what in your life is causeing you to harbor anger, resentment, and frustration. Identify the people, situations, or conditions in your life that have sparked anger. Identify if this anger has ever really been extinguished or, if it is still brewing inside you.
3. Identify your triggers: Identify which current situations, circumstances, or people are “triggers” that rekindle the anger which is held deeply inside of you.
4. Identify your stuffed anger: Identify if deeply inside you have stuffed anger which could be causing you to feel blue or depressed.
5. Identify if you have huge road blocks to your anger: Identify if you have built walls between you and others because of your fear of losing your temper with them. Recgonizing that someday if these people provoke you badly enough those walls could come tumbling down in a violent anger outburst.
6. Record everything which you have identified about your anger: Whatever it is that angers you, identify it and get it down on paper. This way you can begin to work on getting all of your anger out of your system by using these next steps of WRITE, READ, and BURN.
7. Set aside a time to do WRITE READ AND BURN: To do this you need to set aside a period of time in each day to do an anger workout. The ideal is to set aside one (1) hour a day. If you can't afford an hour, you should spend the same amount each day, be it 15, 20, 30 or 45 minutes.
8. WRITE it! For the amount of time you've decided to commit to write about an issue, topic, trigger, memory, person, place, or situation, which makes you angry. See TIPS below on how to do the WRITE it.
9. READ it! The following day you READ what you wrote for one hour or the same amount of time as the day before. See TIPS below for how to handle the READ it.
10. BURN it! At the end of the hour, you are to BURN (or shred, or tear into tiny pieces) the paper on which you wrote and read your anger statement. This releases the vileness, hostility and rage.
11. Return to WRITE, READ, and BURN until you extinguish the anger on that topic if after the burning you find that you still harbor anger about the issue you've just tackled, then return to it the following day and repeat the process. Write for a specific length of time one day, read what you wrote the next and at the end of the session burn the paper. Do this again and again until you exhaust your anger about this topic.
12. Use the WRITE, READ, and BURN method to extinguish anger on all the issues you surface as ones that underpin your anger. Once you complete one topic, proceed the next day to another topic. Continue this process to free yourself of the anger which most likely is keeping you from feeling relaxed, serene, at peace, and happy with your life.

Tips & Warnings

• WRITE, READ and BURN Tips This is two day process. It is ideal to set aside one (1) hour for each of these two days. If you can't afford an hour, you should spend the same amount each day, be it 15, 20, 30 or 45 minutes. Remember you will be doing this every day for a period of time until you can get the anger that burns inside of you out of your system!
• WRITE it Tips On the first of the two day process, WRITE for the one hour (or the amount of time you've decided to commit to) about an issue, topic, trigger, memory, person, place, or situation, which makes you angry. You need to spend the entire time writing on this topic. Use loose leaf paper and write as much as you can. Use language that gets the anger out. Use foul, gross, disgusting language. Be vile, hateful, putrid, ugly and demeaning in your descriptions and statement. Don't hold back. Let it all hang out. Write stuff you have never said before in your life. Vent, vent and vent some more. If you run out of things to say then use one or all of the following sentence stems to open you up more: I hate it when ... I despise ... I loathe people who ... I wish that ... I get so angry when ... I hate ... I will never again allow... I regret that I opened myself up for ... I don't like it when ... I hope that the following will happen to ... for doing ... The beauty of writing down your most vile angry thoughts is that no one except you will ever read what you write. So don't feel guilty about what you are thinking since no one will be hurt by what you write.
• READ it! Tips When you do READ it, it is best if you do this in a private place where you can read out loud with great expressiveness and passion. Yell it out. Scream it out. Whisper it out. But use your verbal skills to be complete in your interpretation of what you wrote. It will take about 7 to 10 minutes to completely read what you wrote in an hour. This means you are to re-read what you wrote over and over again from 6 to 12 times during the time you set aside on this day. The more you read what you wrote the more the intensity and power of your anger will decrease or dissipate.