Anger, not expressed, can have potentially devastating effects, especially when you suppress it and turn it inward on yourself. Harboring feelings of anger often leads to emotional or physical consequences. We see this every few months in the news about an incident in which a person shoots several strangers. The latest event of this kind that occurred early in 2007 took place in Utah.
On a more mundane level, people who leave work with pent up anger take their feelings out on those who have a harder time fighting back such as spouses, children and waitresses. Suppressed anger can eat away at the body producing headaches, eating disorders, intestinal disturbances, and other more serious illnesses. It can also diminish your self-esteem, undermine your self-confidence, and reduce your feelings of self-worth.
If you’ve been struggling from such aftereffects of anger, would you like to achieve a healing from them? A few years ago, I discovered a powerful method that could enable you to heal from the debilitating effects of anger held in. I call my approach the Anger Technique.
I must caution you though, it is not easy to use. Before you begin, you must make sure that it is safe for you to do a significant amount of physical exercise. In addition, you must be certain it is okay for you to get in touch with angry feelings that you hold. Furthermore, it requires significant emotional work for up to twenty-five minutes per day for a week or two.
Is my approach worth the effort? You bet. If you are able to use it successfully, the healings you obtain are truly life changing. As I implied the results come unusually quickly. Furthermore, the healings appear to be both complete and permanent.
Description of the Anger Technique Is there a person toward whom you have harbored strong angry feelings? Imagine you are confronting this person. In a standing position, visualize yourself screaming at the person phrases like “you son of a gun.” Obviously, you would want to use much stronger language. You need not do this out loud.
As you express these feelings, it is essential to involve your body physically. One way to do this would be to move your arms like a boxer punching a heavy bag. With another way, you could place a pillow at the edge of your bed, kneel down on the floor, and pound on the pillow. Use whatever variation would work best for you.
You will make the best progress if you put all your strength into the physical effort. To avoid exhaustion, do this for about five seconds at a time and then relax for a few minutes until your body has calmed down. Repeat this a number of times in a twenty- to twenty-five minute session. After several of these sessions (typically between three and eight) you should go through what I call a healing transformation (HT). The HT might last anywhere from a split second to several seconds. It is likely to occur as you are “screaming” and “punching,” and when it begins, you should continue what you are doing.
When the HT happens, you might experience sensations that are not easy to characterize. The most salient feeling is a tingling in the upper part of your body. It is similar to what you experience when your foot has been asleep and is in the process of reawakening. Light headedness and deep breathing might accompany this tingling. After the HT, you are likely to experience a deep feeling of relaxation in the pit of your stomach that will last for a few days.
The results may be somewhat different if you acquired your angry feelings gradually, rather than through a traumatic incident. In such cases an HT might not occur. I am confident, though, that the approach will still be beneficial in terms of reducing your angry feelings.
Another Benefit of the Technique I have also learned that if you use the technique on a situational basis, that is, whenever you feel very angry or frustrated because of an upsetting experience, the technique will dissolve the angry feelings or frustration and allow you to maintain a healthy emotional state. There is nothing wrong with feeling appropriately angry when you feel mistreated. It isn’t the anger that is destructive; it is the harboring of it that creates problems. On such occasions, when I use the technique for just a few minutes, it helps me release most of my anger. I can then view the person with whom I am angry from a more peaceful or neutral perspective. If the situation is such that I need to communicate further with the individual, the procedure allows me to later relate my concerns in a calmer and more effective manner. Here are two examples. One day, on my way home, I had an unpleasant encounter with an extremely nasty bus driver. Although my behavior during the interaction was quite reasonable, later on I wanted to express some of the anger and frustration I was still feeling toward the man. Using the Anger Technique in the comfort of my home for just a few minutes helped me become much more at peace.
On another occasion, I felt rejected by a woman to whom I was very attracted. For a long time, this was a mutual attraction. When she abruptly changed her mind, I felt frustrated. Using the technique for several minutes helped me express and eliminate my emotions. I was then able to think about her from a completely neutral point of view. If you use the Anger Technique, I am interested in knowing your results. Please contact me to let me know. You can reach me at P.O. Box 173, Newton, MA 02456.
Fred Craver, Ph.D., is a partially sighted person who is now developing his fourth career, as a professional speaker and author. He discovered his approach for dispelling anger in the mid-nineteen nineties out of his desperation to rid himself from long held angry feelings. The inner peace that soon resulted was most gratifying.
Fred began his professional life as a college teacher of physics at St. John Fisher College, near Rochester, New York, where he taught courses at all levels. When his declining vision made teaching difficult, he became a human services director and social worker. He ran a summer vacation program for blind adults sponsored by the Massachusetts Association for the Blind. When developing technologies made it possible for partially sighted people to work with computers, he became a programmer at the Army Research Laboratory in Watertown. Fred received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Cornell University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in the same subject from the University of Rochester.
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