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Last updated on October 30, 2023 by Randy Withers
Anger is a valid emotion that protects the raw feelings that lurk beneath the surface of frustrating situations or misunderstandings. Exploring it helps you better understand other people’s anger and can improve relationships with your children, friends, and partner. Keeping an anger journal allows you to express your anger in a judgment-free zone to help you release stress and validate your emotions so you can deal with them in a healthier way.
What is an anger journal?
An anger journal is a place where you can write down your thoughts and feelings when you feel angry. It helps you process feelings of anger and frustration without feeling like you have to repress them.
How does the Rage journal help with anger?
Someone may have told you that being angry or expressing your frustration is inappropriate or harmful, but anger is inevitable in any relationship. Parenting can be frustrating at times due to exhaustion, overstimulation, and dealing with daily demands while trying to balance your life. While you want to protect your children from harmful effects of parental angeryou still need an outlet to release your feelings.
Keeping an anger journal gives you the space to express yourself fully and unreservedly without fear of ruining relationships or affecting your children’s mental and emotional health. The practice of journaling too helps you maintain mental well-beingand develop self-compassion and self-awareness. As you journal, you’ll discover that anger is a secondary emotion that can help you understand what’s really affecting you.
Why should you keep an anger journal?
When you write about your anger in a safe place, you begin to understand the emotion and how you can use it to improve situations or relationships. Letting go of anger through an anger journal:
- Validate your emotions.
- Reduces stress and anxiety.
- Improves sleep. If you’ve ever stayed up all night trying to process your anger, you know how much the emotion can affect your ability to sleep peacefully.
- Maintains physical well-being. Studies show Anger is connected to physical ailments. such as IBS, back pain and stomach problems.
- Aid you work pleasing people and passive-aggressive behaviors.
- It gives you the opportunity to look at things from another perspective and choose different thoughts and reactions.
- Helps you protect your relationships and communicate more effectively with your children or couple.
How to start an anger journal
These steps will help you find a way to get angry on the page that suits you best.
- Decide on the medium
The intention of an anger journal is to release anger and frustration without fear of judgment. If you want to burn the pages or tear them out when you’re done, which can be cathartic, a spiral-bound notebook will work. You can also have a note locked on your smartphone with a password
- Write as you want
Your journal can be whatever you want and be as explicit as you want. You can write about your anger and its surroundings. How did a situation make you feel? Where in your body do you feel frustration or resentment?
A journal entry could be a brain dump listing what made you angry or you could draw an anger monster. Another journal entry could be a diagram that maps his anger and the feelings behind it, or a letter to someone who frustrated him.
- Be consistent
Consider keeping an anger journal as a first step in understanding anger. When you review your journal entries, you can see trends and discover triggers or areas that particularly hurt you. This helps you get to the root cause and understand how anger protects you from feelings such as fear, insecurity, guilt, anguish or shame.
Anger also inevitably involves other people or situations that demand a response. Once you’ve processed your feelings, you can use clarity to communicate how you feel to your child, friend, partner, or colleague. Anger can improve situations or relationships when you express it appropriately.
Rage Page Directions to Get Started
If you’re not sure where to start, here are some questions and prompts to help you write about your frustrations:
- If anger were a person, what would it be saying right now? What would anger say about you and your life?
- Make a list of everything that frustrated you today.
- Rate your anger. On a scale of 1 to 10, how angry do you feel? Why are you angry? What happened and how did it affect you?
- Is your anger trying to protect you from another difficult emotion? What other feelings can you associate with this situation?
- Try anger word association. Write the word “anger” in a bubble in the middle of the page. Write down some other emotions that come to mind related to the situation.
- How does this situation make you feel? What sensations are going through your body?
What comes after anger?
Once you’ve written about your feelings, take a few minutes to reflect. It’s helpful to ask yourself what you can do next. What are some trends and patterns you notice? Do you need to have a conversation with your partner or friend? Is there anything you want to work on so you can react differently when you feel frustrated next time?
Final thoughts
Keeping an anger journal is a cathartic experience that allows you to freely express and explore so you can deal with frustrating situations in a healthy way. It will also help you overcome emotions that affect your relationships with your loved ones. As you release your anger, you release stress and tension from your body and find better ways to cope.
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