Anger

Anger and frustration is completely normal and usually a healthy human emotion. It is a natural response to a situation where we feel injured, attacked or violated. Only when it regularly gets out of control does it lead to problems regarding health, personal relationships, work and social situations and to our general enjoyment of life.

Anger can be helpful as it helps us survive giving us the required strength to fight back or run away when attacked or faced with injustice.

However angry feelings can lead to destructive and violent behaviour, and so we tend to be frightened of it. The way we are brought up and our cultural background, can influence how we feel about expressing anger.

Anger

When you were young, you may have been punished for showing anger, (‘Good girls/boys don’t get angry’) or you may have watched your parents’ or other adults’ anger when it was out of control, destructive and scary. Or you may have been alarmed by the strength of your own bad temper. All of these things encourages you to suppress your anger.

When something makes you angry, you feel a heightening of emotions and sensations. Your body is pumped full of adrenalin, preparing for fight or flight. You are full of energy, alert, ready for action. Tension build up is released when you express your anger. The release is good for you, helping to to keep your body and mind in balance.

As long as the build-up of tension is released in a safe way through action or words, you should be able to cope with feeling frustrated every now and again. But generally if you have to bottle up your feelings, the energy has to go somewhere. It may turn inwards and cause you all sorts of problems. Suppressed anger can have very negative effects, physically and mentally.

Physical effects of anger

Anger might affect your:

– Digestion (contributing to the development of Heartburn, Ulcers, Colitis, Gastritis or Irritable Bowel Syndrome(IBS))
– Heart and Circulatory system (leading to blocked arteries)
– Blood Pressure (making it too high)
Joints and muscles (resulting in inflammations)
– Immune system (making you more likely to catch the cold and flu and other bugs, and less able to recover from operations, accidents or major illnesses)
– Pain threshold (making you more sensitive to pain).

Emotional effects of anger

These might include:

– Depression (when the anger is turned inwards)
– Addictions (to alcohol, tobacco, or drugs)
– Excessive behaviour (eating disorders, such as over-dieting or binge-eating, overworking, unnecessary cleaning and any other behaviour that is out of control)
– Bullying behaviour (trying to make someone else feel bad, because you think it will make you feel better)

All of these will damage relationships with other people, and this is likely to lower your self-esteem further, and make you feel depressed.

How can Hypnotherapy help?

Examine your behaviour patterns
As part of a therapy session, you can get to know your own pattern of behaviour and history around anger. What was your family like when you were growing up? Who got angry, and what happened when they did? If nobody was openly angry, what happened to resentments and differences of opinion or of needs?

What unspoken messages did you receive about anger in your family when you were growing up and how have they affected your life? How do you feel about that now?

Do you tend to bottle things up and get depressed, or do you tend to explode and be aggressive?

Sometimes you just need some help to acknowledge that your current beliefs and behaviours are no longer helpful to you, no longer in your best interests or the best interests of those around you. I can help you develop some techniques to enable you to handle certain situations better than you do now.

Acknowledge past hurts
It’s important to acknowledge angry feelings left over from the past, especially your childhood. Nothing can change what happened to you, but your attitude to it can change. Past losses and injustices, big or small, can rankle for years. Painful experiences may include being neglected by your parents, rivalry with a brother or sister, the death of someone close, or growing up away from family.

You may think you have forgotten about them, but those memories are still stored away. And you may think that the ‘past is the past’ and that there is no point in thinking about it now. But, if something suddenly happens to you in the present, and your response to it is excessive, it may be that these feelings are not dead after all. While you remain unaware of them, they can cause unnecessary problems. But, if you can get to know them, you will have a chance of dealing more constructively with present situations.

Sometimes it is useful to acknowledge these past hurts and how they are affecting your current behaviours and using hypnotherapy we can do this in a safe environment.

Whilst anger cannot be completely eliminated, nor would you want it to be, hypnotherapy can help you to manage with assertiveness, not aggression, the triggers that cause your reactions of anger.

Here is a link to a useful article on the National Council for Hypnotherapy’s website.

Still have questions? Get in touch.

How can we help?

Hypnotherapy sessions can help you understand your behaviour patterns, recognise past hurts and help you find ways to understand and manage your anger. More than one session may be required.

Therapy

Find out more about what is involved for a Therapy session on the therapy page or get in touch if you have questions. If you want to go ahead, use the Buy Now button below.

1:1 Therapy session of approximately 60-90 mins