6 Proven Ways to Release Anger & Move into Peace
1. Feel the Emotion
First thing you need to do is to honor that feeling. Don’t react or judge yourself. Just pay attention to what the emotion feels like in your body.
2. Take Responsiblity
Define your emotion without blaming someone else. Own that emotion: anger, resentment… It’s ALL yours, no matter who did what you always have a choice to step into anger or choose peace.
3. Express the Emotion
In different perspectives:
- from yourself
- from the other person’s point of view
- from an outside bystander
Looking at the emotion from many different perspectives loses it’s emotional charge.
4. Share
You get to tell your story ONE time and one time only. Process what happened with another person and reflect on what you could have done differently.
A word of caution: stick to the 1 time only rule – because each time you repeat the story it regenerates and refuels the negative energy. It’s therapeutic to review and reflect ONCE but after that it does more damage than good.
Same with repeating thoughts in your mind – once you’ve reflected if the story comes up again in your mind say to yourself: “That’s over now …NEXT!”
5. Release through a Ritual
- Count to 10, take a deep breath & say: “With this breath I release this emotion.”
- Use The Healing Code technique
- Do Terra Essential Oils, Sage, Music, Exercise, etc…
6. Celebrate
Feel the joy in being able to take back your power and choose peace. Feel power in not allowing your emotions to control you sending you on a roller coaster ride that leaves you feeling guilty and remorseful afterward.
Even if you did lose your temper – you don’t have to spend hours or even days mad and upset or guilty. Celebrate being able to pop out of that mood quicker and choose peace resolving to manage those feelings with these new techniques next time.
Practice makes perfect. The more you employ these techniques when strong emotions arise the better you’ll get at managing and moving through them with grace and ease.
Remember peace is only a breath away.
This is so true… usually when I am not able to share an emotion honestly, it comes out via another avenue and less healthily too. My preschooler has taught me this one!
I, too, LOVE this! And I’m looking around for the camera that must have caught me whining and whining about the same thing/person recently 😉 I think I actually blushed when I read the reminder to vent only once! This has been especially helpful!
Julie, I very much enjoyed reading your post and all the great strategies and reminders that can be used to deal with the emotional part of ourselves. Prayer is a great one for me to get me back on track and help me release what it is that I am holding on to.
Awesome! One of my fave subjects. Yes, we have the right to be angry and you have great tips here to do that in a healthy way. I particularly enjoy your one vent rule. Thank you.
What a great list of tools! There are people I wish would use the “one story” approach. I find that people who lean toward anger repeat their stories over and over, giving their gripes more energy. I love 5 and 6—release and celebrate!
I love your process! Allowing yourself to feel the anger is the big one for me and then taking responsibility for it … it’s so easy to make it about someone else.
I also feel your suggestion to share it only once is very valuable. No need to beat the drum by retelling you story over and over again. Feel it, acknowledge it and let it go.
thanks for your post, Julie. I didn’t know about the rule to share only once, good to know. It takes a lot for me to lose temper that’s why sometimes it feels very refreshing, usually it’s a sign for me that I was suppressing something over the period of time and the event or person that triggered my anger might not be a real cause, it’s always a chance to revisit what I’ve been overlooking.
I love the easy-to-read-and-implement format of this post, Julie! And I’m all about practical tips for making life better, so this one really spoke to me. Practice, practice, practice — that’s the name of the anger game. I appreciate your tips and will use them often!
I so appreciate these reminders. Thank you! You’ve got great tips here.
I love this post! Some really useful tools. It took me years to allow myself to feel and then acknowledge anger, I was scared of it. I love the one rule and will definitely be putting it into practise!
I LOVE the 1 time only rule! Sharing the event more than that definitely rekindles the fire of negativity, that’s for sure! I recently learned about actually acknowledging the emotion and letting it exist, and it has made a huge difference. Something that I do to help me through anger is remembering not to take anything personally…that the event/person/thing that made me unhappy or mad actually has nothing to do with me, and that is liberating!!!!!!! Thank you for this amazing reminder!
This came at the perfect time Julie, just had a bit of anger flair up. I was resisting so hard feeling angry because I didn’t feel like I should be angry! Looking at it through all those different lens certainly helps. Time to release it and celebrate.
With the stressful and fast-paced life we have these days, these strategies to release anger would be very helpful to avoid any chaos or misunderstanding with one another.
Great tips! I love your reminder to only tell the story once – the things we give our energy to grow, so be careful not to give that anger more fuel!
Hugs and butterflies,
~Teresa~
Oh my goodness – yes anger plagues us all at times no matter how “spiritual” we think we are LOL! What a great technique. It’s definitely one we all need to learn to manage so it doesn’t take control and get the better of us.
Allowing ourselves to feel it fully & name it is always the first step, and one that many of our spiritual colleagues don’t realise and they end up repressing it instead – not good.
Excellent article – thank you Julie 🙂