Writing Down and Throwing Away Your Anger May Help Reduce It, According to New Study
Writing Down and Throwing Away Your Anger May Help Reduce It, According to New Study
Science has found that writing down your feelings and performatively disposing of them can make you less angry.
Summary
A new study suggests that writing down your anger and then throwing the paper away can significantly reduce anger levels. Researchers believe the act of throwing away the paper with your written anger on it symbolically throws away the anger itself.
The study involved participants writing about a social problem and then receiving negative feedback designed to make them angry. They were then asked to write about their anger and either throw the paper away, shred it, or put it in a folder. Throwing the paper away and shredding it resulted in a significant reduction in anger compared to putting the paper in a folder.
The researchers believe this technique may work because we associate objects with our feelings and destroying the object feels like destroying the feeling itself. They acknowledge that this technique may not work for very serious anger issues.
Link to the study
This absolutely works! I find it's helpful for just about any negative feelings, not just anger.
According to the doctor I got the technique from (Dr. David Hanscom), handwriting is more effective than other ways of writing out your thoughts and feelings. I however still had plenty of success typing things out and deleting that. I hate wasting paper.
Try this for yourself. You'll be shocked at how well this works!
Especially if you're mad about stupid paper. Fuckin bull shit sonofa mother paper. Gah! I'm so angry! I wish I had some paper to write about it and throw it away, but I already threw it away.