By Stewart Robertson

As you know, anger is one of the most debilitating emotions we can experience as human beings.  It drains us of our energy, emotional freedom, and personal power.  Releasing angry, frustrated, or resentful feelings can be the biggest favour we do for ourselves and those around us, and should ensure we pay fewer visits to the doctor.

Here are four specific ideas you can “tap in” with your clients, to let go of those hurts, and help them reclaim the emotional and physical wellbeing we all deserve.  I often have people simply tap the Karate Chop point continuously as we exchange views on these items.  It seems to help them land successfully.  With a little flexibility in the language, they will provide relief and be relevant for most scenarios.

1) Your anger only hurts one person.

Of all emotions, anger is unique.  The other person doesn’t feel a thing.  They are getting on with life, whilst you are holding on to the past.  And as long as you are holding on to the anger, you are the target AND the recipient of your own anger.  Your insistence on being right rather than happy is costly – your anger only hurts one person – and that would be you.

2) They were doing the best they could, given their limitations.

As you think about the situation that bothers you, was the perpetrator really intending harm?  Does it seem realistic that they had the internal choice, the capacity, the extra mental resources, to NOT do what they did, and yet they still chose to go ahead and do it anyway?  Probably not.  Regardless of how it seemed, this person has learned, through the experiences of their life (which they did not ask for), that this behaviour is what they needed to do in this situation, for reasons known only to their unconscious mind.  They don’t intend harm.

3) They are not their behaviour.

Just as your less-than-useful behaviour in certain situations in life doesn’t represent all of you, all of your skills and abilities, capabilities, resources, and sparkling attributes; neither does theirs.  Their choices and behaviour in this situation may well have been appalling, and the consequences shocking, but that does not mean they are appalling, as a person.  Forgiveness and freedom are found outside of the moment of trauma captured in our mind – what might be the situations and learnings that led the person to behave like this at all?  Might they have been operating out of their own pain, on some level?

4) Anger is costly…

There is an old Chinese proverb, that if you hold on to thoughts of anger and revenge, you might just have to dig two graves, because your insistence on pursuing revenge will ultimately cost you, as much as them.

With love from beautiful Scotland,

Stewart