Japanese anger note: This is the simple technique for relaxation

Japanese rage note
What balanced people do differently

Anger is a strong emotion that can have a variety of causes. For example, if you feel that you have been treated unfairly, you are usually angry at other people. But you can also feel anger towards yourself if, for example, you didn’t stick to a deadline you set yourself and now stress breaks out.

If we just bottle up the frustration in moments like this, we usually don’t process what happened properly and so little will change in the future. If we allow our anger, we can free ourselves from the emotion so that we can then move on calmly and with new energy. Of course, we should never overdo it – aggression towards ourselves or others is of little use, but constructive acceptance of anger is. But how does that work?

Japanese anger note: The trick of relaxed people

A helpful method that many balanced people use is to write down their worries, thoughts and feelings in order to clear their minds of them. Japanese researchers have now taken this approach further – and have come up with an even more effective variant.

In one In the experiment, subjects were asked to write down their views on socially relevant, critical topics. While the participants thought that their writing would be evaluated by a doctoral student from the university, the researchers themselves left comments – very bad ones, regardless of the content. They even added insulting comments: “I can’t believe an educated person thinks like that. I hope this person learns something while at university.”

The test subjects should now put their anger after this nasty evaluation back on paper. These angry notes were then dealt with in different ways: one group pushed them to the edge of their table, another threw them away or even shredded them. And here the researchers came to their exciting conclusion: those who threw away or destroyed their anger notes felt less frustration afterwards than those who just put the note aside. This resulted in questionnaires that the participants were supposed to fill out.

Rage note: Always useful?

Anger notes that are destroyed therefore seem to be a simple but effective way to relax and move forward when angry. And the best thing: you can use it in all situations – in your professional life, in a relationship, in relationships with friends or even family members, whenever you feel like it.

However, if you feel anger very frequently and very strongly, small pieces of paper will of course not work wonders. In this case, it is appropriate to get to the bottom of the underlying cause of the emotion together with another person – a trusted person or even with professional support – and work on it.

sas
Bridget