Are you an angry person?

Do you ever experience uncontrollable rage?

Maybe you have no idea where the anger comes from?

And yet, you dream of letting it go but think it’s just impossible?

People used to say to me all the time “you get angry over the silliest things.”

This was never the truth.

Have you seen the movie The Avengers? If so, do you remember the scene toward the end when all hell has broken loose, the city is being destroyed, the Avengers are huddled together and Tony Stark or Iron Man, is heading for them with the giant alien robot thing close on his tail. “I’m bringing the party to you” he cries. Then Bruce Banner turns up, after spending the entire movie, avoiding turning into the hulk. He heads toward the giant robot thing bearing down on them. Captain America says “Now might be a good time to get angry” Then Bruce turns to him “That’s my secret Captain… I’m ALWAYS angry!” He transforms into the Hulk and punches the giant robot, a thousand times his size, right in the face destroying it. The heroic music swells, he screams in rage and they go on to beat all the bad guys.

The scene hit very close home with me and brought tears to my eyes as I sat in the theatre. It was NEVER the silly little things that would make me angry, the fact was, like Bruce Banner, I was angry ALL the time. Only, it was NEVER heroic.

It was silly little things that would set me off for sure, but the anger was ALWAYS there. Bubbling away just beneath the surface, waiting for someone or something to tip me over the razor’s edge and set me on a rampage of rage.

The worst part was, when there was nothing to set me off, I’d imagine scenarios in my head and they could start me off too.

I guess a blessing and a curse for me was that I’d rarely take my anger out on other people. Even if they deserved it. Instead, I’d bottle it up inside and eventually take it out on myself in all manner of self-destructive ways. I even shattered teeth from clenching my jaw so tightly when I slept. And not just one either.

Anger was eating me alive and it only seemed to grow more intense with age.

The thing is, I had no real idea where it came from. Sure I could blame the idiot on the road who cut me off, or my boss for being an imbecile, and he was an imbecile. But in truth, these were just triggers for a deep rage that permanently lived in the pit of my stomach.

Even when I was supposedly happy, it was tainted with the expectation of something triggering my wrath.

As I’m sure you’re aware, anger like this is incredibly unhealthy. It kept me, and probably you if you suffer from anger too, in a permanent state of high stress. Stress releases hormones into our bodies that are designed for short bursts of fight or flight response to get us out of dangerous situations. But long term, these hormones are incredibly toxic to us and can create all manner of illness and disease. Including the big ones like cancer, heart disease and stroke. And this is just what it is doing to ourselves.

All of us handle our anger in different ways. For me it was self-harm, for some it may be bursts of violence toward others, smashing things, or yelling and screaming at the ones we love. Anger can tear our lives apart and the lives of those around us. And on the extreme end of the spectrum, it can kill!

And then one day, actually as a side effect to something else I was doing, my anger was gone.

Everything I’d known from the earliest of memories, was now different. The world seemed different. It even looked different. It was lighter, more colourful and honestly, a little bit scary because I just didn’t recognise it any more. My whole life, the world I lived in was viewed through the eyes of anger and now the glasses were removed. It actually took days to get used to this new, more beautiful world before me.

You see, I had just started studying life-coaching and hypnosis and one of the processes we were taught was specifically focused on letting go of anger. When I started the course, I didn’t realise that we would be practicing on each other. I didn’t have issues, right? I was there to learn how to help others. So anyway, we paired up and I never believed it would work on me but I sat there for my partner to gain his practice anyway. Twenty minutes later and my entire world was different. He even screwed the process up in the middle and had to get help from the teacher. It didn’t matter, the technique was astounding, completely unexpected and so quick and powerful.

I’m sure it helped that I was so ready to let this burden go even if I didn’t believe it’d work.

I couldn’t believe that something I had held on to my entire life as part of my core personality, I was able to let go of in less than half an hour.

It changed EVERYTHING for me.

Things that used to make me boil inside just washed off me. The triggers that would cause rage, they no longer bothered me.

The weird thing was, and I found this quite humorous, is that I still had forty years worth of programmed responses. Such as when someone would do something stupid in front of me on the road, I’d yell and scream and call them every name under the sun. I found myself still doing this but without the anger behind it. Have you ever heard someone yell an abusive rant but with no anger behind the words? It’s hysterical. And I found myself laughing all the time.

Now take a moment to imagine this. Close your eyes if you like.

You’re doing something you do all the time and minding your own business. You know how to do what you’re doing because you’ve done it so many times before. Then somebody comes along and gets in your way and does something that totally triggers your anger. You can feel it rising, boiling away inside you. A flash of heat. A spark. They say something and the full uncontrollable fury is unleashed.

But stop, go back a moment just before the trigger. This time, imagine they do the same thing, only YOU are different. The anger inside you is gone. That thing you felt for as long as you can remember is just not there. This other person does what they do but it has no effect on you. It may annoy you in the moment but that’s all it is, a momentary annoyance and not an annoyance with a lifetime of rage powering it. The person goes and you go about your day without any more thought to the situation.

Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?

It certainly did to me when I was first told about it.

But it worked for me and it can work for you too.

It’s a simple process, almost like an interactive guided meditation and since learning it, I’ve helped many people overcome their anger issues in the same way that I did. And when combined with a number of strategies for handling future events, the anger can be gone for good.