How to Diffuse Anger & Let go of Anger - NLP Article
Anger management is practically a field by itself within psychology. And yet, sometimes, with the right anger release techniques, you can let go of anger easily and naturally.
"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." -- Buddha
Some years ago I visited a coffee shop and met one of the employees who allowed me to unpack a certain amazing cognitive strategy she'd developed unconsciously, for releasing anger easily. She was a young lady somewhere between 17 & 21 (a guess). At first there didn't seem to be anything phenomenally unique or terribly fascinating about her; she seemed balanced and involved in her environment. As I chatted with her, I discovered she had (at least) one very interesting skill. She told me that when criticized, she never stayed angry for very long!
I thought, that seemed like a pretty neat skill. As I pressed further, I discovered she had set up an internal 'propulsion system' strategy which worked very well for her. So after eliciting this strategy, I trained it to many others, most of whom found it extraordinarily effective! So... here it is:
Jonathan Altfeld's NLP Technique for Releasing Anger
Here's an NLP Strategy or Technique to help us get past or get over angry feelings. Works great!
Whenever you find you're in an angry state induced by hearing someone else say something nasty:
- Hear someone saying something nasty
- Allow your head to begin fill with tension normally and let the normal response 'begin' (i.e., when you *could* act with an immediate response)
- Set up an "away-from" motivation:
- Picture a future-pace of angry responses to that person's comment delivered over
time, imagining carrying around that anger that you might have allowed to take over your near future
- Make the pictures bigger - Amplify the negatives
- Hear potential future conversations with all that anger releasing
- Turn up the volume - Amplify the negatives
- Picture a future-pace of angry responses to that person's comment delivered over
- Imagine a break-away from the away-from
- Dissociate from your present experience of allowing the anger to take over the present state. Dissociate also meant getting out of the presence of the antagonist (for her).
- Set up a "towards" motivation:
- Think of a positive thought. A time when everything was GREAT. (for her it was primarily Vc, associated). Amplify the pictures & the submods!
- Allow a good feeling to come into the body around the shoulder muscles leading into the neck (upper lats). Begin to relax there. Turn the feeling up, make it warm.
- Let the posture change. Get it looser. Allow the mind to clear.
- Hear self saying "What a completely different OUTLOOK"
You may need to practice this until you get good at doing this inside your head, thoroughly well. But it works like a charm for most people! Give this a try and hopefully preserve some of your troubled relationships!!!
- Jonathan Altfeld
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