Have you ever been lost in a pure, unadulterated rage? The feeling of power and strength as anger courses through your body is a high better than any drug. Do you allow it to release or shove it back down when anger flows through you? As a woman, I know I was taught it wasn’t ladylike to show anger, so I pushed it back inside where it would boil in me for days.

Anger is often frowned upon in society, yet it’s a healthy normal emotion. It can be taken to extremes, as can anything, but the root cause of anger is that our needs are not being met somehow. Or it could be that there is a big hurt in us that we turn to anger to feel some modicum of power and even safety. Anger begins as a protective tool that can get out of hand if the hurt and needs behind the anger are not met.

Backtracking a little to where anger and anxiety evolve from - As we grow, emotions develop in a specific way as means of protection. Hurt is the first emotion we create in response to our unmet needs, and if they continue not to be met, we experience pain, rejection, and sadness. We may also feel lonely or isolated. Hurt tells us we have some need that is not being met.

When you experience hurt the first question to ask yourself is, “what need do I have right now that is not being met?“

If the hurt keeps happening, then it evolves into fear. The expectancy of pain due to past needs going unmet. Fear is also protective by causing flight or avoidance to escape further anticipated pain. This is also where anxiety, terror, and panic show up. Have you ever had your thoughts go into a spiral of all the terrible things that might happen? Or been afraid to speak your needs because you assume they won’t get met? Do you have generalized anxiety?

When you experience fear or anxiety, the first thing to do is use a calming tool. If you’re stuck in fear, it’s hard to consider anything else until you feel safer. Learning self-hypnosis and meditation, along with tools from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), can be suitable.

Once you are in a place where you can use your higher thinking again, ask yourself, “what’s the pain that you are anticipating?”

Now we arrive at Anger. It starts with hurt at our needs not getting met, then evolves to fear if that hurt keeps happening. After fear, we move to anger. Anger’s primary goal is to protect you by scaring the perceived danger away or annihilating the perceived threat. As you age, anger morphs into a way to change your or another’s behavior.

When you experience anger, the best question to ask yourself is, “What do I want to change? What need is not being met right now? Or “What am I trying to push away?”

Are you saying to yourself, “you’ve lost me,” or “I kinda get it, but not sure what you’re really talking about” at this point? Let’s go through an example of how this evolves.

Baby is hungry, and no one automatically feeds them, so they start to cry because their stomach hurts from not eating. This is a level of hurt. They continue not to get fed for a while, and the damage continues. Finally, someone provides for them, and the pain ends; their need is met.

This scenario is repeated over and over where they are not getting fed close to when they are hungry, so fear of not getting fed develops. There is currently an expectancy of pain due to the memory of past pain.

This goes on as the baby develops, and they continue not to get their needs readily met, so anger develops. Maybe they begin to lash out at their caregiver, hoping they’ll get fed when they’re hungry. Or they could hurt a sibling and steal their food so they can eat more.

As this child ages, they have now developed a belief that their needs will not be met, so they live more in fear, expecting pain. And to protect themselves, they use anger more and more to scare away perceived danger or try to eradicate it. They may also become manipulative or controlling. In this case, an overeating disorder could easily develop because they may feel they have to eat all they can when they have a chance since who knows when the next meal will arrive. This programming is active in the subconscious even if they have plenty of money and can easily afford to eat whenever they want.

This is the basic cycle of how emotions evolve around specific topics and how they can impact us much later in life. Each of these emotions has a positive function of getting our needs met. Correcting an unhealthy anger or anxious response is finding healthy and positive ways of expressing the feeling and the demand behind it.

Emotions are just information traveling through our bodies; they have a message for us that needs to be received and heard. When we don’t deal with them, they get stuck. They will run our behavior without us noticing.

The first step to developing emotional intelligence is to dig into the needs behind our emotions. What need is not being met? And then find ways to communicate it better, so it can be completed. I highly recommend Marshall Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication to learn more about communicating in a way that meets your needs.

Reader, you may now be thinking - “Ok, thanks and all for that info, but how does hypnosis play into all of this?!?!? That’s what I’m here for.”

Hypnotherapy is highly effective for helping to collapse sensitizing events from childhood that are spurring on the anger and anxiety you feel today. After the negative emotional charge is removed from the event, you can start to reprogram your mind with beliefs that reverse the ones that developed.

Here is how you reverse each of the three emotions:

Hurt - you need to instill the idea of pleasure and comfort
Fear - through establishing security and safety
Anger - by instilling love after the hurt and fear are resolved.

I often recommend that a lot can be done on your own with self-hypnosis, which is why I provide many blogs full of affirmations. With this topic, deep-rooted childhood issues often need to be addressed to turn the corner with it, so outside assistance is recommended. A two-pronged approach of collapsing the past with some method such as Hypnotherapy or Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and then learning new ways to communicate your needs that are more productive than anger.

Get started with a few affirmations to get new ideas into your mind. The link for “how to do self-hypnosis” is in the resources section at the end of this blog.

Hurt:

More and more now I listen to my needs and find healthy ways to meet them

More and more now I feel pleasure and comfort in my life because I am meeting my needs
When I feel an emotion I pause, receive it’s message and clearly communicate what needs I have
Because I listen to my emotions and allow them to process I feel connected and at peace
More and more now I love and accept myself as I am

Fear:

Because my needs are being met I feel safe.
More and more now I feel safe and secure therefore I am calm.
Because I am in touch with my needs I am confident that my needs are being met.

Anger

More and more now, I feel calm and peaceful because my needs are being met
More and more now, I love and accept myself; therefore, I feel calm
More and more now, I communicate calmly and clearly
When I experience anger, I calmly communicate that I need a few moments to process my emotions and then step away and allow myself to process my emotions

Forgiveness affirmations.

For this to be effective, you must process the past hurt, fear, and anger, or else the subconscious ignores it.

I now forgive everyone who has ever harmed me in any way

I bless them with my love

I want for them the same good I want for myself

I forgive myself for every mistake that I have ever made

I now know that each mistake has been a stepping stone to greater understanding and greater opportunity

I freely forgive myself as I would be forgiven

Resources:

Instructions on how to do self-hypnosis with these affirmations. Click Here.

Or just buy my self-hypnosis track and learn by doing! — Link Here.

Marshall Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication (https://bookshop.org/a/23512/9781892005281) (Please note that this is an affiliate link. I will get a small portion of the proceeds if you make a purchase through this.)

Schedule a consult to learn how you can release your anger and anxiety with Hypnotherapy.

Find your Peace with Hypnosis for Anger and Anxiety