I talk it out. I'll go someplace where nobody can hear me and I won't be interrupted (like my basement) and just sit there and talk about what makes me angry. I shout and scream and pace around the room and punch cardboard boxes if I need to, until I can feel it dissolve, or I just wear myself out and I run out of things to say. Usually it only takes about 10-20 minutes; sometimes (rarely) it takes up to an hour. Some things take multiple sessions--certain issues kept coming up over and over again for weeks or months before I'd finally worked through them.
"Do it as long as it takes, as often as it takes" is my only rule.
The funny thing is, I find it easier to open up if I have a tape recorder running, even though I never play back the tape (doing that is counterproductive). I'm not even sure my tape recorder works, to be honest--the tape runs, but for all I know nothing is being recorded on it, or else my habit of re-using the same tape over and over means anything recorded on it is hopelessly garbled.
But maybe the tape recorder does work. And maybe everything I say is being recorded just fine, and if I wanted someone to hear my rant I could give them the tape. That makes me feel like I'm not just talking uselessly to empty air, or just to myself. Yeah, the next time I need to rant I'll record over it, but in the moment as I'm raging away, it doesn't matter.
When I'm done, I go for a long walk to "cool down" emotionally and reconnect with the world outside my head, and by the time I get back home I feel so much better. |