Discover how this therapeutic tool can help you unleash your inner angst in a healthy, and productive, way
Many of us have tried journaling, especially to help our anxiety, or to practise gratitude. There are, however, other styles that can be just as cathartic but are less discussed. Enter: rage journaling.
“Journaling is known to be incredibly cathartic, and can break the cycle of rumination that many of us tend to have when experiencing anxiety,” therapist Victoria Jeffries explains. “Instead of being stuck in a cycle of thoughts and worries, journaling allows you to take a step back, see the situation from a new perspective, and possibly consider what you could learn from that experience. This often leads to finding solutions to a problem you previously felt you couldn’t get away from.”
The effectiveness of journaling as a complementary mental health tool is well-noted, with numerous studies backing this up, including a 2022 paper published in Family Medicine and Community Health. However, how we harness this best can be up to individual preference. So, if the concept hasn’t quite appealed to you before, you may be inclined to give rage journaling a try, and see how harnessing the power of venting can help you find emotional harmony.
What is rage journaling?
The point of rage journaling is to express and explore emotions freely, without judgement, so you can deal with frustrating situations in a healthy way rather than feeling like you have to bottle it up, or deny those feelings.
We’ve all experienced situations in our personal or professional lives which have made us want to scream, and rant and rave. We might be holding on to an event that happened years ago, which still makes us feel angry. Or there’s that person who always manages to push our buttons. We might even feel anger and rage at the state of the world, which can lead us to feel helpless and incapable of creating change, given so many things feel beyond our control. Rage journaling allows us to let it all out, but with pen and paper, or on our phone or computer screen. Releasing internalised anger by expressing our thoughts and feelings through journaling helps us stay emotionally healthy rather than those feelings consuming and controlling us.
What are the benefits?
A fresh perspective
Rage journaling allows us to see situations from another perspective. Reading back what we’ve written with a clearer head, helps us to learn about our own behaviour, along with our reactions to others. It encourages us to see how we could have dealt with a situation in a more productive way, and how we can manage and express our emotions in the future.
Victoria has observed these very benefits in clients who’ve explored rage journaling as a therapeutic tool. “Quite often, I’ve been told by clients that when they read their journal, they can notice patterns and themes in their own behaviour. For example, it may be apparent that you are releasing more negative (or positive) thoughts and emotions on a particular day, or after a certain event. This may seem glaringly obvious but, as a therapist, I know that quite often triggers, and causes of difficult feelings, can be hard to identify when we are ‘in it’. It is when we stand back that we can look at our experiences and feelings through fresh eyes, and gain a new understanding of ourselves.”
Emotional intelligence
This ability to see other perspectives can help to shed light on why a situation made us feel anger and frustration. It can also help us see why someone may have reacted to us in a certain way, and how they may have been feeling. For instance, we may know an individual we argued with received bad news that day, and recognise that this may have put them in a more emotionally volatile or sensitive place. Understanding both our emotional states helps us navigate confrontations and difficult situations from a more respectful and empathetic place.
Increased resilience
By writing down what we see as ‘negative situations’, we can learn how to keep ourselves emotionally safe in similar scenarios. An experience which could have floored us, or made us feel angry and resentful, can become, through journaling, one that helps us problem-solve. When we see the array of thoughts and feelings that have been whirring around our heads written on the page, it can be easier to make sense of them. We can see threads connecting things, overall problems, and, hopefully, a way to manage them when it doesn’t feel like an insurmountable mess.
Acceptance of anger
So many of us are conditioned to believe anger is a shameful or negative emotion, and that we must ignore or hide from it. But keeping our anger and upset bottled up is unhealthy – these feelings are trying to tell us something, and shouldn’t be ignored. The result can often be that emotions can bubble over, and we find ourselves expressing them in the wrong place, at the wrong time, or to someone who doesn’t deserve that reaction. Bottled-up anger has been linked to feelings of shame and guilt, and even depression. Channelling this anger through journaling is much more beneficial to our overall wellbeing, by dealing with it and the cause directly.
How to practise rage journaling
“There are various approaches to journaling, but most importantly remember there is no right or wrong one,” Victoria Jeffries says. “You could start by writing about how you are feeling in that moment and why, or you could follow a journaling prompts style, which I myself have found to be very helpful.”
Some helpful prompts that Victoria suggests include:
- What do I need right now?
- What do I owe myself?
- What makes me anxious or afraid?
- What story am I telling myself that is unhelpful?
When it comes to implementing this activity in your life, know that rage journaling doesn’t have to be a daily habit, but targeted as and when you need a release. When an event has left you angry, spend 20 minutes at the end of your day journaling about what happened and how it made you feel. You might want to delve further into the past, and pick up events that have had a lasting impact on you and, most importantly, left you feeling furious.
With rage journaling, it’s important not to rush the process. If the experience was particularly upsetting, you may want to write about it, but not revisit what you’ve written, in order to protect yourself. And if you regularly find these feelings of anger are arising, but you’re struggling to get to the root of it yourself, you may want to speak in a safe space with a therapist. Your journaling examples might be a helpful tool to discuss and reflect on what you’ve been feeling.
Another important consideration when you’re journaling is who this is for. In the heat of the moment, it can be tempting to share what you’ve written with whoever provoked your anger to let them know exactly how they’ve made you feel, but often it can be best to keep it private. Rage journaling is not about sharing what you’ve written or accusing others, but a safe place to let out your frustrations. Sometimes, the very act of doing so alleviates those feelings, and you may decide you projected feelings from one situation onto the wrong person, or overreacted. Or you may feel completely validated in being angry with someone, or an event, but equally draw a different conclusion on how to address this in a productive way. It’s best not to be rash with your reactions, and use this tool to help process how you feel for yourself.
Ultimately, rage journaling is for you, and you alone. After writing and reading what you’ve written, an option can be to literally rip up and shred what you’ve put on the page. It can be a truly cathartic release of all of the tension and anger you’ve been holding close, and a metaphorical way for you to let it go.
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