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Art work is an excellent means of self-expression, and many people use art this way, but how many people know that art can be used to manage anger and heal from past traumas. Art just for the fun of it is not what we are discussing though. Art as a simple pleasure might keep you from losing your mind, but art as Anger Work is something else. It is a more active way to express your anger through what you create or do. Many examples of anger or other strong emotions can be found from the greatest artists, painters, musicians, and dancers, but the rest of us can focus our anger and thereby heal, as well. Being a great artist isn't a requirement either.

Kids and others not so young really benefit Art Anger Work. They may create a descriptive image with their angry feelings, or they may create and then destroy some piece of art. It is best to let your anger flow as you create paintings, for example. One victim of sexual molestation may design abstract drawings dominated in black tones. Another may create a jumble of body parts expressing the confusion and disconnectedness he feels. One of my clients years ago, who was very upset at a former counselor who used to eat potato chips during their sessions and had even slipped into a nap during a counseling appointment with the client on one occasion. To express this anger she drew a caricature of her former therapist lounging on the couch with cookie crumbs all over her. Her eyes were heavily lidded, and a little balloon above her head read ?Want a cookie?? My client drew herself on the other couch as a nondescript naked body with a huge knife sticking out of her guts and blood pooling on the floor below her. She was very careful to include the plaque that hung ironically on her former counselor's wall: it read ?It?s Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood.? In this one drawing the client was able to express her desperate need for help and her anger at feeling neglected by the therapist.

To start your anger work through artistic expression, let your creativity go. Who knows, perhaps you will create some items worth selling someday. A couple of professional artists with whom I have worked with over the years have changed their style of artistic expression after getting into Anger Work. They often feel even more connected to their pieces because of the intense level of self expression.

Some other modes of artistic expression you may want to explore are those of expressive dance, creative movement, and creative visualization. This could even be in the form of a creative work-out routine. For example, as a survivor of rape or sexual abuse you may create a special work-out routine as one of my clients did. There were three movements to her routine. The first was a straight, strong punch forward at eye level, imagining that she was punching her attacker in the face. The second movement was a swift, powerful kick upward, imagining that she was kicking the attacker in his private parts. The third movement brought her arm up over her head, then down in front in a swift swinging motion where her clenched fist met her open palm like a hammer, finally symbolizing her crushing the attacker?s private parts between an anvil and a large, metal hammer. She repeated these movements in sequence for 15 to 20 minutes at a time several times a week, or whenever she felt the victim mentality taking hold of her again. She found it helped her move from a place of fear into a sort of dance that tells a story, the way a ballet does. You do not need to have special training to do this. It is your story. As a whole being, body, mind and spirit, you can express your experience with yourself as the only audience. Creative movement is not the same thing as expressive dance. It can be one, simple, repetitive movement or a series of movements that have symbolic meaning to you.

Creative Visualization is another tool, a sort of art form in your mind, which you can use. You can pretend that you are a lion ripping up the person who hurt you, or you can imagine a cleansing fire burning away all the evil in a person and leaving behind only that which is good and worthy of remaining. Use your imagination and visualize symbolic scenes which will help you heal.

One idea for enjoyable way to use creative visualization. Find a metaphor that works for you and visualize yourself rising above your current problems. You can pretend that you are hiking on the path of life and your particular problems are vines trying to grow around your ankles and keep you from climbing to higher ground. Visualize yourself overcoming that challenge by stomping on them, hacking them up or simply climbing over them.

Any number of art activities or creative visualizations can serve as Anger Work for you. Relax and let yourself go. Keep trying until you find one that works, or many! What is important is that you do find effective ways to do your Anger Work so that you can live a more peaceful, joyful life.

Lesson # 1 Acknowledge that the simple, pure emotions of anger and sadness that children express are at the root of more complicated adult feelings.  

When children are traumatized, they heal from it naturally as long as there is a safe environment to do so. Many children experience a wide range of traumas like sexual abuse, death of a loved one, divorce, moving to a new neighborhood, or being teased at daycare. As surprising as it may be, I have observed that there are only two emotions which children express to help themselves heal. These two emotions are ANGER and SADNESS. In affirmation of the wisdom of this natural choice by my young clients, I have noted a similar pattern among my adult clients. Those who make the most progress are those who get in touch with these primary emotions of sadness and anger.  

Lesson # 2 Express your feelings. Don?t repress them.  

As adults we develop defenses such as depression, anxiety, phobias, worry, stress-induced illnesses, and a myriad of other non-healing ways of trying to cope with emotional pain. In contrast to children, some adults never cry or display anger. Most adults take repression too far. While doing Anger Work, both children and adults learn to express their anger in safe environments. The following case of Shawn and Jaime are good examples of how children use their sadness and anger to heal themselves. (Please note that names and details have been changed to protect the confidentiality of my clients).  

Once when I was directing a day care center, the parents of a two-year old child named Shawn was left with me by her parents. It was the first time in her life she had ever been separated from them. As I took Shawn from her anxious parents, she immediately started crying. Shawn cried off and on for the entire three hours. Though I tried to set her down a couple of times, she never let go of me. By the time her parents returned, my shirt was soaked.  

The next week Shawn returned and of course started crying the second her parents left. I held Shawn for about five minutes and then she stopped crying. After watching the other children playing all around us, she slowly made her way out of my arms. Though she kept a watchful eye out for me for a few minutes to make sure that I would rescue her, Shawn began to play. She never cried again when her parents left her at childcare with me. Shawn?s tears of sadness helped her heal from the emotional trauma of leaving her parents for the first time in her life.  

As the case of Shawn demonstrates, experiencing and expressing your sadness through tears can be an effective tool for healing. However, I find that children between the ages of two and seven primarily express one feeling during their treatment: that is anger. They rarely cry about their trauma--they just get angry, sometimes very angry. Afterward they leave the session feeling better, and over time the symptoms which brought them into therapy go away. Children like Jaime in the following story have taught me that anger heals.  

Jamie was a two-and-a-half year old girl with whom I worked for a year. She was brought to therapy because she had been sexually abused by a man and woman at a day care center where she was being watched for a few hours. Evidence of this crime was her radical behavior change after the incident. She regressed to soiling her panties, began playing with her private parts, started pinching and biting her younger brother, and did not want to return to the daycare. When I saw her, she appeared to be a sweet little girl who just wanted to play. During all the sessions with Jamie, her mom or dad stayed with us in the same room, reading magazines or books, so that Jamie would give me her full attention. Quickly Jaime began displaying intense anger towards toys as she played with them. She would growl at them, hit them, throw them, and even try to destroy them. Jamie had told her parents what happened at the daycare, but she never verbalized anything about the abuse during therapy. Her play clearly displayed that she was angry at the abusers who had fondled her private parts.  The parents were instructed not to let Jamie aim her anger at them or her younger brother. During the year, Jamie's behavior gradually improved until she was back to her old self. Therapy was terminated and Jamie has never returned. She is reported to be doing fine.  

Lesson # 3 Have an appropriate object for your wrath. Acting-out on people or animals takes you backwards.  

Tony was an eight year old bully. He was always getting in trouble at school for teasing and tripping younger kids. Other times, he would take strings that had bells or forks attached to them and tie them to the cat?s tail in order to torment the poor old cat. Once Sam, the family?s golden retriever who loved people food, had to be rushed to the animal emergency hospital because he had suddenly become deathly ill. After surgery, the veterinarian found a cactus spine in Sam?s stomach. Tony confessed that he had given the cactus spine to Sam covered in butter. His parents were very concerned and did not know what to do.  

First I helped them to come up with rewards for when Tony was behaving appropriately, and taught them to use time out for when he was taking out his anger on others. Having his parents reinforce appropriate behavior at home, in addition to bringing him to therapy was very helpful. Very shortly, Tony began to love coming to therapy, because here he and I had lots of toys and he could do whatever he wanted. He was free to express his anger, as long as he did not direct it at me. His favorite ?toy? was my couch. He loved to throw things at it, jump on it, hit it whatever he wanted. When Tony first came to see me his anger was a constant threat, boiling just beneath the surface. He was expressing his anger at people and animals, and his problems only snowballed. His self esteem was very low and he felt that nobody really liked him. He was ostracized on the playground because he had done so many mean things to his classmates that most of them stayed away from him out of self-protection. In therapy he expressed his anger by directing it at inanimate objects and his life began to transform. He was now releasing his anger regularly, instead of letting it build up. Without all that repressed anger, he didn?t feel as many impulses to do mean things.  

Lesson #4  Stay active and use your body to express yourself, especially when you?re doing Anger Work.  

If you think about it from a historical perspective, it has not been long since our world was much more physically active, like our children?s world. In the past, people did more physically demanding work for a living. They spent 5-12 hours a day doing something physical, like chopping wood, harvesting fields, hand-washing the laundry or grinding grain. This type of work provided more natural opportunities for letting off steam.

Today our lives are often more sedentary. We need to be proactive in creating opportunities for exercise and include a healthy expression of anger at the same time. My young clients are almost always throwing, shooting, or hitting something during their sessions. Combining physical work with anger work is not only good for the body, but for the psyche as well. Today we must work to add that additional activity to our daily lives.