Everyone has experienced moments of anger at work— those times when it feels like a volcano inside you suddenly erupts, consuming all calm thoughts. Whether it's receiving a rejection from your boss, discovering an error in your work, a maddening email, or a thoughtless comment from a colleague, anger can flare up instantly. The emotion feels like a burning flame in your chest, growing stronger until you can't help but shout or storm out of the room. However, if not managed well, this fiery emotion can not only hurt you but also affect everything around you. So, how can you calm this feeling and prevent it from turning into an uncontrollable fire? The answer might lie on a piece of paper.
Sometimes, you might only need a simple piece of paper, a pen, and a bit of creativity to extinguish your anger. This is not a joke scientists have recently found that writing down your angry feelings and making them "disappear" can help us break free from the grip of anger and regain our composure. To put it simply, writing down the angry words and then throwing them into the trash or shredding them can instantly extinguish the fire m your mind.
Researchers set up an "anger release game" for participants: First, they asked each participant to write down what made them angry due to work-related frustrations or conflicts. These words were like letting out all the anger that had been building up inside Next, participants had three ways to handle these pieces of paper. Some threw them in the trash, some left them on the table, and others shredded them. When the angry words were destroyed, researchers found that those who had released their emotions in this way experienced a noticeable reduction in anger. It was as if they had thrown away a heavy stone, and their hearts suddenly felt much lighter. In contrast, those who chose to keep the papers did not see a significant reduction in anger, and the troubling thoughts continued to circle in their minds.
This is based on psychological principles. Our emotions are like a trash compactor, where every bit of anger is like a small scrap of paper. As these emotions accumulate, they become increasingly difficult to bear. By writing them down and destroying them, we are symbolically throwing these emotional "trash" into a bottomless bin, clearing out the clutter inside. This method works because it provides the brain with an outlet, allowing emotions to be "legally" released. When we write down our feelings and symbolically destroy them, the brain believes that the negative emotions have been dealt with, just like turning off an old, annoying television to make the screen clear again. It's like throwing a heavy stone off your shoulder into the deep sea, where nothing can hold you back anymore.
Controlling emotions is not always as easy as it seems in a laboratory setting. After all, work-related anger can sometimes be as complex as a stew, with each element intertwining in ways that make it hard to resolve with just a piece of paper. So, while this method can help us release temporary emotions, it doesn't mean that all problems can be solved by writing a note. However, the beauty of this method is that it gives us an amusing emotional "shutter," allowing us to pause and regain calm during tense moments. It's like pressing the brake while driving a temporary solution that doesn't mean the problem has disappeared, but at least you can steady the wheel and prevent things from spinning out of control. Especially when work pressure is high and your emotions fluctuate like a rollercoaster, taking a few minutes to write down and destroy those angry words can help you return to a "normal track."
This method can provide support when your emotions are about to collapse, helping you regain order from the chaos. When the ink of anger is quietly erased from the paper, those trivial matters no longer have the power to affect your, mood.
