Work it out
When working as a clinician at a public mental health clinic in 2010, I wrote a grant to acquire a punching bag and gloves for a patient. He suffered from acute migraines and angry outbursts that kept him for being able to work or parent his five children. When installed in his garage, I suggest he pin photos or drawings of people, places and things he thought he might feel anger toward on it. After a few months of daily punching, his migraines and angry outbursts all but disappeared. Anger is normal. It resides in the body. It often needs physical expression to resolve in a way that won’t cause you to end up in prison or physically ill.—MR
A moment that changed me: I stepped into the boxing ring and decades of quiet anger lifted
by Kia Abdullah, Guardian US, June 18, 2025
On meeting me, you would never guess that I used to be an angry person. I’m talkative, sociable and self-possessed – but for nearly 20 years I lived with a quiet fury. It started with my parents, whose strict conservatism restricted everything in my life: what I ate, what I wore, where I went, what I thought. As immigrants from Bangladesh, they believed that control was the best way to protect their daughters, but it suffocated me.
