Heal Your Childhood Anger

What unhealed emotional wounds from your childhood keep emerging, with hopes to finally be healed? Use this exercise to heal the roots of your anger.

For this exercise you will need approximately 10 minutes of uninterrupted time.

Think back to yesterday. Imagine that your memory is a videocassette that you can rewind to any time you choose. Right now, take it back just 24 hours. What were some of the things you did during the day? Did anything frighten you or make you angry? It doesn’t have to be anything especially important or dramatic. You may have felt impatient waiting in line, or you might have witnessed someone being rude or inconsiderate. For the next minute or so, try to remember the events of the day in as much detail as you can. Focus on a moment of anger, becoming aware of the sensations in your body as well as the emotions in your mind.

Next, rewind that videotape back even farther. Think back exactly one year. Try to recall what you were doing a year ago on this date, or as close to it as you can remember. What was on your mind at that time?

Rewind the tape even farther back to when you were a teenager. Again, focus on a situation that made you angry or frightened. Relive the feelings, mentally and physically.

Try now to remember an incident from childhood. What is the earliest time in your life that you can recall being really angry? Bring that experience into your awareness. Where were you when it happened? Who else was there? Who or what was it that made you so angry? Feel all the sensations created by that anger.

Notice how fear and anger have accumulated over the years. Although you cannot remember it, there was a time in your life before you ever felt anger or fear, a time of total peace and tranquility.

With that feeling of total bliss still in your awareness, begin to move that imaginary videotape forward again. Visit the same points in your life that you stopped at earlier: Those angry or fearful moments from your childhood, your teenage years, a year ago, yesterday.

Spend a minute or so feeling the anger and fear being erased by this memory of bliss.

Adapted from The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books 2003). Reprinted by permission of the author.
Adapted from The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books 2003).

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

J.L. A.

7:46AM PST on Feb 24, 2012

interesting...

send a green star

Rosie L.

11:57AM PST on Feb 22, 2012

amazing thank you!!

Maria E.

3:46AM PST on Dec 5, 2010

Rhonnda I'm sorry for what happened in your childhood,it's like
reading mine,I hope that now everything is better in your life.

Brian M.

8:57PM PST on Dec 2, 2010

Thanks

Bee S.

4:26AM PST on Dec 2, 2010

Quoting poepiesnoepie K. Thanks 4 the article.

Rhonnda R.

9:48PM PDT on Jul 25, 2010

My childhood fears and anger revolve around circumstances that I did not know about until recently (I am 58). It seems that as I reached puberty, my father became an angry, judgemental bully who thought nothing of beating and verbally abusing me over every little thing. I was branded 'trouble' at every turn for being a normal teen and never allowed to experience any happiness in those years at home. My adult life has been full of desperation at times, but I learned that I was a good person in spite of the past. I now know that my father's anger came from 'dated' attitudes about illegitimate children whom he had been privy to, from Mom's parents to his own son's situation, so when I hit puberty, I became another terrible example just waiting to happen and rather than teach and trust me, he decided control and abuse were his 'weapons'. My relationships/psyche suffered all these years because he did not know how to be a loving parent to me and thanks to his terrible attitude, my own brothers now hold me as a villian and are abusive to me. I understand the past and myself, now, but one brother was closer to the things that went on and is suffering to understand himself, too, while the elder one who added to the situation long ago has become my father's disciple and won't even talk about it. My Mom suffered all those years, knowing that things were not right, but lived in the same fear I did which destroyed her thinking in the end, sadly. Please,God Bless us All, now?

Bethany W.

12:23AM PDT on Jul 21, 2010

People with true anger, unhealed wounds, or anxiety disorders should see a therapist or psychiatrist for help. However this article was amazingly helpful just as Deepak Chopra's tips always are.

beverly g.

3:14PM PDT on Jun 20, 2010

I can remember as far back as 5yrs old when i ad to go to school My mother dragged me there and to this day i can still feel the fear and that feeling. It makes me feel quite sick. I suffer with depression, stress and xtreme high anxiety.