Enable your feelings to become more manageable through a process of acceptance and reflection.
What you’ll need: Paper, a bin or box, and coloured pens
What’s it for?
This activity will help you to manage your anger and what makes you feel this way. It will help you identify the way anger makes your body feel, which can support you with managing and releasing difficult feelings.
Check In:
Notice how you’re feeling right now. Close your eyes and notice what’s going on inside your mind and body.
How are you feeling?
What are you thinking?
How does your body feel?
Method:
Think about a time when you felt angry and were not sure how to express this angry feeling. Maybe it was hard to act safely or use kind words.
Use scraps of paper to write or draw about how it feels to be angry. You might like to write in a colour that feels angry, like red. What words or pictures could represent feeling angry? Maybe words like “Mad!” or “Out of control!”, or a picture of a scribble or an angry cloud.
While you hold your piece of paper, can you remember how your body felt when you were angry? Think about how it felt in your head, your tummy, your feet, and your hands.
Scrunch up your pieces of paper into a ball and try throwing them into the bin or box from a few steps away, if this can be done safely in your space. As you throw them, imagine you are throwing away those angry feelings and releasing them from your body.
After you have thrown your paper, take some deep breaths and imagine how you could manage an angry situation next time. Could you speak to an adult? Walk away from the situation? Smooth out the paper with your ‘angry’ words or drawings and use the back to write or draw about another way to deal with a situation that made you feel angry, so that you can transform those angry feelings into something that feels calm and easier to manage. What words or colours could you use instead to show these calmer feelings?
Extra Activity: Would you like to share the activity with someone you trust? If you would, use your drawings and words to share about the time you found it hard to manage an angry situation and how you might share those feelings safely another time.
When you’ve finished, spend a moment reflecting on the activity and ask yourself the following questions:
What kind of words or colours did you use to share your angry feelings on your paper?
Did you have lots of angry feelings to write down or was it hard to think of something?
How did it feel to scrunch up your paper and throw it in the bin? What are some other actions you could do to safely share your anger?
What were some of your ideas for managing a situation that makes you feel angry?
Sometimes you might feel angry for a ‘good’ reason, like when someone is unkind to your friend. What kind of things do you think it is good to be angry about? What are some safe ways to share these feelings?
Conclusion:
This activity helps you to understand what makes you feel angry and think about how to share those feelings. This can help you to manage your anger in a safe way.
Take a moment to notice how you are feeling at the end of this activity. Did you discover anything surprising? What can you take away to make you feel better about yourself from this activity?
If you would like to, share something about your experience with this activity with someone you live with! Ask the person who looks after you to send us an email if you have any questions or comments about the activity, or would like to send us any pictures (info@catcorner.co.uk). Don't forget to subscribe for more fun CAT activities!
Created by Sarah Kong © April 2020
Creative Arts Used: Art
Psychological Areas Explored: Emotional Wellbeing, Communication, Resilience
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These activities could be done by children of all ages, but some may need the support of their parent or carer to read the instructions or complete the activity safely.
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