How Energy Psychology Can Help You Stop Feeling Angry All the Time

Anger is a natural human emotion, and learning how to contain anger can be very helpful. It indicates to us that our boundaries have been crossed, be it because something feels unjust, others have trespassed our limits, or we’re carrying more than we can hold and we are not respecting our own boundaries.

Yet, when anger takes over, when it becomes rage, it can feel frightening, for ourselves and for those around us. This is why understanding and working with anger, rather than suppressing it, is so important. One client once described their experience with a vivid metaphor:

"It was as if I had clothes soaked in petrol, and the moment I came into contact with a spark, I would catch fire. Now it feels as if the petrol is in a can."

A man carrying its contained anger in a petrol can

This image captures the difference between being constantly on the edge of explosion and learning to contain anger safely. Let’s explore how that shift can happen.

Containing Anger Starts In Childhood

In good enough families, a child’s anger is met by a parent who is able to tolerate and hold their intense activation while gently trying to understand their experience. Step by step, such children learn that being angry is part of being human, and integrate the containment that they receive from their parents.

However, if parents are dysregulated by their children's rage, or if they never learnt to contain their own anger themselves due to early deprivation, they are not able to teach their children that anger can be healthy. Instead, children are encouraged by their parents' model to suppress it, hide it, or act it out destructively. In many cases, they feel extremely ashamed of this powerful feeling that they are not able to use constructively. Without a model of containment, anger can become overwhelming, leaving many adults searching for how to accept and manage anger in healthy ways

Energy Psychology, Talking Therapy and How To Contain Anger

Dysregulation, such as in the case of explosive anger (rage), requires healing childhood trauma, as it stems from unresolved early experiences. If anger was not contained by the main caregivers at a young age, this issue remains unresolved. Energy psychology can help release the effects of early trauma. At the same time, talking therapy can offer a radically different experience.

Therapy can become a safe space where anger is neither feared nor dismissed. In the therapeutic relationship, anger can be acknowledged, accepted, and validated. The encounter is not just about words; it’s about being seen and held in moments of intensity.

A client may fear that expressing anger will lead to rejection or punishment. Yet when the therapist responds with understanding rather than judgement, the client learns something new: anger does not have to destroy relationships. Over time, clients begin to gradually internalise the therapist’s capacity to stay grounded in the face of anger, until they can contain their own without fear of losing control. Their "petrol" is driven into a can that they can control instead of being all around them.

Clearing the Roots of Anger with Energy Psychology

Current frustrations can very easily turned into rage when unresolved trauma gets triggered. It is as if all the times one felt raw anger in childhood are re-experienced because no adult was there to calm the activation in the past, and therefore the wound is still open.

That is the nature of trauma: a trigger can bring a load of past feelings that are experienced as current ones, but might more accurately be called "emotional flashbacks". This can create unbearable suffering for those overcome by rage and others around them.

Old wounds can leave the nervous system in a state of constant readiness to explode. This is where energy psychology can play a crucial role. By working directly with the body’s energy systems, such as the meridians or chakras, energy psychology techniques help clear the original traumas that fuel explosive anger. For many, energy psychology offers a practical and embodied way to release unresolved trauma, making it one of the most effective approaches for those wondering how to contain anger without simply repressing it.

In the case of clients such as the one who described himself as “soaked in petrol,” using energy psychology, alongside the different experience of anger offered by the relational model of talking therapy, tends to allow them to release the traumatic charge that keeps this system on edge. Once those roots are addressed, they can approach life with less anger. The shift isn't that you have to make an effort not to be angry, but that you no longer feel angry because the traumas are gone, and so too the unnecessary activation.

Final Thoughts

Anger is not the enemy. When accepted, understood, and contained through therapy and energy psychology, it becomes a source of strength rather than destruction. If you have ever wondered how to contain anger or how energy psychology can help with anger, know that change is possible.

Therapy provides the relational container, offering acceptance where once there was fear. Energy psychology helps to release the old traumas that keep anger volatile and alive, fostering healing childhood trauma.

Together, these approaches make it possible to move from being consumed by flames to holding a steady fire within: one that lights the way forward, rather than burning everything in its path.