Psychology Commons^™

Effects Of Anger Awareness And Expression Training Versus Relaxation Training On Headaches: A Randomized Trial, Olga Slavin-Spenny, Mark A. Lumley, Elyse R. Thakur, Dana C. Nevedal, Alaa M Hijazi

Psychology Faculty Research Publications

Background and purpose: Stress contributes to headaches, and effective interventions for headaches routinely include relaxation training (RT) to directly reduce negative emotions and arousal. Yet, suppressing negative emotions, particularly anger, appears to augment pain, and experimental studies suggest that expressing anger may reduce pain. Therefore, we developed and tested anger awareness and expression training (AAET) on people with headaches.

Methods: Young adults with headaches (N = 147) were randomized to AAET, RT, or a wait-list control. We assessed affect during sessions, and process and outcome variables at baseline and 4 weeks after treatment.

Results: On process measures, …

The Therapeutic Expression Of Anger: Emotionally Expressive Writing And Exposure, Cory James Patrick

Theses and Dissertations

The following reports on multiple studies in a line of research examining the use of emotionally expressive writing as a means of altering the experiences of state anger and negative affect. This line of research has also sought to develop an iterative economic version of the prisoner's dilemma game as a behavioral measure of changes in state anger. Preliminary studies demonstrated evidence that expressive writing about an angry memory does trigger initial activations of state anger and negative affect but that subsequent repeated writing does lead to reductions in activation of state anger and negative affect. The current study sought …