ABSTRACT
When clients withhold anger expression for years, they often believe that if they start feeling it, it will never end. Anger is perceived as an omnivorous monster that will consume everything: the client, the therapist, the room, the clinic, the building, the world. Clients fear rejection, especially by the therapist, as so many others have rejected them. Clients also fear that if they express the anger, they may physically harm the therapist. Therapists have their own struggles with hearing and managing anger. The magic remote control is a hypnotic technique that is immensely useful in processing grief and anger. It uses the fact that many chronic-abuse survivors use self-hypnosis and/or dissociation to cope with the original trauma and are good at it. Anger is forceful and energetic. In the model of therapy, it is used to propel the client from a stuck space to the next developmental task.
