Feeling angry? This is how you deal with it | Letters

Your article (Write down and shred your thoughts to relieve anger, say researchers, April 9) reminded me that in the 1960s, after visiting a preschool group to supervise, I felt mortified by the way I was received. When I got home I wrote a letter to the person concerned, but then calmed down enough to decide not to send it. I messed up the paper and threw it on the open fire. I did feel better afterwards.

Fast forward to the early 2000s, when my client was working at a bereavement organization, he expressed negative thoughts about a close family member who responded to his loss in a different way. I suggested that he write down his angry thoughts and then destroy what he wrote in any way possible.

At our next session he said he expressed his anger on paper and then shredded it. His anger was relieved. I had had other clients emotionally tear up written words, but this was the first time I heard that shredding was cathartic.
Name and address provided

During my previous career as a clinical psychologist, I suggested writing emotionally charged letters and then destroying them several times to patients. I also remember talking to a man during lockdown who was doing his garden. He looked very angry, and when I recalled it to him and asked why, he said he felt cheated out of an inheritance. He had a photo of the person concerned, who is now buried in the garden together with his letter. It turned his dismay into glee.

The best was a patient who wanted to burn a letter on the beach. It was too wet, but on the way home she noticed dog poop on the sidewalk, so she used the letter to remove it and put it in the trash. She felt better afterwards.
Janie Penn Barwell
Eastleigh, Hampshire

As a cyclist, much of the anger I see (and hear) comes from car and van drivers. Will vehicle accessory manufacturers start selling dashboard-mounted chippers for people with anger management issues?
Sam White
Lewes, East Sussex

My solution when you’re angry? Write it down and send it as an email to the Guardian letters desk.
Mike Pender
Cardiff