THINGS TO DO LATER IF THE MADS ARE STILL THERE

• Remember, mads don't have to stay inside you. Talk to someone who can help you sort out the feelings that made you feel bad.
  
  
• Draw lots of pictures about what makes you angry. Make big, colorful angry drawings. Make mad noises when you draw. BIG, MAD NOISES!
  
  
• Put your pictures in the freezer to cool off those mads. Or let your refrigerator hold pictures of your mads.
  
  
• Pound on clay or on pillows. Scream and yell and pull those mads out of your stomach. Let those mads run down your fists and into the pillow.
  
  
• Go out in the back yard and dig a hole. (Or just pretend to dig in your living room.) Pull all those mads up and out of you and put them down in the hole. Then cover them up with dirt and jump up and down, stomping on the mads.
  
  
• Put your mads in soap bubbles and blow them away. Watch those feelings float up to the sun and poof! Act out the story of your mads with dolls, stuffed animals or plastic dinosaurs.
  
  
• Get permission to tear up an old magazine. Rip each page out, one by one as you make "big mad noises." Then throw those mad feelings away by putting all the pages in the trash.
  
  
• Get permission to put your anger in a raw egg. Write the name of the person you are mad at on an egg. Go to a wide open space and pull up all your mads to put in the egg. Throw your mads as far as you can and yell and scream ... "Aaaaagh!"

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This information is from the book, The Mad Family Gets Their Mads Out: Fifty Things Your Family Can Say and Do to Express Anger Constructively ($9.95 +$3 s&h from Talk, Trust and Feel Therapeutics * 1120 Buchanan Avenue * Charleston, IL 61920 * 217-345-2982)). Text and illustrations are copyright 1995 Lynne Namka.

• Rules For Getting Your Mads Out
• Things To Do If Someone Bigger Starts To Hurt You

For Parents