Anger & Irritability · Hypnosis session
Forgiveness Is Not a Favour You Owe Them
Two years on and you can still run the whole argument, both sides, at two in the morning. Nothing here asks you to say it was acceptable, to answer the message, or to sit down with them at Christmas. Putting it down is a different act from letting them off.
Is anyone in your house frightened of you?Not annoyed. Not sick of the arguments. Scared. Do they change what they say, where they go, or who they see, to keep you calm?
If the answer is yes, or if you are not sure it is no, this recording is the wrong thing and I am not going to sell it to you. Anger and family violence are not the same problem. The Victorian Government puts it plainly: violence and abuse is not caused by anger, but by the desire to hurt or dominate others.
- Men’s Referral Service — 1300 766 491. 24/7, free from all phones, confidential, and you can stay anonymous. The national service for men who use violence and want to change, and the way into a Men’s Behaviour Change Program.
- MensLine Australia — 1300 78 99 78. 24/7, free. Runs a free two-month phone programme for men worried their behaviour could escalate.
- 1800RESPECT — 1800 737 732, or text 0458 737 732. 24/7. If you are the one who is frightened, start here rather than anywhere else on this page.
- 13YARN — 13 92 76, 24/7, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
- In immediate danger, call 000.
“I would only suggest this to somebody carrying the same grievance for years and tired of what it costs. It excuses nothing and it is no favour to them. No trial has tested hypnosis for anger; ninety days to change your mind.”
Forgive and Move On
US$18.95one-off · no subscription · about A$27
I earn a commission if you buy through this page. It doesn’t change what you pay, and it doesn’t decide what I recommend.
Ninety days to change your mind, nothing to justify. Checkout opens on hypnosisdownloads.com in a new tab; priced in US dollars, and some cards add a foreign-transaction fee.
The publisher reports 1,103 purchases of this title.
Does any of this describe your last couple of years?
- A message you have drafted, edited and never sent
- You know what you should have said, four years late
- Their name comes up and the room changes temperature for you alone
- You have rehearsed running into them at the shops, and won
- Somebody who loves you has said you are still on about that
Two of those and you are in the right place. If it is your temper rather than one person, a different session fits.
Does this mean you have to excuse what they did?
No. On this page forgiveness means one thing: letting go of what the resentment is costing you. It is not a verdict on them, and it is not saying the thing was acceptable, minor, or understandable.
It does not require reconciling, contact or an explanation. It does not ask you to unblock the number or drop a complaint that ought to stand. Nobody needs to know you have done it.
You can be completely right about what happened and still be tired of carrying it. Neither fact cancels the other. Most advice on the subject assumes that putting it down means conceding the argument, which is why people won’t go near it.
If a family, a partner or a congregation has been telling you to forgive and move on, notice whose comfort that serves. I am not selling you a recording to make you easier to sit beside.
The grievance is about them. The bill arrives at your address. They are asleep. They have very likely built a version of events in which they come out fine, and they are not running your side of the argument at ten past three.
So the useful question is not whether they deserve to be let off. It is what you are paying, weekly, to keep the account open.
And some of what people carry does not belong on an audio file at all. If this is an assault, a childhood, or a betrayal that still arrives in pictures rather than sentences, that is work for a person who can stop when it gets heavy.
Why doesn’t going over it again settle it?
Because rehearsal is not digestion. Get it out, talk it through, have a roar in the car: the advice is everywhere, and it points the wrong way.
In 2002 Brad Bushman angered 600 undergraduates and split them three ways: hit a punching bag while thinking about the person who had angered them, hit it while thinking about getting fit, or sit quietly for two minutes. The ones thinking about the person came out angriest, and the ones who did nothing came out calmest. Venting to reduce anger, he wrote, is like using gasoline to put out a fire.
Forgive and Move OnUS$18.95 · instant download · full refund within 90 days if it isn’t right.
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In 2024 Kjærvik and Bushman pooled 154 studies and 10,189 participants, sorting anger techniques by what they did to arousal. Bringing arousal down reduced anger and aggression, at a pooled 0.63. Raising it did nothing measurable: 0.02. Jogging was the activity most likely to make anger worse. Both bodies of work lean on short laboratory tasks and provoked anger, so read them as a direction rather than a dose.
Should a doctor be looking at this?
Possibly, and one appointment settles it. Irritability is a symptom of plenty of other things, and healthdirect lists them: sleep problems, thyroid problems, chronic pain, traumatic brain injury, premenstrual syndrome, substance withdrawal, depression, PTSD, ADHD, dementia, hunger and fatigue. Its own advice: “If you feel unusually irritable or are constantly irritable or on edge, it is important to talk to your doctor.” In men especially, depression often shows up as irritability and anger rather than sadness.
What can you do this week that costs nothing?
Five things. Two work on arousal, the part with the best numbers behind it. One changes what you do with the story. One is for the arguments this spills into, and one is sleep.
- Give it two minutes of nothing
When it arrives — the name, the anniversary, the car like theirs — don’t argue with it and don’t follow it. Sit still and let two minutes pass without adding a sentence to the case.
That is the condition that won Bushman’s experiment, and it is uncomfortable precisely because it feels like letting them off.
- Let the out-breath run twice the length of the in-breath
Three in through the nose, six out through pursed lips, about six breaths a minute, five minutes a day while nothing is happening.
Be clear what that is doing: the research here, 223 studies pooled by Laborde in 2022, measures heart rate variability rather than anger. The bridge to a shorter fuse is the meta-analysis above, where what worked was bringing arousal down.
- Do perspective-taking properly, which is not what you think
Not “see it from their side and forgive them”. Nobody is asking you to conclude anything about them. The task is mechanical: describe the event once in the third person, no adjectives, the way a stranger would relay it. You can do it and still hold them entirely responsible.
Across 306 experimental comparisons, perspective-taking was the strongest sub-effect within cognitive reappraisal at 0.45 — though cognitive change overall came out at 0.36, smaller than the self-help shelf implies, in laboratory studies about emotion in general rather than anger.
- If it boils over into arguments, take a time-out correctly
Agreed in advance, when nobody is angry. The angry person is the one who leaves, never the other one. You say when you are coming back and you come back then, and it is never used to end a conversation the other person wants to have.
Those conditions are not fussiness. Wistow, Kelly and Westmarland interviewed 44 men on perpetrator programmes and 27 partners and found the technique repurposed: the woman made to leave instead, the man returning mid-argument, “this is what I have been taught” used to run the room.
- Sleep before you decide anything about it
Krizan and Hisler randomised 142 people to keep their usual sleep or lose a couple of hours across two days. Restricting sleep universally intensified anger, reversing the pattern where irritation settles as you get used to a nuisance.
That was 142 people over two days in one laboratory paradigm, and still the cheapest lever here. None of this gets decided at midnight.
Is there any evidence that hypnosis helps with this?
None. Not thin evidence, not mixed evidence. None.
There is no randomised trial, no systematic review and no meta-analysis of hypnosis for anger, irritability or aggression. Rosendahl and colleagues published a twenty-year umbrella review in Frontiers in Psychology in 2024, covering 49 meta-analyses of hypnosis. Search the whole of it for anger, aggression or irritability: not one occurrence. And no trial anywhere has tested a recording for it.
What does have evidence is anger treatment delivered by a person. Saini’s 2009 meta-analysis pooled 96 studies and 139 effect sizes at a weighted 0.76 — mostly American work, a third of it on students. Best-evidenced, and still not this.
Set that beside the trade. On 5 September I read nine Australian anger and hypnotherapy pages. Four published or implied a success rate; the figures given were 85%, 80% and 76%, and one 82% traced back to a 2007 paper about depression. Eight of the nine never mentioned family violence.
Fourteen years in practice has given me a settled view of what this work does. That is experience, not evidence, and I will not pass one off as the other on a page asking you for money.
What a recording cannot carryIf the thing you are trying to forgive still has hold of your sleep, your body or your safety, this is not a self-help purchase. A GP can start a Mental Health Treatment Plan, which brings Medicare benefits for up to 10 individual allied mental health services a calendar year.
An Australian evidence brief found that completing a men’s behaviour change programme is not an indicator of meaningful change. If twenty weeks of group work will not claim that, twenty-three minutes of audio cannot.
What is in the Forgive and Move On session?
One guided session of twenty-three minutes, made for repeated listening rather than one attentive go. It works on the rehearsing rather than the verdict: the return to the same scene, the arguing with somebody who is not in the room. You stay in control throughout, can stop it mid-sentence, and suggestions you disagree with don’t take.
There is no free sample of this one. Voice is the commonest reason a recording does nothing for somebody, so the refund window is carrying that risk.
Forgive and Move On
US$18.95About A$27 · one-off, no subscription.
- 23 minutes 7 seconds, narrated by Roger Elliott of Uncommon Knowledge, publishing since 1998
- Instant MP3 download plus the publisher’s app — any device, unlimited listens
- Best used most evenings for a fortnight, not once on the night it flares
- For somebody with an old grievance who has decided to stop paying for it
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Figures the publisher reports about itself: trading since 1998, upwards of 24,000 people trained in person, and 1,103 purchases of this title.
Self-reported, and none of it an outcome. A purchase count says what people bought, not what followed.
Who is this session wrong for?
More people than usual. Anger content sells best to the readers it can hurt, so this list runs long.
- Somebody in your house is frightened of you, or you are not certain they aren’t.
- You are the one who is frightened, and that person is still in your life. 1800RESPECT is 1800 737 732.
- What you are carrying is abuse or an assault, and it comes back with pictures and sleeplessness.
- Somebody else wants you to forgive, and you are shopping for it to keep the peace.
- You are inside a complaint or a legal process, and putting it down would mean dropping it.
- You have had thoughts of harming yourself, or of not wanting to be here.
Any of those wants a person rather than a file, and the referral takes one appointment.
Free and confidential, open now. Tap to call.
Common questions about forgiveness and letting go
Does forgiving someone mean I have to see them again?
No. Reconciliation is a separate decision with its own risks, and nothing here asks you to make it. You can stop rehearsing an argument and still keep the person blocked, keep the distance, and never explain yourself to anybody at all.
What if what they did was genuinely unforgivable?
Then it stays unforgivable. Being right about that and being tired of carrying it are two separate facts, and neither cancels the other. The session works on the rehearsing and the three-in-the-morning replays. It does not ask you to revise your verdict.
Isn’t it healthier to get the anger out?
That is the common advice, and the evidence runs the other way. Bushman’s 600 angered students who hit a punching bag while thinking about the person came out angrier than those who sat quietly for two minutes. A 2024 meta-analysis of 10,189 participants agreed.
Is there any evidence hypnosis helps with resentment?
None, and it is worth saying plainly. No randomised trial, systematic review or meta-analysis of hypnosis for anger or irritability exists, and a 2024 umbrella review of 49 hypnosis meta-analyses does not contain the word anger. The best-evidenced help for anger is work with a person.
What if I am angry at somebody who frightens me?
Then this is the wrong page, and safety comes before anything on it. 1800RESPECT is 1800 737 732, or text 0458 737 732, twenty-four hours a day; 13YARN is 13 92 76. No recording helps with a person who is still frightening you.
What if the session does nothing for me?
You email the publisher with your order number and they refund you in full inside 90 days, without asking why. One refund per customer. Nobody can predict whether a recording reaches a particular person, and there is no free sample of this one.
Other sessions that may fit you better
- Anger ManagementIf it is the temper itself rather than one person you cannot put down
- Stop ArguingIf the same fight restarts weekly with somebody you live with
- Stop Being IrritableIf everything is annoying lately and no one person is to blame
- Losing a ParentIf the old hurt is with a mum or dad who has since died
The anger and irritability guide sorts sessions by how the anger behaves rather than by what set it off.
Buy it or don’t. The two minutes and the long out-breath are yours tonight for nothing, and they carry the numbers.
Ernest McLeod — clinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice.
- ICHP
- FELLOW, ASCH
- IICT MEMBER
Forgiveness is where the marketing and the harm sit closest together, so the line is simple: nobody earns peace by excusing anything. More about me →
Twenty-three minutes, and three months to change your mind
If the account has cost you enough, and nobody in your house is frightened of you, this is a small private thing to try.
US$18.95Instant download · 90-day refund · about A$27 · opens in a new tab
This is a self-help audio session, not medical treatment, a diagnosis, or a substitute for professional care. Anger and family violence are not the same problem and no recording addresses the second: the Men’s Referral Service is 1300 766 491, and 1800RESPECT is 1800 737 732 if you are the one who is frightened. Constant irritability has medical causes worth ruling out with a doctor. Never listen at the wheel.