Wear my Anger

Communicating emotions is difficult, it’s especially difficult for me. There are so many different emotions we experience daily and sometimes when we experience them intensely, the reality behind them can get lost in translation. Psychologists have worked out ways to communicate emotions using certain techniques such as non-violent communication, using “I” statements when communicating, labelling one’s emotions and techniques learned in cognitive behavioural therapy, but from experience I can say that they don’t always work as the intense emotion can drop a veil on our reasonable thinking and none of the learned techniques come to mind.

The project is meant to go deeper into emotions from a personal perspective and use autoethnography in order to find new and authentic ways to communicate one’s emotions.. Emotions are very personal and I realised that I have to start from myself before designing for others. The target group for this research is the individual who experiences intense anger, on one part, and my loved ones on the other. The
individual so that they could start a conversation within themselves about their own anger and my loved ones so that I can start conversations with them about my anger. The individual hopefully gets the chance to be vulnerable with themselves and get confidence to start looking at their own emotions, if they haven’t done that before or if they have but lack courage. Hopefully to my loved ones the value is that we can
have more open and healthy relationships when we can have a discussion about my anger in a healthy way.

The outcome of the journey is changing the narrative of anger and a physical representation of my anger highlighting the positive aspects of it: “my anger is my friend”. This physical representation serves as a tangible artefact for the start of a discussion either on personal level or with someone else while reminding that anger should not be hidden but instead visible and festive, loud, expressive, fun, and easily shared by wearing/experiencing - these are also my design principles to be used while designing.

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