'Feeling angry was giving me a bad back'

About of boxing was a penny drop moment for Sam Parker. He'd suffered from anxiety for years (or so he thought) but the sheer release of tension as his fist hit the punching bag led him to an epiphany: he was, in fact, full of rage.

- INTERVIEW BY MARGARET HUSSEY

"I used to be an anxious person growing up," says Sam, 40, a journalist. "One day I was going through my boxing routine and something switched.

"Almost by accident I had tapped into this well of anger I had been ignoring for months.

"And for the first time in a very long time I didn't feel anxious, sad or meek. I instantly felt so much better on an emotional level. That was a real eye-opener for me, that repressed anger had such a strong link to anxiety."

Now he is on a mission to change the image of anger - and show that it can be used as a force for good. By repressing it, we are not tapping into our emotions, leading to mental and physical ill health.

Sam's new book, Good Anger, looks at why the emotion has had a bad rap and that despite notions of us being an angrier society online, behind closed doors we are keeping a lid on everything.

"I tried many things - meditation, jogging, gratitude journaling which are all perfectly good and useful. But if your anxiety is about repressed anger, which mine was, it's never going to really cut it in a deeper sense."